Why Santa needs Oracle

He has the most difficult job of all and if you ask any child across the world it’s also probably the most important of all. But as populations increase so does demand, product lines diversify and expand meaning that processing and producing these ‘orders’ only becomes more difficult. Think about how Santa ran his operation back when he started out.

1.      Demand was fairly predictable as at the time the population was a lot lower and there were a limited set of products/toys on the market.

2.      Again, due to the size of the population, volume was manageable and orders typically arrived at the North Pole in handwritten format.

3.      To process these orders the elves would open these letters by hand and enter them into a system of record again probably handwritten but maybe today he uses excel spreadsheets for this.

4.      Production was again managed by his elves who manually assembled basic toys in Santa’s factory in the North Pole.

5.      Senior executive elves would provide quarterly forecasts to Santa based on a combination of previous years’ experience, changes in population and to a certain extent ‘gut feeling’.

6.      Everything would run smoothly and without thinking about what was happening in the background children all over the world would wake up on Christmas morning to find once again the big man in the red suit had delivered!

Now take that forward a few years to 2017 and consider the following factors which have put a major strain on Santa’s organisation and his ability to deliver year after year.

1.      Massive increases in population and a more diversified set of products drives more frequent and less predictable demands.

2.      Email, social and digital has dramatically increased the volume of orders that Santa’s elves have to process.

3.      Processing these orders has become near on impossible and he has probably had to hire a lot more elves to complete this process to ensure no child gets forgotten/missed on Christmas morning.

4.      The production capacity is also under major strain due to the manual assembly process, shortage of staff, the difficulty to predict what was coming and in turn ensure they have the right raw materials to meet expectations.

5.      Forecasts have become increasingly inaccurate and the organisation as a whole is starting to creak.

6.      Not having enough staff coupled with the increased demand and the outdated processes in Santa’s operations means that going forward it is not a sustainable model.

Santa’s org needs a massive overhaul if he is going to continue to deliver year on year. So how would Oracle help him going forward and in turn make sure that millions of children around the world do not have their hearts broken on Christmas morning?

Workforce Modelling

Given the seasonality of Santa’s business he could link staffing requirements to changes in demand using Oracles PBCS. He could make a decision based on modelling if it was better to have full time employees do overtime hours or if taking on temporary contractors would make more financial sense during peak times.

Recruiting

Having a modern recruitment solution, like Oracle Taleo, that is both candidate and recruiter friendly would allow Santa to accelerate the hiring of full time and par time seasonal elves. All the while building his pool of talent for any future potential requirements.

Production and cost planning

Santa is not in the business of making profit so it makes it all the more important that he keeps a firm grip on matching supply with demand. With Oracle he would be able to track, in real time, any increase or decrease in demand for certain toys so that he knows precisely how much stock he needs to have to meet orders.

Order Management

Having an automated Order management solution would free up a lot of those elves to focus on other more strategic duties within the organisation. It would also be a more efficient and accurate process to minimize fulfillment costs and production errors while maximising customer satisfaction.

Forecasting

Rather than quarterly forecasts, senior executive elves would be able to provide monthly, weekly and even daily forecasts based on real time information which would make planning easier and ease the pressure on production.

Collaboration

Having a single IT platform with built in social networks and mobile functionality for all of these supporting systems increases collaboration and accountability across different lines of business meaning tasks get completed quicker. All of this contributes to helping the big man to hit his deadline on Christmas day. Companies or organisations who have all of their interactions connected with a common user experience tend to outperform their peers.

This is really just a snapshot of how we could help Santa as Oracle is the only vendor to offer a complete suite of cloud applications covering everything in your business from Customer Experience to Human Capital Management along with Enterprise Resource Planning and Enterprise Performance Management.

If you need better insights and efficiency at your organisation feel free to drop me a line to discuss how Oracle can help support your strategic vision.

Thanks for reading and I wish you a Happy Christmas and Prosperous new year!

Email - [email protected]  or  Phone – 00441189248695