Oracle offers free tools to help customers adapt to changing market conditions

Enterprise cloud services provider Oracle has joined the list of global companies in offering free services to its customers during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. 

For the next 12 months, the company’s existing customers can access Oracle financial statement planning, including strategic modelling, for free. 

Oracle financial statement planning, a cloud-based forecasting solution, helps customers run detailed ‘what-if’ scenarios for a possible economic situation, including payment delays, inventory fluctuations and supply disruptions.

The solution helps increase the accuracy of revenue and cash flow forecasting, capital structure scenario modelling and assist with funding compliance and credit rating calculations among others, the company said in a statement.

According to Oracle, the financial tool will help customers with decision making and data analytics. 

Read: About 82% of decision-makers say data strategy key to better business outcomes: Oracle

The Redwood Shores, California-based firm also said that its Monte Carlo simulation capabilities help customers improve business agility and mitigate negative outcomes by enabling them to test a range of likely outcomes and plan for potential responses.

One sector that will benefit from the planning tool is retail, Oracle said. The pandemic has severely affected retailers’ in-store business. Owners will now have to open the physical outlets in a gradual manner and find the right mix of online and offline offerings to increase sales and improve business efficiency.

They also need to consider consumer spending shifts, with staple items driving a larger percentage of revenues than luxury items, the company said.

“No one knows what a post COVID-19 world will look like and no two industries or geographies are experiencing the same reality, but the one certainty is that every organisation needs to balance urgent and critical short-term needs with long-term strategic priorities. In this environment, scenario planning and strategic modelling have become essential to finance teams as they assess a wide array of possible outcomes, forecast revenues and liquidity, and make iterative short- and medium-term forecasts.” Hari Sankar, group vice president, Oracle EPM Cloud said.

Other technology companies have also waived off fee for some of their services to help customers. 

Last month, the search giant Google made its video conferencing platform Meet free for anyone with a Google account. 

Software-as-a-solution provider Zoho launched an app for schools among other initiatives to help education and government sectors cope with disruption caused by the pandemic. It also made its products free for around 20,000 of its paying customers. Under the business emergency subscription assistance programme (ESAP), Zoho customers with 25 or fewer employees will be able to access its products for free for the next three months, the company had said.

The cloud computing arm of Chinese ecommerce major Alibaba, Alibaba Cloud has rolled out artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud-based technology solutions to help researchers and healthcare workers.

Recently, Noida headquartered technology firm HCL Technologies made its Glovius license available for free until May end. Glovius is a multi-platform visualisation solution, which enables access to 3D data on Windows, Cloud, iOS and Android apps.