Globetrotter comes to rest at head of Oracle's Ireland office

If Oracle were deciding where to put its European service centre now, it probably would not choose Ireland, Nicky Sheridan tells…

If Oracle were deciding where to put its European service centre now, it probably would not choose Ireland, Nicky Sheridan tells Jamie Smyth, Technology Reporter.

For much of the 1990s Mr Nicky Sheridan spent his time traversing the globe auditing financial accounts, preparing initial public offerings, and counting cash during the high-tech boom.

This decade-long whirlwind tour with the US-based software giant Oracle took him to the US, Australia, Latin America and finally Eastern Europe, where he met his wife Abigel in Hungary.

Now, five years after returning to Dublin from his role managing the Eastern European region for Oracle, Mr Sheridan is taking up the key management role of head of Oracle Corporation, Ireland.

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"Managing a regional office is not as enjoyable as managing a local office like Ireland, because in my current job I'm meeting the same people everyday, rather than jumping on a plane and seeing them once a fortnight," he says.

The scale of Oracle's Irish unit, which distributes and supports software in Europe, Middle East and Africa, is immense. Oracle EMEA, which is based at the East Point Business Park, made a profit of $427.1 million(€382 million) in the year to the end of May 2002. Revenue generated by Oracle's suite of database, middleware and e-business software in the same period were $1.94 billion, a slight fall on the previous year due to the slump in the software market.

Ironically, despite the obvious success of Oracle's Irish operations over the past five years, one of Mr Sheridan's first jobs when he joined Oracle in the early 1990s was to perform an internal audit on Oracle's Irish manufacturing operation in 1993.

"I was sent back to cost-justify it to see if we could close it down. But after analysis we found, if anything, we should shut the US distribution business down."

Having established Oracle's Hungarian unit in 1993, he appreciates the strength of the competition that Ireland is likely to face from the region, when states join the European Union in 2004. Ireland Inc must continue to be forward-looking, he says.

It is likely that if Oracle were deciding where to put its European shared service centre now, rather than five years ago, it would not choose Ireland, says Mr Sheridan, who set up this centre at the East Point, Dublin, in 1998.

"Although I do think we are still an excellent place to locate strategic functions," he says, "they [Eastern European states] are a little cheaper than us and although I think we have made progress in education, I still don't think this is sufficient."

Infrastructure issues are also likely to weaken Ireland's competitiveness vis-a-vis Eastern Europe. "Ireland will start losing strategic locations if senior executives in multinationals are stuck in traffic or have to take indirect flights from the US." On the plus side Irish people have a reputation for being clever, hard-working and innovative. I hope we can promote more entrepreneurship within the community, says Mr Sheridan.

Much like his predecessor at Oracle Ireland, he is relatively young, having just turned 40 this week. His hobbies include swatting tennis balls in the Leinster League, and spending time with his two-year-old son.

"I'm not a workaholic since my son came along," he admits. " I get up early and go to work and then come home."

But from Mr Sheridan's bustling demeanour it is obvious he is steeped in Oracle's distinctive aggressive culture, which is currently being demonstrated by the firm's $6.3 hostile bid for its smaller US rival PeopleSoft.

"I can't say anything about PeopleSoft," he says. "But there is a general trend towards consolidation in the software industry. The rule is that successful firms prosper at the expense of the slightly less successful ones."

Increasing sales of Oracle software in the Republic to both the public sector and mid-sized Irish firms employing 100 to 499 people will be a key feature of his time as head of the group, he says.

"There is tremendous opportunity for Oracle in this market... Our software can be used to revitalise industries. One example is agriculture, where our wireless solutions can be used by farmers to streamline their work."

Of the larger industry sectors, pharmaceuticals, is an obvious target and the Northern Ireland market is also promising, he says.

One area where the State needs to lead by example is the use of open-source software such as Linux, says Mr Sheridan. There has been a tendency for the State to rely on Microsoft instead of investigating other options.

Likewise, the State should investigate the possibility of outsourcing certain IT and finance functions. Oracle already manages these for a number of companies in the Republic and is delivering multimillion euro savings.

Mr Sheridan, who spent his first decade in business as a pure number cruncher with consultancy firms such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and KPMG, also has strong views on accountancy.

"We as accountants have let ourselves down by not focusing on substance... This is disappointing," he says. "We need to find different methods of monitoring a company's health."

"We are still using an accountancy standard developed more than 500 years ago and this just doesn't do justice to a company's affairs. It is imperative for accountants and auditors to put substance on financial reports."

"For example, we need additional methods to value people within an organisation," says Mr Sheridan, who will manage Oracle's Irish workforce of 1,200.

"Oracle has great value in its people but this asset is not accurately reflected on its balance sheet. There are $10 billion in assets listed on the balance sheet but then the market values the firm at $70 billion," he says.

New stricter accountancy regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which will be enforced from June 2004 in the US, will also change the dynamic for companies, says Mr Sheridan.

Firms will need to standardise their internal processes to cope with these regulations. Oracle was one of the first companies to seek the full benefits from globalisation. And in the mid-1990s the firm began setting up the same back-office processes in all its 150 geographies, according to Mr Sheridan, who played a key role in this company-wide strategy.

"Oracle is privileged in that back in 1997 it took the time to standardise its internal processes in all its countries. We set up three global shared services centre in Sydney, California and in Dublin, which have gone on to save us a lot of money."

Mr Sheridan established Oracle's e-business centre in Dublin, which services Oracle's back-office services for Europe, in 1998.

All customer, partner, supplier and employee data is controlled in Dublin and the centre has become a major showcase for the region with more than 500 firms coming to visit the centre so far.

The success of this centralised model depends on the strength of Oracle software and its database products. This week the final part of an internal project within Oracle will go live that will centralise all the systems on a single database. This is doing it by example, says Mr Sheridan.