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Customer Spotlight Series: Live Webinar with Hearst

During this candid conversation, senior executives in IT, Human Resources, and Finance will reveal how the company completed nine deployments over 24 months—on time and on budget. This is your opportunity to learn and interact with the leaders who ushered their business through a digital revolution with measurable results.

Live Webcast
August 13, 2020
9 a.m. PT | Noon ET
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News and entertainment giant drives transformation in HR and Finance

Hearst is responsible for connecting us with household names including A&E, HISTORY, Lifetime, ESPN, San Francisco Chronicle, Men’s Health, ELLE, and 33 local US television stations. In this live webinar, the company’s senior leadership will discuss replacing a 25-year-old legacy environment. Using Oracle ERP, EPM, and HCM Cloud, Hearst was able to transform business processes and improve integration, impacting 360 global entities with over 20,000 employees.
  • Harmonize processes and adopt leading practices across the businesses
  • Enable analytics to better understand the composition, performance, and capabilities of its workforce
  • Mitigate risk and transition to a modern platform built for the cloud

Hearst featured speakers

Debra Robinson

Debra Robinson

SVP, CIO Oracle Technology & Operations
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Debra Robinson

SVP, CIO Oracle Technology & Operations
Debra Robinson is the senior vice president and chief information officer for Oracle Technology and Operations at Hearst. She oversees Oracle technology across the company and HCM. During her tenure, Robinson led and delivered financial and HCM applications across the organization. She was also the delivery executive for Project UniFi, which included outsourcing payroll, business process transformation and implementing Oracle Cloud for financials and human capital management.

Additionally, Robinson serves as a scout for the HearstLab, a group of women executives at Hearst who contribute their subject matter expertise, connections and mentorship to HearstLab’s portfolio companies.

Prior to being appointed SVP, Robinson was chief technology officer of Hearst Magazines, and was responsible for leading and coordinating IT initiatives and operations across all magazine business units. At that time this included 20 US titles; CDS Global, the Hearst-owned international data management company that provides customized fulfillment services to publishers and direct marketers; Periodical Publishers’ Service Bureau (PPSB), the Hearst-owned circulation and subscription services company; and Hearst Magazines UK, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hearst Magazines in the UK.

Prior to being appointed CTO, Robinson was vice president of technology and production for digital media at Hearst Magazines. She was instrumental in developing and organizing the newly created department. Additionally, Robinson was the lead person for developing the technology and production needed to create and implement Hearst Magazines Digital Strategy. She also served as interim chief information officer of CDS Global.

Before joining Hearst, Robinson was senior vice president and chief information officer at Primedia, a publishing company, for five years. She previously held executive positions at CVS Pharmacy, CMP Media, Delaware North Companies and Aramark.

Robinson is a graduate of the Wharton School and also has a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
David Hovstadius

David Hovstadius

SVP of Finance Operations
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David Hovstadius

SVP of Finance Operations
David Hovstadius is Senior Vice President for Finance Operations, Hearst Communications. Hearst is one of the nation's largest diversified media, information and services companies with more than 360 businesses. Its major interests include ownership in cable television networks; global financial services leader Fitch Group; a group of information and service businesses; television stations; newspapers; and more than 300 magazines.

Mr. Hovstadius is responsible for Hearst’s finance operations including continuous process improvement and operational excellence. He is the executive leader for the company’s finance transformation journey to the cloud successfully implementing Oracle’s Cloud ERP and EPM suite of products. The program has been one of the largest enterprise initiatives in the company’s history and has established a modern finance platform for growth.

Mr. Hovstadius is an executive with over 28 years of experience within finance. He began his career in consulting, specializing in enterprise transformation programs in the Communications, Media, and Hi Tech industries.

Mr. Hovstadius completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at University of Connecticut.