Compare Oracle Cloud ERP for banking to SAP banking
The banking industry is going through unprecedented changes. In this shifting environment, a broad range of banks trust Oracle banking solutions to help them stay competitive. Oracle has proven to be the most complete and integrated provider of SaaS, ERP, EPM, HR, and SCM solutions. On the other hand, SAP has not built any comprehensive service offering across all segments of banking. When compared with Oracle, SAP's position in banking suffers from its lack of a banking solution that is integrated with ERP and other applications. SAP remains largely centered on the ERP market, rather than banking systems. In fact, SAP itself doesn’t claim any leadership position in the banking sector.
How bank CFOs are evolving finance operations to lead strategic growth
ERP for banking vs. SAP banking detailed comparison
Oracle is leading the way in cloud ERP. Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP has been cloud-based from the beginning, with continuous innovation delivered quarterly. It's intelligent, predictive, fully connected, and built for flexibility. You can start your transformation now, whatever your starting point, to create instant business value in the cloud.
Compare SAP's ERP solutions to Oracle Cloud ERP and Oracle Cloud solutions for banking and see why Oracle is the better choice for you.
Business benefit |
SAP S/4HANA Private Cloud |
SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud |
Oracle Cloud ERP and Banking |
Why this matters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| True cloud SaaS applications | Not SaaS, hosted legacy | SaaS | SaaS | True SaaS is required to enable continuous digital innovation without end-of-life and implementation disruption required for today’s banking business. |
| Complete suite of modular applications | ERP-centric but comprehensive set of modules. | Limited financials and banking capabilities. | Full suite of flexible modular SaaS applications focused on banking. | When all modules are built on unified data, you can optimize processes and analyze data across departments. Modularity allows for diverse business models and priority-focused implementation. |
| Continuous innovation across all applications | Traditional disruptive upgrades | Quarterly SaaS updates | Quarterly SaaS updates | Quarterly updates allow continuous innovation based on the latest technologies. |
| Ability to anticipate and react to market conditions and disruptions with scenario modeling | Limited capabilities | Limited capabilities | Supports multiple scenario planning approaches. | Scenario planning prepares organizations for disruption and unforeseen events. |
| Embedded risk management across functions | Fragmented across multiple application and technology layers. | Fragmented across multiple application and technology layers. | Pervasive risk management with embedded data science across the applications and platform. | Built-in risk management and data science strengthens financial controls, stops cash leaks, streamlines audits, and detects emerging risks. |
| Flexible ledger structures | Thick ledger | Thick ledger | Choice of thick ledger, thin ledger, or structured federated ledger (subledger accounting). | A flexible ledger lets users decide how much data flows into the general ledger, based on their business and reporting needs.* |
| Configurable, not customizable applications | Customizable | Configurable | Configurable | Rule-driven configurations and workflow changes don't require IT support. They also drive security and continuous optimization without business disruption. |
| Development strategy | SAP's co-development strategy restricts development without a customer trigger, leading to customized solutions for each customer. The picture is getting more complex with the externalization of new product development to a minority-owned JV.** | SAP's codevelopment strategy restricts development without a customer trigger, leading to customized solutions for each customer. The picture is getting more complex with the externalization of new product development to a minority-owned JV.** | All the cross-app solutions are the product of Oracle in-house development with minimum effort toward customization for users. | A completely in-house development means less of a problem for users in terms of security, identifying and closure of errors, ease of integration—and no pointing fingers at one another. |
| Core banking solution (CBS) | SAP does not have a dedicated product for CBS. | SAP does not have a dedicated product for CBS. | Oracle FLEXCUBE and Oracle Banking Platform are the two CBS that are qualified on OCI or can be deployed on-premises. | A CBS is at the core of banking operations. It is a must-have for modernizing banking operations and building other functionalities around them. |
| Banking on cloud infrastructure | Available in trial phase and yet to be GA. | Available in trial phase and yet to be GA. | Oracle has the core banking system and multiple solutions available on OCI. These solutions include payments, revenue management, billing, lending and leasing, digital banking, and more. | With cloud gaining traction in the banking industry, it is important to provide cloud-based banking services to manage cost, free up resources and achieve scale in operations. |
| Payments engine | Suited for those financial institutions that are already customers of SAP banking solutions. | Suited for those financial institutions that are already customers of SAP banking solutions. | Oracle Banking Payments, connects seamlessly with Oracle's comprehensive banking solutions as well as other solutions. | Banks need an integrated payments platform as a solution that enables the processing of multiple payment types across financial institutions, including both consumer and corporate lines of business, within a single management context. |
| Data sharing and its usage | Legacy application connected to the cloud. All relevant data is in silos. | SaaS with multiple, acquired disparate modules. | SaaS solution with a single data model with a componentized, open, and microservices-based architecture for HR, finance, and other lines of business. | Banks need to turn data into an asset to use across functions. Microservices-based architecture forms a core investment along with a common data model. |
| Blockchain as a service | Available as a node between SAP Cloud Platform and service providers/partners. | Available as a node between SAP Cloud Platform and service providers/partners. | Embedded as a service in the platform as well as within Oracle Database. | Embedded blockchain is secure and tamper-proof. Oracle Database 20c delivered a new feature called Blockchain Tables that bring unique fraud protection to the database. |
Product comparison as of May 25, 2022.
