Cloud Leader, Week of March 14, 2016 |  Web View   Forward to a Friend CLOUD LEADER News and Analysis to Guide Your Strategy   Editor's Note: Kill Complexity with Cloud ERP In today's quickly changing business landscape, complexity is an anchor weight that prevents companies from innovating. Executives at Khaleefa Butti Bin Omair (KBBO) Group, an Abu Dhabi–based investment firm, were determined to avoid that fate with the company's enterprise resource planning initiative—even as they looked for a single system that could span a portfolio of companies ranging from healthcare to oil and gas. As they looked for an ERP platform that could standardize the technology and processes in KBBO's many companies based in the UAE and the UK, the firm explored cloud ERP options at a time when few companies of KBBO's scale had moved in that direction. And in January 2015, KBBO moved its financials, HR, payroll, and procurement functions to the cloud. Here, KBBO's director of IT discusses what drove the company's decision—and the many benefits, including that the IT staff's workload has been reduced by 40 percent. —By Margaret Harrist, Oracle Director of Content Strategy More Cloud News Going All In on Cloud ERP Boosts Business and IT Process Effectiveness at KBBO  The Art of Successful M&As: A CFO Guide to Technology Issues  Is Your Business Unsinkable? Think Again  Cloud Innovator Avaya's Customer-Centric Evolution Communications technology maker Avaya has put customer engagement front and center of its new digital strategy. But to succeed, it needed to consolidate and rationalize more than 750 applications, about 100 dashboards, and untold databases. Learn more about Avaya's consolidation plan and why company leaders moved to cloud applications for customer-facing functions. Three Keys to Success  Get Started with Oracle Cloud News: Oracle Unveils First Data Protection Solution with Seamless Cloud Tiering  White Paper: Everything You Need to Know About Data Onboarding  Video: Is the Cloud Burden on You?  Trials, Demos, and Briefings: Oracle Cloud  Great Expectations: How the CFO's Role Is Growing Here's something to make the case for attending Oracle's Modern Finance Experience this April: just over half of chief executives predict the CFO's influence will increase more than that of other C-suite roles in the next three years, according to a recent report from Forbes and KPMG. But a third of the CEOs cited in the report said their CFO didn't help them enough with the challenges of running their business. A common complaint? Lack of expertise in new technology, particularly ERP. How Can CFOs Meet the Challenges of Modern Business?  The Oracle Blog When Change Hits, the Cloud Lets IT Say, 'Yes' For IT leaders, it doesn't matter whether a challenge comes from entering a new market or reinventing an internal organization. IT needs to be ready to say, "Yes." Learn how cloud-based platforms, software, and infrastructure help three companies seize new opportunities. Three Customers That Faced Change with the Cloud  Events Navigating the Evolution of Cloud-Based EPM March 23 | Online Event Oracle Cloud Day: Transforming Your Tomorrow March through April | North America Oracle EPM Innovation Day March through April | North America Oracle CloudWorld: Modern Business in the Cloud March and April | Worldwide Oracle HCM World April 5–7 | Chicago, Illinois Modern Finance Experience April 6–7 | Chicago, Illinois Collaborate16 April 10–14 | Las Vegas, Nevada Oracle Industry Connect April 11–13 | Orlando, Florida Oracle Modern Experiences: Service, Commerce, Sales, and Marketing April 26–28 | Las Vegas, Nevada Stay connected Visit the Oracle Account page to subscribe to this newsletter and other Oracle publications.   Global Contacts     Sales Chat Live Please send questions or comments to newsletter_feedback_us@oracle.com. This document is provided for information purposes only, and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. 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