Author: Dipak Patel, Client Innovation Director, Namos Solutions
When I first started in management with great ideas on what improvements we can make, and how we’ll operate differently and the benefits it’ll bring to the organisation, my GM told me this – “Dipak, you can’t improve what you can’t measure”. That has stuck with me throughout my career. (he also said a problem shared is still your problem but that’s another story!)
Since then, I’ve seen lots of improvements go unmeasured and while any improvement is welcome, it’s a missed opportunity when we can’t evidence or demonstrate that to our stakeholders, our peers or anyone who’d care to look. This can be incredibly frustrating, as without the evidence it might as well have not happened at all.
Because it’s one thing to be delivering improvements by adopting innovation or new features, but imagine if you say with confidence:
- “Month end is faster.” By this amount.
- “New hire time to productivity is better.” By this amount.
- “Forecasting is more accurate.” By this percentage.
- “User adoption is up and people aren’t working around the system.”
Because when you can align on what matters, (now, next, later as we discussed prior) choose a focussed set of improvements, measure them properly, something changes. You don’t just get a better Oracle cloud application; you get a clear business outcome story you can take to your stakeholders.
The quiet truth: most value gets lost in the “in‑between”
I’ve noticed across my career that there’s a gap between what the business cares about (outcomes) and what gets discussed in QBR’s, which is the perfect time to be aligning on business issues, prioritising change and measuring its impact.
If a QBR becomes a list of tickets, changes, and release notes on unrelated ‘innovation’ it can still be a “good meeting”, But it won’t necessarily move the dial in a meaningful way. We can’t express to the business the improvements gained through adoption new capabilities, or changes in process. Good things are happening for sure, but it’s hard to answer the simple question: “Was this quarter better than the last one, and by how much?”
This is where I see real opportunity for change, coming into a QBR with a value-based mindset prioritised by your business needs.
The mindset shift: from “what happened” to “what needs change”
When you join a QBR with a value mindset, three good things happen.
First, the conversation and outcomes stay anchored in your world with your priorities, your pressures, your constraints. Not generic KPIs, but the critical issues that your stakeholders care about (and are probably measured and compensated on too)
Second, we stop debating new features and innovation in the abstract and start linking specific changes to a pain the business feels (or a goal it wants to achieve). Less “should we turn this on?” and more “will this remove friction where it hurts?” or “how does this accelerate delivering this business goal?”
Third, we can prove progress (show it, measure it, not just feel it) because we’ve agreed what success looks like and how we’ll measure it.
Measure value without turning it into a reporting project
This is where we keep things deliberately simple and avoid getting in the way of good things happening at pace. Choose a real pain (not a generic KPI) as the best starting point isn’t “we need more reporting” or “we want to use AI.”
It’s something more human:
- “We keep re‑keying data, and nobody trusts the numbers.”
- “Approvals slow everything down.”
- “The process technically works, but people avoid it.”
In other words: pick something that would make you say, “If we fixed that, the business would genuinely feel it. We moved the needle for all to see”.
To do this, we make success measurable by setting a baseline and target. This is the step that turns “we think it’s better” into “we can prove it’s better.”
But don’t get bogged down seeking perfection, a simple baseline and a sensible target is enough, for example.
- Month end: 8 days → 5 days
- Hiring approvals: 10 days → 4 days
- Forecast iterations: 3 cycles → 1 confident submission
Once that’s agreed the conversation changes to value, Progress becomes visible. However, start small (think big) then scale fast. One of the fastest ways to dilute impact when adopting a new way of working is trying to do too much so I recommend keeping it simple through the first few iterations until it becomes a natural cadence:
- One or two value outcomes (time, cost, risk, quality)
- One or two experience outcomes (confidence, ease, adoption)
Review these quarterly and refine over time.
A gentle ask: approach your next QBR differently.
I would encourage you please to bring a value-based mindset to your next QBR meeting. Instead of joining the QBR thinking “Tell me what happened.” please join thinking: “Help me decide what we’ll improve next — and how we’ll prove it.” Don’t write war and peace, just clarity on where the pain is felt most, what “better” would look like, and what constraints we need to respect. Chances are, you’ll leave with something you can do that will move the needle meaningfully for your business. Leave the meeting with a couple of quick wins, and one deeper topic where there are clear owners and deliberate intent.
And yes, service health still matters but it can’t dominate the conversation or derail the value-based focus. Trends and exceptions that affect outcomes get airtime; ticket-by-ticket reviews don’t. Leave those conversations to the (still important) service reviews.
The Takeaway
Oracle Fusion will keep evolving. And that’s a good thing as you want your subscription to be delivering valuable enhancements and a wealth of new features and capabilities.
But success with Oracle Cloud post go-live isn’t who adopts the most features, it’s who has a repeatable way to choose the right improvements, adopt them safely, and show impact in language the business recognises.
Make this the outcome of your next QBR, a shared, practical rhythm for measurable improvement quarter after quarter.
