Optimizing Oracle Costing & Inventory Control for ERP Upgrade

With its critical SAP upgrade on the horizon, Client’s goal was to stabilize and optimize its core business processes—particularly around costing and inventory—to ensure a clean, scalable foundation. They saw this project as a strategic investment in long-term operational excellence, greater visibility, and future system readiness.

Client: Global Top Industrial Robot Manufacturer
Industry: Industrial Automation and Robotics
Size: 15000+ employees

Location: Boston

Challenges:

Client consistently had issues with its Business processes within ERP’s and planning to fix these before FY-25 for its SAP Upgrade:

Pain Point	Everyday Reality & Risk
Average vs. Standard Costing debate	Plant controllers used both methods, creating “dueling margin” reports that never matched and stalled investment decisions.
Zero formal close playbook	Seven years of ad-hoc reconciliations meant a single period close produced 15–20 spreadsheets and took 5–6 days to finalize.
Limited inventory visibility	Robotics subsystems moved between three U.S. sites; planners discovered stockouts only when assembly lines stopped—worth $1.2 M in rush shipments last year.
Few alerts or dashboards	Variances over ±10 % hid for weeks; finance often learned about cost overruns at the quarterly business review, far too late to recover margin.

Action:

Over a focused 24-week program—timed to wrap before the FY-25 SAP upgrade freeze—the cross-functional team delivered four big wins:

Costing Vision & Governance
- Set a “One Standard Cost” mandate for 4,800 SKUs and wrote a 38-page Costing Guidelines playbook; CFO signed off on an annual review cycle.
Period-Close Standardization
- Documented 22 close steps across Finance, Manufacturing, and Supply Chain; introduced a color-coded RACI board and parallel processing of accruals.
Inventory Control & Work-Order Discipline
- Rolled out daily cycle-counts (A items at 97 % confidence) and enforced standard work-order closures within 24 hours of completion.
Real-Time Costing Dashboard & Training
- Built a Power BI dashboard that pulls SAP data every 15 minutes; 57 users trained, with “red/yellow/green” variance alerts at ±5 %.

Results:

KPI	Before	After	Benefit
Costing errors (mis-applied rates, wrong BOM)	1 in 10 costed items	1 in 25	↓ 60 % mis-costs
Inventory issue resolution	46 hrs avg	39 hrs	↓ 15 % faster fix; fewer line stoppages
Cost-variance detection	Reactive (monthly)	Daily, automated	15 % potential loss avoided via early course-correction
Period-close cycle	5–6 days	≤ 2 days	Books close 3+ days quicker; earlier performance insight

Client Testimonial

“We faced long-standing challenges with inconsistent costing, lack of inventory visibility, and disjointed period close processes. The team helped us streamline and standardize across our business, resulting in 60% fewer costing errors and a 2-day close cycle. Their deep expertise and structured approach truly set us up for SAP success.”

— Senior Operations Manager

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