AT&T revamps its finance and planning processes with Oracle Cloud ERP and EPM

With origins dating back to the late 19th century and the invention of the telephone, AT&T today is one of the largest networking and telecommunication providers in the US, offering phone, wireless, fiber, and internet and broadband services to individuals and businesses.

AT&T’s on-premises IT environment had been powering its finance operations for 20 years, and the systems became bogged down by customizations, making it hard to upgrade and tap into the latest innovation. This scenario stood in contrast to the company’s overarching strategy of simplification and efficiency. AT&T’s finance department relied on a number of legacy systems that created unnecessary complexity, with many of those systems performing similar and duplicate functions. Employees were also spending a lot of time finding and curating data, which risked slowing down decision-making.

AT&T decided to move core finance functions to the cloud as part of a broad transformation strategy, starting with its general ledger.

AT&T evaluated several cloud software providers before choosing Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM). The company wanted to use the combination of Oracle Cloud ERP’s general ledger, accounts payable, and fixed assets functionalities alongside Oracle Cloud EPM’s system of planning, forecasting, and allocations tools. For AT&T, the ability for these applications to work together to break down data silos and give employees a more holistic view of the business was a key benefit.

“Oracle software works end to end, from source to settle, procure to pay, record to report—many capabilities that our team looks for,” says Ramya Lakshminarayanan, a lead technical architect for finance systems at AT&T.

An Oracle customer since 2000, AT&T previously moved thousands of databases to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and implemented Oracle Field Service to streamline scheduling and dispatching for its technicians.

AT&T migrated from Oracle E-Business Suite to Oracle Cloud ERP and EPM, establishing a single chart of account structure across lines of business for its US operations. With that migration ongoing, the company also moved its revenue management and planning processes to the cloud, with allocations, accounts payable, fixed assets, and project accounting slated for migration by mid-2024.

Access to a single, integrated information platform in the cloud helped eliminate data silos and reduced manual processes for AT&T’s finance team. The consolidated view of data makes it easier and faster to extract trends and insights that the business can use for better decision-making.

AT&T also saw performance improvements across core finance processes running in the cloud, with many jobs being completed much faster compared to on-premises. For example, since deploying revenue management in the cloud, AT&T reduced the time required to generate and receive customer contracts from stores from 60 hours to less than 30 hours. When the migration is fully complete, this will help AT&T start the month-end close process earlier.

Moving to the cloud allows AT&T to be more efficient with its technology. They moved away from complex customizations and consolidated multiple legacy systems that were duplicating tasks. With Oracle Cloud ERP’s quarterly update cycle, the company no longer endures the difficult system upgrades of on-premises software. This smoother upgrade cycle ensures AT&T stays up-to- date with the latest innovations and technologies.

“As the world shifts from on-premises solutions to more cloud-based technology, we don't want to be left behind,” says Lakshminarayanan. “Oracle allows us to make this shift and has been a great collaboration the past two decades.”