A key focus for SNA is to leverage best practices and technologies across its global operations and improve efficiencies
by locating mills closer to key automotive customers.
“Our acquisition of Rouge Steel Company marked the
global positioning of SNA as an automotive supplier and put
us right in the center of the automotive industry in Detroit,
where we can get access to the latest industry products and
technologies,” says Kuznetsov. “Once these customers come to
Russia with steel stamping facilities, we can supply them with
the same high-quality steel they use in the U.S.”
SETTING A GOAL OF INTEGRATION
Meeting the needs of key automotive customers requires
a top-flight IT infrastructure that’s agile enough to address
changing global business requirements and flexible enough to
enable efficient growth. Like that of many companies, SNA’s
existing IT infrastructure is a conglomeration of different
systems: Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise, for financials; Indus
Enterprise MPAC, for purchasing and maintenance; and a
variety of custom systems.
“Our existing systems are all silos and are typically focused
on individual functional areas,” says Kevin Myers, CIO of
SNA. “There’s no integration, and it creates a real challenge in
getting the appropriate information to the business so it can
make the right decisions.”
After SNA considered the option of upgrading its existing applications, many of which were several releases behind
current versions, it quickly became apparent that it would
be faster, cheaper, and more effective for the company to
select an integrated suite of applications. As a result, in 2007,
the company standardized on Oracle E-Business Suite 12.
Working with BearingPoint and Perot Systems, SNA expects
to have several Oracle E-Business Suite applications—Oracle
Financials, Oracle Purchasing, Oracle Enterprise Asset
Management, and Oracle Manufacturing—deployed by July
CFO Summit Focuses on Global Challenges
Globalization, and the challenges
and opportunities it presents to
companies around the world, was
the theme of the Oracle CFO Summit
at Oracle OpenWorld last November.
Globalization experts and leading
CFOs and other executives gathered
to discuss the role finance can play
in helping organizations succeed in
a world that is being increasingly
flattened by outsourcing, technology,
and new competition from emerging-market leaders.
The executive event, entitled
“Capitalizing on Globalization:
CFO Strategies for Winning in a
Flat World,” was sponsored by
India’s Infosys, a leader in flat-world thinking and an inspiration for
Thomas Friedman’s book The World
Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century.
“If you’re a CFO, you know
how difficult it is to manage in
today’s global economy,” stated
Oracle Chairman Jeff Henley, who
led the event. “Rapid shifts in
markets, technologies, customers,
and products are disrupting entire
industries and forcing companies
to rethink the business models
and corporate strategies that have
sustained them for decades. The
risks have never been higher, but
the rewards are potentially greater
than ever for those who can adapt
and thrive in a world of continuous
change.”
The CFO Summit featured
keynote speeches from three leading
globalization experts. Infosys CEO
Kris Gopalakrishnan spoke about
the four megashifts flattening the
world and how CFOs can leverage
them to achieve stronger financial
performance. The Hackett Group’s
president, Wayne Mincey, discussed
how CFOs are capitalizing on
globalization to lower governance
and administration costs through
outsourcing and technology
standardization, reduce complexity
through simplified compliance and
supplier management, and increase
strategic alignment with performance
and talent management.
Hal Sirkin, senior vice president
and globalization practice manager
at the Boston Consulting Group,
shared new research from his soon-to-be-published book, Globality:
Competing with Everyone from
Everywhere for Everything, which
describes how companies in
rapidly developing economies are
challenging developed-country
corporations and transforming
international business as we know it.
The summit’s two panels, entitled
“Capitalizing on Globalization:
CFO Strategies of World-Class
Performers” and “Globalization
Strategies of Emerging Market
Leaders,” featured senior executives
from Oracle, Agilent, CSAV,
HSBC, Infosys, SeverStal, Stryker
Endoscopy, and ZTE. CFO panelists
discussed how leading companies
can leverage the new international
business climate to maintain
their competitive edge and how
emerging-market companies can use
their advantages to gain a significant
share of the market.
Infosys CFO V. Balakrishnan, for
example, spoke about his company’s
unique offshore outsourcing
strategy, which relies on “insourcing”
local talent from around the
globe, training these people at the
company’s education center in India,
and then redeploying them to their
home countries in order to better
serve the local needs of customers.
More information on the research
and globalization strategies
presented at the Oracle CFO Summit
on Globalization can be found at
oracle.com/goto/cfosummit.
