Many businesses today are opting to migrate their on-premises applications to the cloud for increased scalability, storage capacity and initial cost savings. Delta Dental of California, the leading provider of dental insurance in the US, mandated a corporate-wide move to the cloud as part of its long-term digital strategy. They had been a long-term client of Alithya’s, leveraging on premises Oracle platforms since 2007. In 2019, Delta Dental moved its human resources to Oracle Cloud with an Oracle Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM) implementation. Shortly afterwards, Delta Dental added Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM). “Our Oracle HCM and EPM project success strengthened the case for moving Financials to the Oracle Cloud too,” says Dominic Titcombe, chief information officer, Delta Dental.
Dental insurer builds on Oracle Cloud success with financial systems integration
In 2022, Delta Dental signed a contract with Alithya to add Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to include the implementation of a payroll system as well as change management and cloud-based training services to ensure optimal adoption of the technology. “We had confidence in Alithya for this broader scope of work,” says Titcombe. “The Delta Dental contract is among the largest contracts ever awarded to the Alithya Oracle Practice,” says Mike Feldman, senior vice president, Oracle Practice at Alithya. “It reflects our reputation for excellence as an Oracle partner and showcases Alithya's expanding role as the trusted advisor to top tier organizations across multiple sectors. This undertaking was an entire team effort, and it gives us the opportunity to deliver repeat success for this important client," continues Feldman.
The implementation of Oracle Cloud ERP was a success based on a commitment from the Delta Dental and Alithya teams. “It was a tremendous effort by the Alithya team,” says Titcombe. “We formed relationships between our two teams. We challenged each other, had mutual respect, and course corrected, when necessary,” continues Titcombe. This large project engaged over 40 members of the Alithya team. “Props to the team turning up and spending time in the office with us to help work through challenges,” says Titcombe. “They listened to our feedback, which made for a successful collaboration between our teams. Hats off to both teams for getting the effort done and landing such a complicated project the first time,” continues Titcombe.
Benefits of Oracle Cloud’s SaaS-based platform and robust integrations
With a unified back-office cloud with Oracle HCM, EPM, and ERP, the single data model and repository help ensure that the information for Delta Dental’s business units, employees, and budgets is consistent across finance and HR. For instance, if an employee’s role changes with a promotion to a different business unit, all those changes are immediately reflected across Oracle’s ERP, EPM, and HCM systems. The result is an accurate business unit P&L, proper authority for the employee to procure to his/her new limits, and a clean payroll-run—all based on a single change versus multiple changes in three different systems. “We are really excited to have an integrated HR system and financial system all working together in a SaaS-based Oracle platform,” says Titcombe.
Unlike legacy on-premises applications where you typically see a major upgrade once every three years, Oracle Cloud ERP applications are updated with the latest features frequently, usually every quarter, without the need to take down systems. For example, cloud ERP systems are regularly updated to align with GAAP, Sarbanes-Oxley, and other financial standards, aiding compliance. “It’s a tremendous advantage to us that when features and functions arrive, we can take advantage of them and roll them out quickly to the team. We are excited to bring new capabilities to the business in a much quicker fashion than ever before,” continues Titcombe. “When you’re running the on-prem versions, it’s easy to fall behind on the new features and functionality,” adds Titcombe.
Overcoming challenges in cloud integration: key lessons and results
Delta Dental successfully moved all its primary business functions to the unified cloud. “This was a big, incredibly complicated effort,” says Titcombe. “I’d say the most complicated part was the Oracle Cloud Integration component which allows all our systems to talk to one another. It was challenging to build, architect, and support that component. Alithya led this charge and gave us the experience that we needed so that all capabilities were successfully rolled out and the challenges were surmounted,” adds Titcombe.
Oracle Cloud Integration is an enterprise connectivity and automation platform for quickly modernizing applications, business processes, APIs, and data. It allows Delta Dental to connect any SaaS and on-premises applications six times faster with a visual development experience, embedded best practices, and prebuilt integrations for the most common applications. Oracle Cloud Integration allows Delta Dental native access to events in Oracle Cloud ERP, HCM, and EPM and connect them to app-specific analytic silos and end-to-end processes.
About Delta Dental
Delta Dental is the nation's largest dental benefits provider, covering more than 89 million Americans and offering the country's largest dental network with approximately 152,000 participating dentists. Over the last decade, Delta Dental companies and their foundations invested over $1.9 billion to improve the oral and overall health of its communities. For more information, visit deltadental.com.
Alithya, a trusted Oracle partner
Alithya is a trusted North American leader in strategy and digital transformation, employing a dedicated and highly skilled workforce of 3,700 professionals in Canada, the United States, and internationally. Alithya's strategy is based on a plan of accelerated organic growth and complementary acquisitions to create a global leader. The company's integrated offer is based on three pillars of expertise: strategic consulting, enterprise transformation, and business enablement.
An Oracle Partner for over 25 years, Alithya's expertise includes more than 300 certified consultants and Oracle ACEs. The company has a dedicated practice for healthcare and financial services and serves other industries and contributes in an advisory role to the Oracle Product Development team. Alithya’s Oracle Practice delivers cloud applications, technology services, advisory services, and industry services to clients to help them achieve their business goals and gain a competitive industry advantage. Contact us today to start your digital transformation journey.
“We very much look forward to continuing our relationship with Delta Dental for many years to come,” says Feldman. Interested in learning more? Check out the full conversation here.