It’s springtime and always on my calendar is an opportunity to check-in with Oracle. Traditionally, they host an HR event called HCM World but this time they have a new event that combines all of its Software as a Service (SaaS) applications for HR, Finance and Supply Chain into a single holistic event called Modern Business Experience which really addresses the entire shift in how business is changing. Oracle showed how changes in each facet of the business can be addressed to create a truly modern and competitive organization. For example, modernizing one aspect like finance without looking at the human capital area of an organization really can’t allow a company to move forward and even if both have been updated to modern technology, can the two systems properly talk with each other to provide the insights that you really need in a quick and seamless way? Of course, I spent most of my time checking in on HR, below is a summary of what is expected to change in 2019 and how Oracle is addressing these changes.

 
 
HR Trends for 2019
The event kicked off with a thought-provoking presentation from Cara Capretta, vice president, Oracle HCM Transformation Practice, where she shared what they believe to be the HR Trends for 2019. This is important to look at as you can then see how Oracle is offering solutions that will impact these trends:
 
Macro Trends

1. Record low global unemployment
2. Increasing transparency on business culture and practices
3. Energized focus on diversity, inclusion, gender equity, etc.
4. Generational shifts in the workforce

5 Changes HR Leaders Can Expect in 2019 - Source: Brian Kropp, Gartner

1. #MeToo movement will accelerate
2. More companies will use non-traditional listening tools
3. Workplace tech will go beyond observation and start nudging
4. Pay discrepancy issues will get worse, not better
5. A new wage gap will emerge for new hires vs. current employees

2019 HCM Trends – Source: HRWins

1. Practical application of AI
2. HR, the business of getting work done
3. Skill quantification
4. Learning and recruiting close the skill gaps together
5. New levels of recruiting experiences
6. Total wellbeing
7. Payroll innovation

The length of time a system has been deployed plays a major role in Payroll application replacement plans. Organizations planning to replace their current Payroll application in the next 12 months report that, on average, their current systems have been deployed 8.62 years. Organizations planning to make a change within 24 months had solutions for an average of 10.85 years.
 
Issues on the CHRO agenda

1. Transform Human Resources: Reposition HR to drive impact to the business, directly measured by increased performance to the business.
2. Courageous Advocate and Trusted Advisor:  Cultivate a meaningful presence amongst the CEO’s executive team, Partner with the CEO and CFO to drive business results through finances and people.
3. Manage the Board: Build board sponsorship, plan for CEO succession, manage and drive the Board’s talent agenda.
4. Evolve the HR Business Partner: Drive impact in HR by evolving the role of HRBP. How many should you have? What level of support should they provide to the organization? How do we facilitate the shift from a tactical HRBP workforce to a strategic HRBP workforce that delivers on this promise?
5. Acquire and Retain the Best Talent: We all know that this is a huge issue.

Oracle Solutions - Think Chess, Not Checkers
Oracle’s HR solution – Oracle HCM Cloud – has really evolved. As Chris Leone, senior vice president of development, Oracle HCM Cloud stated, “We put the big boulders behind us that had to be addressed behind the scenes,” things like building out recruiting and learning etc. Now Oracle has moved into the finer areas that will help you strategically. I liked their term for what stage they are at presently: “Think Chess, Not Checkers”.
 
According to their press release “Employers are now facing higher candidate and employee expectations than ever before. Today’s workers are looking for instant access, highly personalized content, and easy-to-use systems whenever and wherever they are. These demands are forcing HR professionals to rethink the way they approach the entire workplace experience. To address this challenge head-on, the latest updates to Oracle HCM Cloud provide the tools organizations need to reimagine how HR services are delivered, simplify complex processing, and build a team of the best talent”.
 
The user experience, according to Chris Leone, is something that is always evolving. As he said, “It is like the Golden Gate Bridge when you are done - you re-start painting.” When we think of user experience, it goes into 3 buckets (Employee and Manager Experience, Recruiting Experience and HR Experience).
 
