DHL Supply Chain moves from five ERP systems to one with Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP

DHL Supply Chain manages the supply chains of some of the world’s best-known brands, providing transportation, warehouses, and expertise that keep operations resilient and efficient. With 200,000 employees and operations across more than 50 countries, including 17 million square meters of flexible warehouse space, DHL Supply Chain relies on a culture of standardizing and simplifying processes throughout the company.

In finance operations, however, DHL Supply Chain lacked that kind of standardization. It was using five ERP systems, with another 30-some add-on applications supporting finance functions. Five ERPs meant regional accounting hubs were using different master data models and different charts of accounts, so any change in business strategy or regulatory requirements took too long to implement. The team’s leadership also felt they weren’t making the best use of finance data to support business operations.

Moving to Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP put the entire global finance organization on the same platform and data model, using standardized processes and one chart of accounts. And Oracle Cloud ERP gave the finance team a platform for ongoing innovation.

DHL Supply Chain had a clear business and IT vision for its ERP initiative, and it chose Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) because it had the range of capabilities needed to replace myriad other applications and help the company execute on its finance standardization and simplification agenda. Having worked with Oracle for more than 20 years, DHL Supply Chain also sees Oracle as a major innovation partner, and the finance team expects to work closely with Oracle to embrace new features, including artificial intelligence opportunities.

DHL Supply Chain also recognized that Oracle runs its own global business using Oracle Cloud ERP. The team saw that the Oracle finance organization uses Oracle Cloud for a lot of the same objectives that DHL Supply Chain has, which helped crystallize the team’s finance vision for the future.

Using Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP allowed DHL Supply Chain to standardize its finance processes across its regional accounting hubs, helping the finance team to deliver more consistent service and performance. It helped the team cut supporting finance applications by 70%. The finance organization also implemented business and regulatory changes noticeably faster and more easily, because it no longer needed to juggle testing and training for five ERP systems. Oracle Cloud ERP’s intuitive interface made training much faster. And consolidating ERP systems and reducing the number of third-party supporting applications brought significant licensing and maintenance savings.

Because Oracle Cloud ERP is updated regularly, the finance team can quickly deploy new capabilities, such as artificial intelligence tools, as soon as they’re added to the application. The pace of innovation fits with DHL Supply Chain’s culture of continuous improvement. “We'll never have to upgrade again, which is a massive relief, and it allows us to focus more on business innovation, insights, value analytics, and how we then provide better decision support for our business,” says Walker.

Invoice processing is one example of how DHL Group uses Oracle Cloud ERP for a more standardized and effective process. The company handles well over 3 million invoices a year, and they come in all kinds of formats. It now taps Oracle’s AI-powered intelligent document recognition capabilities to get invoices into the ERP system with less manual work and higher accuracy. “It has helped our finance community with a relatively labor-intensive process to focus more on higher-value activities rather than processing invoices,” Walker says. Intelligent document recognition shows how DHL Supply Chain can quickly apply new AI-powered features that are built into Oracle Fusion Cloud applications to get practical results.