Four reasons to choose Oracle over SAP banking
01Seamless integration
Oracle provides single vendor accountability for hardware and software with preintegrated components based on industry standards and open technologies, no matter the scale of your business transformation effort. You can seamlessly integrate a broad range of functionality with your pre-existing cloud architecture to save costs and accelerate your deployment.
02Decades of global banking experience
Oracle has decades of global banking experience, and our customers span more than 140 countries. You can benefit from applications specifically developed to meet the most demanding business cases for the banking industry across revenue management and billing, sales and marketing, supply chain and finance, and advanced analytics.
Explore Oracle Cloud banking solutions
03Unified solution
Oracle also offers a comprehensive set of solutions across accounting, revenue management and billing, risk and compliance management, insurance, financial crime, and more, all supported with dedicated products and a unified data model. Whereas SAP’s arduous history of company acquisition (PDF) has slowed down its effort to bring consistency in its interface and data exchange.
Explore Financial Services products by solution
04Ready to support your growth
Oracle delivers new features every quarter, and with every applications update comes an update of the platform, so you can use the latest technologies, innovations, and security in both the platform and application layer. You can add these updates at your own pace, so you can prioritize the deployment phases, control the cost, and mitigate risk.
Investing in finance modernization
According to IDC Roadmap to Driving Finance Transformation in the Office of the CFO (PDF) (June 2022):
70%
of banking leaders believe their lack of reconciled data from source systems is a major hindrance to delivering timely insights.
85%
agree that modernizing financial operations will be an essential element for competing in volatile local, regional, and global markets.
75%
of banks and financial institutions are already investing in finance modernization.
According to the IDC report, the top reasons for investment in finance modernization include decreasing cost per transaction, gaining performance insights, and supporting faster technology innovation. In addition, the most important applications and tools to drive this transformation include financial planning and performance software; business analytics and data management; and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) technologies; accounting.
Explore Oracle Cloud solutions
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*A thin ledger contains the segments (data elements) for company/account/center, such as project and product. The number of segments is geared toward financial reporting, such as creating an income statement, balance sheet, trial balance, etc. A thick ledger contains more segments than what you need for accounting. The additional segments add more to reporting and analysis, but make the general ledger more complex. Companies often use a thick general ledger as a general-purpose analytics tool. Says Deloitte, "Making a COA overly complex isn’t going to ensure an unequivocal view of the business. It will open it up to interpretation and guesswork.” A third option is a structured federated ledger, such as Oracle Accounting Hub and Oracle Subledger Accounting, which allows for hierarchies of companies in the general ledger, each with its own segments and some shared federated segments.
**SAP and Dediq have formed a jointly owned financial services industry unit called SAP Fioneer, with each party contributing funding, technology, and development expertise. Dediq’s investment in the unit will be more than €500 million. SAP will transfer a “high triple-digit” number of staff to work in the new unit.
According to Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller, “The spin and merger of SAP’s financial business services with Dediq is a completely new chapter for the company, the first time the ERP giant has admitted that it cannot do it all by itself and in-house. All eyes will be on the success of the new venture, and questions will come up sooner rather than later if SAP decides to spin off more of its products and services.” (Source: Mike Wheatley, “SAP bumps up its 2021 forecast as it forms new financial services business,” SiliconANGLE, April 13, 2021
- https://siliconangle.com/2021/04/13/sap-bumps-fiscal-2021-forecast-forms-new-business-focused-financial-services/)