How Oracle is Impacting the User Experience
 
For your Employees
Mobile Experience: Other vendors offer some kind of mobile app that has to be downloaded for either iPhone or Android. The problem with this is two-fold:

• The experience will be slightly different on either platform
• A user doesn’t have a customized view of the  things that they only need to see making navigation cumbersome

To solve this, Oracle provides a URL instead of asking the user to download an app. Then, their HCM Design Studio gives the power to HR professionals to configure the user experience with the addition of advanced, no-coding-required, configuration capabilities. Gone are the days of having to use IT to make changes (which could take days, weeks or even months) – now changes can be in real time. Now HR can create filters to create unique experiences based on users’ business unit, legal employer, or role. An example of configuring by role would be when showing policies and even how they appear. Rather than have all of the policies in a single place, one could configure the view by role and even department (think Marketing in USA, Engineering in Germany) where only the policies that apply to that role in that department are viewed. This provides a much more engaging experience for all employees.
 
They have also added a new autocomplete rules can reduce the administrative burden of fixing incorrect data making filling out forms much less stressful for the employee.

Conversational HR: Oracle has enhanced their chatbot and self-service capabilities. Employees and managers can access frequently requested information to save time, enhance accessibility, and improve the employee experience. This is a big one for engaging your employees – gone are the days of trying to find out who one needs to contact regarding a certain issue and waiting for a response back – requesting information is easy and the response is instant. Here are two ways that they accomplish this:

• Digital Assistants: Employees and managers now have access to a wide range of digital assistant self-service use cases accessible through SMS, voice, and chatbots via desktop or mobile devices. Users can get answers to common HR questions asked in thousands of different ways, including time-off availability, benefits coverage, pay slip details, onboarding tasks, and performance evaluations.
• HR Help Desk: With expanded access now for every employee, the Help Desk knowledgebase empowers every user with smart, self-service offerings, which provide quick and easy access to helpful articles and resources.

  
For your Recruiters and Candidates 
Oracle has created a completely different approach to traditional recruiting with candidate-centric recruiting. It reimagines the candidate experience to help attract, engage, and hire the best talent. Oracle has created new features to enable,

• Tailored Career Sites: Organizations can now create multiple career sites to better target specific candidate pools, such as unique sites to identify college graduates vs. more experienced professionals or dedicated career sites for various business units within larger organizations.
• Candidate Self-Service: Job candidates now have a variety of self-service options to proactively obtain information, such as their application status, through an embedded chatbot.
• Streamlined Scheduling: A broad range of interview scheduling capabilities streamline the interview process and enable recruiters to spend less time on tactical scheduling and more time finding the best candidates.

For your HR team
 Oracle has added new workforce planning and design capabilities help make data-driven decisions.

• Workforce Planning: New features allow supply and demand planning insights to be filtered by key categories, including person, job, and skills, to help HR professionals craft their optimal workforce.

Oracle’s Innovation Commitment           
 “Oracle’s commitment to continued innovation allows organizations to make work more human for the entire employee ecosystem,” said Chris Leone, senior vice president of development, Oracle HCM Cloud. “With the Oracle digital assistant, our customers can create a competitive advantage by delivering a seamless, conversational user experience that we know employees want.” At the event, Oracle outlined where they are going with AI to help you improve the employee experience. Things like best-fit candidates for available jobs, stack ranking on candidates and advanced controls and employee fraud have been delivered and Oracle has much more to come. Some exciting things you might expect in the future include, benefits election optimization, Intelligent approvals automation,recommended employee promotions and Intelligent career planning to name a few.
 
Customers
I was amazed to see so many sessions featuring an Oracle customer which is really saying something about how well accepted their solution is. In total there were over 100 sessions featuring their customers that included companies like Caesars Entertainment, Xerox, National Instruments, Boise State, Cottage Health and many more.
 
Thinking you aren’t big enough for Oracle? Think again, one session that stood out for me was with the NFL – yes, that NFL. Although the brand is huge, the actual number of full-time employees is roughly 1,300. They spoke about their transformation to HCM Cloud and what stuck out to me more than the small full time employee size was the complexity of having to onboard and offboard more than 3,900 casual employees each season (think, rule officials by city and much more) and how difficult it was for them in the past with their manual processes. Yes, you really aren’t too small to consider them.
 
My Take
 I really believe that Oracle has demonstrated that their continued investment into the suite has resulted in some very innovative solutions with much more to come. I believe that they have a very good understanding of the issues affecting modern business and that helps them drive innovation in the right direction.