AUTOMOTIVE

Mr. Wohl, in his keynote speech here today, brought conference attendees up to speed on existing and new application software from Oracle that make it incredibly easy to achieve cost savings and improved information. Tens of thousands of customers around the world are using Oracle applications to do just that with resounding success. "The results speak for themselves," said Mr. Wohl referencing a wealth of customer examples that demonstrate using the Oracle E-Business Suite can results in millions of dollars in savings as businesses standardize and automate various aspects of their business. "We've talked about progressive automation before. Why do I keep stressing it? Because the payback is so great," he emphasized. Lowering cost of doing business by "progressive automation" is only one aspect of the equation; better information is the other. With the latest release of Oracle Daily Business Intelligence, "Oracle can deliver information at one-tenth the cost," Mr. Wohl asserted. Oracle Daily Business Intelligence is the first cost-effective, real-time alternative to the traditional data warehousing approach, making it "infinitely simpler" because Oracle unifies company information into one master repository within the transactional system. Thus, Oracle Daily Business Intelligence makes it possible for executives to drill into the detail behind key performance indicators, such as employee turnover, inventory and sale pipeline, within the online summary report. Mr. Wohl continued by previewing the next release of Oracle E-Business Suite. The next release, Oracle11i.10, is designed to make it easier and more cost effective to integrate applications and processes with third-party applications. "We've made it even easier to integrate to the Oracle E- Business Suite and automate across multiple [third-party] applications," Mr. Wohl underscored. "This is extremely modern support for integration." Mr. Wohl also emphasized new capabilities being added to the Oracle E- Business Suite, including support for RFID, which will help companies address new requirements in their industries. In closing his keynote, Mr. Wohl reminded customers about the wide-range of options customers have to lower their costs and improve information -- whether it is leveraging the entire E-Business Suite, some of the Suite -- using the new integration services -- or none at all, by employing the Oracle Customer Data Hub to unify customer information into one master record. The important thing is "to adopt the architecture of a single source of truth whenever possible," Wohl emphasized. "It is a very effective way to improve your operations." Oracle AppsWorld 2004 continues through Thursday, January 29, 2004, at the San Diego Convention Center.