CEO, executive chairman, and chief technology officer of Oracle, Larry Ellison is the very definition of success. Forbes magazine ranks him as the fifth-wealthiest person in America (the seventh in the world), worth an estimated $55 billion. For decades, Ellison has made a living as a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist in addition to his business work. But what’s the secret to his success?
Oracle is a major competitor to tech-giants like Microsoft and Apple, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Ellison makes it look easy, but maintaining a global business takes a lot of effort and upkeep. This is where Six Sigma enters the fold. If you examine Oracle’s processes and operations, you’ll start to see patterns emerge. What do they suggest? They suggest that much of Oracle’s success is down to Six Sigma. In fact, Ellison depends on Six Sigma methodologies for his vast technological empire. Learn his tips and tricks in today’s article so you can follow his example.
Six Sigma Strategies: Cutting Costs / Striving for Improvement
Oracle is the second-largest software company in the world. Thanks to Larry Ellison’s ingenuity and entrepreneurial skill, it is a leading tech-giant. But even successful corporations like Oracle have their problems. Inefficiencies don’t tend to announce themselves, and, once you’ve sprung a leak, the problem tends to escalate pretty quickly. Using Six Sigma improvement strategies, you can identify problems and fix them in record time.
Software development is complicated enough as it is, but expediting inefficient processes is difficult and time-consuming. Especially without the right tools. Changes can take months if not years. Thanks to CEO Larry Ellison’s insight and experience, Oracle stays on top of issues like waste, variation, and inefficiency. In fact, Ellison operates in much the same way as a Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Moreover, one of the solutions Ellison saw for Oracle’s problems was in plain sight the entire time. Oracle’s world-renowned software has helped other businesses improve their operations. Ellison’s solution was to take advantage of this gold mine of opportunity. He went about revitalizing his company’s operations to incorporate its own software, and to great effect. It has in fact saved over $1 billion dollars as a result of this strategy. But where does Six Sigma enter into this?
Larry Ellison: Six Sigma Champion
As we’ve already mentioned, Larry Ellison is well-versed in the ways of Six Sigma: “The way you get quality is to define a set of processes and procedures and make sure they are implemented everywhere.” Here Ellison alludes to DMAIC and standardization. Both are key elements of Six Sigma philosophy, without which there would be no Six Sigma. As such, techniques like Root Cause Analysis and DMAIC are plain to see in the above scenario. Using Root Cause Analysis, you can trace problems back to their source, allowing you to treat the underlying problem.
Similarly, DMAIC allows businesses to define problems with ease. It helps to be able to articulate what doesn’t work, after all. You can then measure and analyze the issue to develop improvement solutions and procedures to control future recurrences. For Ellison, who believes in simplifying and modernizing all procedures, the secret to reducing costs is streamlining processes. His aim is to make them more efficient and more consistent, and to ultimately increase profit. If this isn’t Six Sigma to a T, what is?
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