INDUSTRY

Marvel Enterprises, one of the world's most renowned character-based entertainment companies, will standardize its entire enterprise on the Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Technology, Oracle announced today. The large-scale rollout will enable Marvel to streamline rights and royalties operations for its more than 5,000 characters, as the entertainment company seeks to expand its leadership position worldwide. The implementation, which expands upon Marvel's existing investment in Oracle Financials, will provide a foundation for all of the company's business groups including entertainment, toys, licensing and publishing. "At the core of our business are the intellectual property rights that we control," said Kenneth West, Marvel's executive vice president and CFO. "The more we can globally link and then analyze this information, the better positioned we are for growth. This is where we expect to see the greatest benefit from standardizing all of our operations on the Oracle E-Business Suite." Until now, Marvel has relied on a series of manual processes to track the growing breadth and complexity of earnings and licensing data for all of its characters. By consolidating all of that data into the Oracle E-Business Suite, Marvel can provide its management and license partners with access to timelier, more detailed and more actionable information. Managers will be able to automatically track which characters and licensing categories are being properly exploited and the precise amount each is earning in the various product lines, territories and channels. Marvel's characters are licensed for myriad products, including comic books, films, video games, toys and collectibles and snack foods. "Everyone knows The Hulk and Spider-Man, but we have so many other characters that we're going to launch in various media around the globe," said West. "And as we make that push, this fully integrated Oracle system will give us a visibility that we never had before into how our businesses are performing and where we need to be focusing our efforts." Marvel also expects to see increased benefits of the Oracle rollout in its publishing business which includes comic books and related publications. Using Oracle Order Management, Oracle Discrete Manufacturing, Oracle Manufacturing Scheduling and Oracle Incentive Compensation, the publishing team will be able to streamline and automate the entire design, manufacturing and distribution process. Marvel's investment in the E-Business Suite includes: Oracle CRM (such as Oracle Quoting, Oracle Configurator, Oracle Sales, Oracle Sales Contracts, Oracle Service Contracts, and Oracle Incentive Compensation), Oracle Supply Chain Management (Oracle Manufacturing Scheduling and Oracle Inventory), Oracle Daily Business Intelligence, and Oracle HRMS (Oracle Self Service HR and Oracle HR Intelligence).