Hearst gives finance teams faster, broader insight with Oracle
Media company cuts close time by 66% and standardizes reporting across its portfolio with Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications.
United States | Media and Entertainment
“We’re excited about Oracle’s generative AI-powered reporting features, as we believe it will help us further accelerate financial insights and decision-making.”
Finance needed consistent data across a diverse portfolio
For more than a century, Hearst has expanded from newspapers and magazines into television, digital services, healthcare, financial information, and global ratings businesses. Today, the company operates more than 360 businesses across 150 countries. That breadth supports growth, but it also increases operational complexity.
Hearst’s growth created a complex finance environment. Teams worked across many general ledgers and customized tools across business units. Financial closes were cumbersome, forecasting varied by business, and corporate finance teams lacked consistent analytics across the portfolio.
The company needed a cloud platform that could connect accounting, planning, procurement, inventory management, and HR data. It also needed a foundation that could support acquisitions without adding more complexity.
Standardizing accounting, planning, and procurement
Hearst launched Project UniFi, an enterprise-wide initiative to replace decades of legacy systems with Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) including Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), Oracle Fusion Cloud Procurement, and Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM).
With Oracle Cloud, Hearst standardized financial management processes, procurement, project accounting, and inventory operations. Manual reconciliations and approvals were automated, and reporting was centralized across the organization.
Planning and forecasting moved to Oracle Cloud EPM. Hearst replaced six separate tools with a common model for budgeting, scenario planning, and performance analysis, giving finance teams more consistent insight into eight business units operating in 150 countries.
Faster close and simpler audits
A central milestone was moving to a common ledger with one chart of accounts. That change created consistent financial definitions across the enterprise and supported faster consolidations, stronger controls, and more reliable reporting.
Hearst also simplified internal and external audits and reduced IT support costs through quarterly updates and no customizations.
AI supports working capital and finance insight
Hearst is using automation and embedded artificial intelligence in Fusion Applications to reduce manual work and support finance decisions. Intelligent document recognition, automated reconciliations, variance analysis, invoice recognition, cash management, and financial narrative summarization help finance teams work with data faster.
Intelligent payments and dynamic discounting help the company identify suppliers eligible for early-payment discounts. With thousands of suppliers receptive to dynamic discounting, Hearst is achieving cost savings while strengthening supplier relationships.
Finance and HR data come together
Hearst’s finance gains are part of a broader shift across the enterprise. Oracle Cloud HCM gave the company one data model for HR, talent, and workforce management. In the move Hearst reduced job codes from 7,000 to 1,700 and accelerated new-hire productivity by more than 30 days through automated onboarding.
By connecting finance and HR data, Hearst can align workforce analytics more closely with business results. That gives finance, HR, and business leaders a more consistent view of performance across the portfolio.
“As we continue to grow and diversify, having a single, standardized cloud platform gives us the flexibility and discipline to scale.”
A finance foundation for growth
Project UniFi gives Hearst a standardized operating model for acquisitions and organic growth. As Hearst expanded into ratings and financial information businesses, the standardized cloud model provided a consistent framework for onboarding new operations, applying common controls, and delivering timely insight from day one.
Finance teams can close faster, plan with more consistent data, manage working capital, and give senior leaders more timely reporting. As Hearst continues to grow and diversify, its Oracle foundation supports faster integration of new businesses and more disciplined decision-making across the portfolio.