We have the opportunity to attend Oracle HCM World in Chicago, held from April 4th to 7h 2016. The conference is well attended with over 1000 participants, coming from customers, prospects and the ecosystem.
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Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:
No time to watch - read on:
HR Helpdesk– All enterprise applications see their challenges with resulting into questions on how to use them. HR Applications typically have the largest user population in the enterprise and as such the questions and support requests of employees demand for more automation. Historically enterprises have looked at IT and CRM helpdesk applications to automate the requests from employees. But those solutions have seen typical challenges one experiences when moving an enterprise product from its designed use case to another one – at some point, somewhere things do not fit as smooth as they could. HCM software vendors have the opportunity to change that, offering the helpdesk application inside of their own technology framework, and that is exactly what Oracle announced at HCM World. The approach has considerate advantages, the user and all its data is known, the subject matter experts want to feed know ledge bases before it comes to the support call, direct screen sharing and most importantly, the support professional can take over the transaction, solve the problem and teach the employee right away. The new helpdesk functionality will come on Oracle HCM fall release, slated for fall of 2016 (...), we look forward to see it in action with customers and real support cases.
Learning advances– One year ago Oracle surprised with the announcement of a brand new learning, starting with the self-creation, publication and social propagation. One year later with Oracle HCM n Oracle Learning users have now access to SCORM compliant e-Learning, as well as an offline capability of using Learning with no connectivity. But the most important capability in this release is the ability to embed learning content into business processes, something Oracle is leveraging already in its above Helpdesk offering. And finally SCORM is always important and 1.2/2004 are supported. Fall will be the big release for Oracle Learning, when the first steps into classroom are coming.
Worklife Portfolio grows– Oracle is the large, suite level HCM vendor with a set of Worklife Applications (Wellness, Competitions etc.) and keeps adding in this area, in the HCM fall release with a volunteering capability, allowing employees to sign up, find relevant volunteering opportunities and matching to them. The combination of the Career Development functionality guiding employees in suitable, synergetic to career goals volunteering opportunities is a welcome functionality and underlines the suite level benefits suite level vendors should seek and exploit for their vendors.
On the concern side Oracle needs to address two major issues, which are growing year over year, the first glance user interface is not up to speed with 21st century best practices. The irony is that the Oracle HCM user experience gets better as you drill down, with all other vendors it usually degrades. And then Oracle runs Recruiting on the Taleo platform, getting this key functionality on the overall Oracle cloud platform (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) is something the vendor needs to tackle sooner than later.
But overall a very good event for Oracle and its HCM customers and prospects. There can be no doubt that enterprises need to look at Oracle for addressing their HCM automation needs, and it is likely to make the short list. Turning great product capability into cloud revenue has moved from a product to a marketing, sales, business development challenge, a good problem to have for any enterprise software vendor.
And if you want to read more of my findings on Oracle technology - I suggest:
Finally find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
Always tough to pick the takeaways – but here are my Top 3:
No time to watch - read on:
HR Helpdesk– All enterprise applications see their challenges with resulting into questions on how to use them. HR Applications typically have the largest user population in the enterprise and as such the questions and support requests of employees demand for more automation. Historically enterprises have looked at IT and CRM helpdesk applications to automate the requests from employees. But those solutions have seen typical challenges one experiences when moving an enterprise product from its designed use case to another one – at some point, somewhere things do not fit as smooth as they could. HCM software vendors have the opportunity to change that, offering the helpdesk application inside of their own technology framework, and that is exactly what Oracle announced at HCM World. The approach has considerate advantages, the user and all its data is known, the subject matter experts want to feed know ledge bases before it comes to the support call, direct screen sharing and most importantly, the support professional can take over the transaction, solve the problem and teach the employee right away. The new helpdesk functionality will come on Oracle HCM fall release, slated for fall of 2016 (...), we look forward to see it in action with customers and real support cases.
Learning advances– One year ago Oracle surprised with the announcement of a brand new learning, starting with the self-creation, publication and social propagation. One year later with Oracle HCM n Oracle Learning users have now access to SCORM compliant e-Learning, as well as an offline capability of using Learning with no connectivity. But the most important capability in this release is the ability to embed learning content into business processes, something Oracle is leveraging already in its above Helpdesk offering. And finally SCORM is always important and 1.2/2004 are supported. Fall will be the big release for Oracle Learning, when the first steps into classroom are coming.
