Oracle Corp. wants you to know that it’s serious about supply-chain management.

The database giant today is introducing release 13 of its Oracle Cloud Applications suite, anchored by improved user experience, mobility and significantly enhanced supply-chain management features in the form of six new products. “We are jumping into the deep water of supply chain with this release,” said Liam Nolan, Oracle’s vice president of cloud applications development and enterprise resource planning.

Oracle is already ranked a solid No. 2 on the list of the largest supply chain software providers by Gartner Inc., but it’s still far behind front-runner SAP SE. With the new set of cloud offerings, Oracle figures it can help close the gap.

Leading off the list of new supply-chain functions is a collaboration application that enables suppliers and buyers to trade information about demand, confirm availability and shipping dates and conduct secure discussions. “This is all new, built from ground up using the same tooling as the rest of the suite and sharing the same data,” Nolan said.

Three other new modules address planning in the areas of sales and operations, demand management and supply. “It’s predicting demand based upon real-world data in real time,” Nolan said. “These features are building upon the detailed planning capability that we introduced several years ago.” The focus is on improving forecasting and make it easier for internal parties to share information across the organization.

A new quality management feature delivers better visibility into material sourcing and quality control, which is particularly useful in the case of recalls, Nolan said. The final new piece, maintenance management, helps organizations monitor machinery and other equipment for predictive maintenance, enabling work orders to be quickly dispatched so that the repairs can be made before equipment fails.

A market-by-market approach

Release 13 is heavy on supply chain features because Oracle is targeting new vertical markets with each iteration of its cloud suite, Nolan said. “We’re realistic enough to realize the size of the task we’re undertaking in creating a suite of cloud services, so we’re proceeding into new vertical areas one at a time,” he said. The software will be delivered as a cloud service but can also be deployed on-premises through Oracle’s Cloud at Customer program.

Oracle is also also heading downmarket with this release, creating as-yet-unspecified bundles for midsized companies. “Cloud enables us to address greenfield opportunities at smaller entities. You’ll see us working in smaller markets because they can afford us now,” Nolan said. Although standard pricing will continue to apply, midmarket companies will be offered application bundles in areas such as human capital management and ERP. “The functionality is the same, but there may be restrictions on additional services,” Nolan said.

On the user experience front, the company has been watching the ways in which customers use applications and fine-tuning its navigation approach accordingly. Oracle CX Cloud Suite Release 13 introduces improved mobile and data visualization capabilities and adds Oracle Engagement Cloud, which combines sales and service capabilities to improve customer satisfaction. “We believe we can finally deliver the 360-degree customer view with a B2B focus,” Nolan said.

Perhaps prompted by the surging success of SAP’s Hana in-memory analytical database, Oracle is now stressing integrated in-memory analytics that eliminate the need for extract/transform/load processes and enable users to query production data directly. “The end user can create reports directly off the production environment without having to know what’s under the covers,” Nolan said. “The complexity is hidden.”

Asked if this functionality is similar to that delivered by SAP with Hana, he responded “Yes, it is.” Oracle can make multidimensional analytics available thanks to its acquisition of business intelligence software supplier Hyperion Solutions Corp. a decade ago, he said. “We have built that into our cloud suite of products.”

Oracle publishes its cloud applications pricing on a module-by-module basis here.

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