We had the opportunity to attend Oracle's HCM World conference, held from March 20th till 22nd in Dallas. Held in the busiest week of the spring conference circuit, the conference had good analyst and influencer representation and was overall well attended (Oracle claimed 2200+).
Prefer to watch – here is my event video … (if the video doesn't' show up – check here)
Here is the 1 slide condensation (if the slide doesn't show up, check here):
Want to read on? Here you go:
Oracle keeps delivering in HCM – Since its early beginning the Oracle HCM product, has done well and is growing at an almost metronomic takt rate. New capabilities are created in the product, and Oracle delivers customer adoption of them in the following 6-12 months. Customers, partners and the overall ecosystem is now on the by-yearly announcement schedule of HCM World in Spring and OpenWorld in Fall, and in between customer adoption manifests themselves in go lives. The result is likely the most comprehensive singe platform HCM Suite in the market.
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| Oracle HCM Cloud Spring 2018 Release Highlights |
Good DNA in Spring 2018 Release – Along the same lines the 2018 Spring release of Oracle HCM Cloud is a rich release that pushes the boundaries. Oracle replaced and strengthened the Onboarding capabilities in the suite. Given the best practice uncertainty that at the moment plagues Performance Management, Oracle has (wisely) opted for a suite of performance management tools. People leaders can choose from four different approaches to address performance management in their enterprise. The good news is that they can even choose to use different best practices / flavors of performance management across the enterprise – slice and dice by operating company, division, people type etc. The right approach and it will be interesting to see adoption. And last but not least more AI, no conference without AI in 2018… Oracle pointed out that it always has had some form of 'intelligence' but no the offerings are serious and it's good to see Oracle speak of AI (vs the a tad misaligned 'adaptive intelligence' term of the past.
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| The new Oracle HCM Cloud UX paradigm |
A new UX - Having been a critic of the Oracle HCM UI for a long time, the new UX is a welcome first step in the right direction to improve this situation. Not surprisingly Oracle opts for the mobile focus of the largest user population, and for the high volume transaction. The new UX looks modern, easy to use and has some of the key inner workings a UX in 2017 should have – it's responsive and can be used across devices and form factors as well takes an aggressive stance on defaulting, suggesting entries. At the core is a newsfeed paradigm, that users are familiar with from consumer websites. The newsfeed manages to collapse menu structures and to surface the relevant information at the right time. Not easy to get right - think of the challenges Facebook has had getting this UX right, but from what we saw about the Oracle HCM newsfeed, it's a well working first implementation in an Oracle enterprise application. All welcome by busy enterprise users, who have to do a real job and can't afford to be held up too long by administrative systems (like any HCM system). Next step is to check in on customer feedback, roll out plans and roadmap.
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| Oracle has invested to get the Newsfeed right |
MyPOV
A good HCM World for Oracle, the product keeps progressing and customers and ecosystem are positive. Customers tap more and more into the suite benefits, adding modules after originally going live on more administrative functions as ESS / MSS and Payroll. Needless from the start though, suite level benefits are tangible and create productivity for users as well as HR departments, all leading to a more positive stance towards the product, in this case Oracle HCM Cloud.
On the concern side the event seemed smaller than last years events. Maybe the timing and the location in Dallas did not help. But in general you expect a growing attendee number. Equally in the ecosystem we saw less partner activity... it looks like Deloitte (for NA SIs) and Infosys (for the Indian SIs) seem to have capture the pool position. Next year's HCM World will be a data point on how much Oracle can activate users and prospects to come to an event like this on. For the record, happy users do not need to travel to user conferences as much, as they know what's coming and are busy implementing and using the software.
But overall a good event for Oracle customers and prospects. Oracle HCM Cloud is probably the most complete, single platform, single code base HCM Suite out there. Stay tuned.