Worklife Portfolio grows– Oracle is the large, suite level HCM vendor with a set of Worklife Applications (Wellness, Competitions etc.) and keeps adding in this area, in the HCM fall release with a volunteering capability, allowing employees to sign up, find relevant volunteering opportunities and matching to them. The combination of the Career Development functionality guiding employees in suitable, synergetic to career goals volunteering opportunities is a welcome functionality and underlines the suite level benefits suite level vendors should seek and exploit for their vendors.
MyPOV
A good 3rd edition of Oracle HCM World, with record attendance of mostly practitioners, as Oracle has designed the event. Global interesting is very good, with (my estimate) close to half of the attendees not coming from the US. Oracle has moved the overall HCM forward as well (above I focus on net new modules and major advances) certainly a benefit of having over 2000 developers on the HCM products (excludes Peoplesoft resources, I know the question has come up already). There can be no question that Oracle has been busy though, as the vendor has added over 500 features and close to 100 localizations in the last 6 months.On the concern side Oracle needs to address two major issues, which are growing year over year, the first glance user interface is not up to speed with 21st century best practices. The irony is that the Oracle HCM user experience gets better as you drill down, with all other vendors it usually degrades. And then Oracle runs Recruiting on the Taleo platform, getting this key functionality on the overall Oracle cloud platform (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) is something the vendor needs to tackle sooner than later.
But overall a very good event for Oracle and its HCM customers and prospects. There can be no doubt that enterprises need to look at Oracle for addressing their HCM automation needs, and it is likely to make the short list. Turning great product capability into cloud revenue has moved from a product to a marketing, sales, business development challenge, a good problem to have for any enterprise software vendor.
Recent blog posts on Oracle:
Future of Work / HCM / SaaS research:
Also worth a look for the full picture
- News Analysis - Oracle Unveils Suite of Breakthrough Services.. or short: Oracle Cloud Machine - read here
- Progress Report - Oracle Cloud - More ready than ever, now needs adoption - read here
- Event Report - Oracle Openworld 2015 - Top 3 Takeaways, Top 3 Positives & Concerns - read here
- News Analysis - Quick Take on all 22 press releases of Oracle OpenWorld Day #1 - #3 - read here
- First Take - Oracle OpenWorld - Day 1 Keynote - Top 3 Takeaways - read here
- Event Preview - Oracle Openworld - watch here
Future of Work / HCM / SaaS research:
- Event Report - Oracle HCM World - Full Steam ahead, a Learning surprise and potential growth challenges - read here
- First Take - Oracle HCM World Day #1 Keynote - off to a good start - read here
- Progress Report - Oracle HCM gathers momentum - now it needs to build on that - read here
- Oracle pushes modern HR - there is more than technology - read here. (Takeaways from the recent HCMWorld conference).
- Why Applications Unlimited is good a good strategy for Oracle customers and Oracle - read here.
Also worth a look for the full picture
- Event Report - Oracle PaaS Event - 6 PaaS Services become available, many more announced - read here
- Progress Report - Oracle Cloud makes progress - but key work remains in the cellar - read here
- News Analysis - Oracle discovers the power of the two socket server - or: A pivot that wasn't one - TCO still rules - read here
- Market Move - Oracle buys Datalogix - moves more into DaaS - read here
- Event Report - Oracle Openworld - Oracle's vision and remaining work become clear - they are both big - read here
- Constellation Research Video Takeaways of Oracle Openworld 2014 - watch here
- Is it all coming together for Oracle in 2014? Read here.
- From the fences - Oracle AR Meeting takeaways - read here (this was the last analyst meeting in spring 2013)
- Takeaways from Oracle CloudWorld LA - read here (this was one of the first cloud world events overall, in January 2013)
And if you want to read more of my findings on Oracle technology - I suggest:
- Progress Report - Good cloud progress at Oracle and a two step program - read here.
- Oracle integrates products to create its Foundation for Cloud Applications - read here.
- Java grows up to the enterprise - read here.
- 1st take - Oracle in memory option for its database - very organic - read here.
- Oracle 12c makes the database elastic - read here.
- How the cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
- Act I - Oracle and Microsoft partner for the cloud - read here.
- Act II - The cloud changes everything - Oracle and Salesforce.com - read here.
- Act III - The cloud changes everything - Oracle and Netsuite with a touch of Deloitte - read here.
Finally find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.