Founded in 1964, JCDecaux invented the concept of street furniture in Lyon, France, which quickly became a global advertising revolution. It is now the number one outdoor advertising company in the world. JCDecaux Australia has been providing high-quality street furniture and advertising space locally since 1997. With plans to expand across the region JCDecaux acquired its Sydney-based competitor, APN Outdoor’s 40,000 site network, comprising billboard, transit and airport advertising. The acquisition complemented and enhanced JCDecaux’s existing suite of premium street furniture and transport advertising assets, resulting in the organisation becoming the leading provider of unique and creative outdoor advertising in Australia. JCDecaux’s acquisition of its larger competitor is testimony to its ambitious expansion plans in the region “As a business, our overriding goal is to be the unrivalled out of home advertising leader. We measure our success through financial performance, but we are completely focused on innovation and proactive thought leadership, aiming to bring ideas to agencies rather than simply reacting.” David Watkins Finance Director, JCDecaux Australia and New Zealand Challenge Following the acquisition of APN Outdoor, there was a need to consolidate the separate finance functions of the two organisations. JCDecaux sought a scalable, simple, standard Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution to support the company’s expansion plans and had to decide whether to retain its existing heavily customised legacy accounting system, or adopt the Oracle Cloud ERP solution used by APN. David Watkins, Finance Director, JCDecaux Australia and New Zealand said “As a business, our overriding goal is to be the unrivalled out of home advertising leader. We measure our success through financial performance, but we are completely focused on innovation and proactive thought leadership, aiming to bring ideas to agencies rather than simply reacting. My goal is to ensure the finance tech is easy to deal with, while supporting optimum business outcomes. Any new technology chosen must be modern, simple to use and manage, flexible, and scalable.” The organisation was also looking for a managed services partner that could provide flexible service delivery with minimal internal support requirements. After conducting significant research into the platform used by APN Outdoor and comparing it to its incumbent solution, JCDecaux decided upon the Oracle Cloud ERP solution as the sole platform to support its expansion plans. JCDecaux was impressed with the performance, functionality and scalability of the Oracle Software as a Service (SaaS) solution, as well as the limited ‘customisation’ required. The solution also forced the organisation to think about how things could be done in a ‘best practice’ way. Solution DXC Technology was selected by JCDecaux to design, build and implement Oracle Cloud ERP. As the largest independent provider of Oracle consulting and managed services in Australia and New Zealand, DXC provides dynamic technology leadership in delivering Oracle Cloud solutions. DXC already had a strong and long-standing relationship with APN Outdoor having supported its successful migration from an on-premises Oracle JD Edwards environment to Oracle Cloud ERP services. The fact that DXC could act as a ‘single strategic partner’ and deliver managed services, consulting and implementation work across the complete Oracle Cloud ERP offering, proved very compelling to JCDecaux. Watkins said, “DXC took the time to understand our business. They demonstrated expertise and understanding, but importantly, provided their point of view on the best way to drive our project’s key objectives. As one of the first customers to upgrade to Oracle Cloud ERP, DXC was able to support us during the implementation, as well as providing ongoing managed services, critical issue resolution, and necessary development support with a set number of hours per month.” Oracle Cloud ERP provides JCDecaux with a scalable, simple and standardised company-wide ERP system with core financials and accounting functionality. It also provides the organisation with the ability to make better decisions, manage costs and improve performance, and has the potential to easily scale and grow to meet JCDecaux’s expansion vision. The company plans to add procurement, project management, and inventory warehousing functionality soon. “We knew our biggest challenge would be moving people off the platform they were familiar with. However, DXC knew how to keep people engaged, and understood the benefits of moving. They were able to quickly address any issues or concerns as they arose.” David Watkins Finance Director, JCDecaux Australia and New Zealand Implementation DXC managed the entire project from roadmaps and scoping through to implementation and change management. The first phase of the project transferred billing and accounts receivable processes from the existing legacy platform to the new Oracle Cloud ERP application suite. The solution offers JCDecaux the flexibility to migrate and scale new areas of the business as they are ready. The introduction of standard processes helped reduce manual effort and streamline processes across the whole business, with the move to a single platform providing clearer visibility into consolidated spending. DXC also assisted JCDecaux to mitigate the issues that came with the footprint expansion to new modules, and helped with system merger activities. A key part of the project was the change management process involved in people’s reluctance to leave behind the legacy solution. DXC pre-empted potential user concerns and built credibility within the business early on. Watkins said, “We knew our biggest challenge would be moving people off the platform they were familiar with. However, DXC knew how to keep people engaged, and understood the benefits of moving. They were able to quickly address any issues or concerns as they arose.” “The Oracle technology allows us to remain lean and nimble and DXC has the right expertise to support our lean team. We now have a steady and sustainable platform, with the ability to scale up and down as needed. Over a period of just three or four months, we merged the two entities to ensure one invoice, one platform, and one face of the business to our customer base.” David Watkins Finance Director, JCDecaux Australia and New Zealand Results JCDecaux implemented Oracle Cloud ERP core financial applications to provide efficient, best-of-breed features; built-in best accounting practices; stability and scalability to support continued growth; and minimal internal maintenance requirements. Less than a year after beginning the project rollout, JCDecaux standardised on a single invoice format, enabling invoice approval in email, and moved all accounts payable and general ledger activities into Oracle Cloud ERP. Since then, the cloud system’s automated processes and streamlined workflows have sped up user transactions considerably, helping shorten the month-end close by several days. Additionally, the system’s financial modelling, real-time automated reporting capabilities, and scalability has allowed the JCDecaux finance team to support the increasing number of advertising campaigns and assets in the region, positioning them as an even more valuable business partner.