Founded in 1944, Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) was created with the initial objective of preparing qualified personnel for public and private administration in Brazil. But today, the institution is recognized as one of the most important schools of higher education in Latin America, offering undergraduate and graduate courses in the most diverse areas, with the aim of stimulating national socioeconomic development.
The Foundation also carries out commissioned work for the public sector, the private sector and international organizations such as the World Bank. In addition, through the Brazilian Institute of Economics (IBRE), it generates and disseminates, as public goods, indicators and reports that contribute to the direction of the Brazilian economy.
Divided into nearly two dozen teaching verticals – and operating somewhat decentralized – FGV's great challenge was not only to speed up the delivery of accounting reports for all units, but also to have greater transparency of the numbers. This includes each company's costs, revenues, direct and indirect expenses, and assessing their net margins (not just gross/direct margins).
Therefore, the Foundation's challenge was to find a solution that would bring all this data in a clear, organized way, with insights and, just as important, quickly. And Oracle Cloud EPM Profitability and Cost Management (PCM) proved to be a solution that lived up to the mission.
Why FGV chose Oracle
To find a solution that met the needs of its verticals, FGV was very rigorous in its search. When selecting suppliers, she evaluated 23 requirements that the software should offer, based on a questionnaire developed with the Controllers of each unit of the institution. As a result, there was greater assurance that the chosen platform would meet the day-to-day needs of its users.
In the end, with the evaluations made by each Controller, in addition to the independent evaluation of the RGCE (consultancy responsible for the Costing model used and for the selection of the software), the FGV Steering Committee (Presidency and Directors) opted for Oracle PCM.
“In addition to the resources offered by PCM, the fact that FGV already has other Oracle products, such as EBS, helped with the choice”, said Rodrigo Gimenez, leading partner of RGCE, the consultancy responsible for the project at FGV and which carried out the entire process of software selection???????? “Having this ease of integration is an important factor, because it mitigates risks and makes the whole process faster”.
Results of
Currently, Oracle PCM is in its first stage of implementation at FGV, already working in three verticals of the institution, more specifically, in the city of São Paulo.
And even though it is in an initial planning phase, Oracle PCM is already showing results in the day-to-day activities of the institution. The use of the solution, for example, has already allowed for a reduction in the time it takes to issue management reports, something essential for making more agile decisions.
“Oracle PCM also delivers a dashboard which brings greater visibility of all the costs involved", says Gimenez. “As a result, both FGV's financial area executives and other administrative or non-administrative areas, for example, course coordinators, etc., are able to have a better view of each product's profit margin, as well as direct and involved, and also what the main cost “offenders” are, which is essential to understand how to make them more profitable”.
The Oracle PCM implementation project at FGV was divided into four “waves”. The first stage has already been completed, covering three verticals of the institution, more specifically in the city of São Paulo (Direito SP, EAESP and EESP). The second wave of implementation of the solution is already underway and includes four other verticals in Rio de Janeiro (EPGE, EMAP, EBAPE, Direito RJ and CPDOC).
By the end of 2022, the expectation is to implement the third wave (IDE – Educational Development Institute) of Oracle PCM. And in 2023, the fourth wave, covering five more verticals (Knowledge, DGPE, EPPG, IBRE and Projects) – at this stage, the objective is to complete it by the end of the first half of next year. And there are still plans to expand the project to other units of the institution in 2023.
Partners
The technical implementation of Oracle PCM at FGV has been carried out by Ninecon. Based on a phased implementation strategy developed by the RGCE consulting firm (consulting company responsible for the project), Oracle's implementation partner (Ninecon) took about ten months to finalize the implementation of the first stage of the project (first wave) and which involved in this period the definition of model. With the structure defined, phase 2 (second wave) is already in progress. go live and took four months to implement.
Oracle's product team was also directly involved in the implementation to ratify the proposed structure and follow up on the product's format, which underwent several changes to serve the plurality of FGV's businesses. The architecture of the solution was modeled with multiple PCM instances so that it was possible to perform the data segregation in the proper way.
To complete, Oracle PCM was implemented in order to guarantee an intuitive navigation, guaranteeing a fast learning curve and is very aligned with the guidelines that were placed. Currently, Controllers already operate the tool without the need for constant support from the IT Department.
