Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM and ERP accelerate UCC’s business growth globally
Japan’s largest coffee producer estimates it could save more than $20 million a year domestically using Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications.
“Oracle Supply Chain Management and OCI have helped us focus on accelerating the business rather than maintaining IT systems. And Oracle Consulting has helped us make a smooth transition from using our traditional legacy systems to adopting the built-in best practices in Oracle Cloud ERP and SCM.”
The UCC Group is the largest producer of roasted coffee in Japan and ranks fifth worldwide. The company integrates the entire coffee value chain, from green bean cultivation in producing countries to the roasting process and sales. UCC runs more than 200 coffee shops, sells ground and whole bean coffee and ready-to-drink beverages, and even markets commercial coffee-making equipment.
For more than 20 years, UCC managed its supply chain and finance with the same on-premises ERP system. To replace the legacy system, UCC tapped a range of Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM and Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP services, including applications for procurement, inventory management, supply chain planning, manufacturing, and product lifecycle management. The company says it’s on pace to save $10 million a year through decreased product and materials inventory. UCC estimates it will save another $10 million in storage, disposal, and retention costs due to inventory optimization.
Why UCC chose Oracle
UCC evaluated SCM and ERP applications offered by SAP, Microsoft, Infor, and Oracle. The company selected Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain and Manufacturing (SCM) and Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to replace UCC’s legacy systems and establish cloud-based, centralized management of finance and supply chain activities. It chose Oracle because of the deep and broad capabilities of its cloud services globally. It also valued the strength of Oracle Integration for simplifying the connection of the company’s core financial management systems with third-party, on-premises, and cloud applications. UCC leaders recognized that the architecture of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Oracle Integration would let them develop cloud-based application extensions for any unique requirements the company had, while still retaining seamless links to Oracle Cloud SCM and ERP. Using Oracle Cloud applications and OCI would help the company centralize data management, simplify quarterly application updates, and accelerate innovation.
Results
UCC Group implemented Oracle Fusion Cloud SCM in its coffee roasting business for inventory and order management, with a plan to roll out to the remaining business units in Japan. It used Oracle Integration to connect Oracle Cloud SCM with the company’s other applications and data. The company is developing an Oracle Cloud ERP implementation plan, which will replace the spreadsheets it now uses for planning as well as third-party apps it uses for various supply chain activities. Those data silos make it difficult and labor-intensive to roll up plans for sales, production, and inventory into a consolidated view.
Oracle’s support for multicloud strategies gave UCC more flexibility and simplicity for data management. UCC sources some third-party data through ServiceNow’s master data management hub. The data moves to a data warehouse on Microsoft Azure, and then to Oracle Cloud Applications using Oracle Integration and Oracle Autonomous Database.
The company also benefits from periodic upgrades to Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications, without disrupting operations that rely on the applications. Overall, the migration is helping UCC bring new ideas to market and facilitating business expansion within its global markets.
Partners
A key consideration for UCC was that Oracle Consulting could provide a clear roadmap for deploying Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications across the company’s 88 global locations with minimal disruption. Oracle Consulting also helps UCC employees adopt best practices built into Oracle Cloud Applications.
About the customer
UCC is the largest producer of roasted coffee in Japan and employs more than 5,000 people. Its mission statement, “Unlocking the power of coffee for a better world,” reflects the belief that good things happen over a cup of coffee.