Oracle develops appetite for bigger B2B ecommerce market share

Oracle Corp. is planning to acquire a bigger piece of the sales pie in the B2B ecommerce technology and services market.

Oracle already has a significant operations base in B2B ecommerce and supply chain and enterprise resource management (ERP) systems. In 2016, Oracle spent $9.3 billion to acquire NetSuite. NetSuite is a developer and service provider. It provides companies with cloud-based applications to run its business financials, ERP, customer relationship management, human resources, professional services, ecommerce systems and more.

Oracle’s forthcoming B2B ecommerce strategy is to leverage its health care presence and NetSuite’s customer base. In health care, Oracle expects to close by later this summer its $28.3 billion acquisition of Cerner Corp. Cerner is one of the largest electronic medical records system vendors.

As Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison told analysts, the company already has over 30,000 cloud ERP customers, including many of the world’s most important banks and leading logistics companies. He added that they’ve got a very strong position in health care with the providers and in Q4, they closed UnitedHealthcare, a win over SAP.

Those providers include Kaiser, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Mount Sinai, Northwell House, Tenant, Atrium Health, Markel, Humana, Cigna.

Oracle also sees room to grow B2B ecommerce in other vertical markets such as financial services and retail boasting to have a very strong position in financial services. That’s one of the key groups of partners that Oracle’s working to automate B2B commerce, along with the logistics companies.

In retail, Oracle already has Kohl’s, Office Depot, Macy’s, Kroger, Albertsons, Tesco, McDonald’s, Chipotle, Tiffany, Saks, Williams-Sonoma, Walmart, CVS. Ellison said Oracle added Lowe’s, Albertsons, Sherwood Williams and Abercrombie & Fitch in Q4.