Both Oracle’s President Mark Hurd and high profile CEO Larry Ellison showed up for the company’s first HCM World conference this February, underscoring the importance of this space to Oracle’s future. Hurd even joked about how rare this was for the two to appear together at the same event saying, “How many times have Larry Ellison and Mark Hurd presented at the same event other than Oracle OpenWorld? Zero. And we’re doing that here.”
Ellison’s keynote was focused on Oracle HCM’s “socially enabled” application suite, which Oracle now claims is its fastest growing cloud offering. The HCM Cloud includes recruiting, on-boarding, training, career planning, talent-review, and workforce planning functionalities wrapped up in a system that has distinct “social” roots.
“If you look at the user interfaces, it looks like a social network, and that’s good because most people know how to use social networks,” Ellison said.
He slammed the old 20th century software approach that required weeks of complicated training to perform relatively minor management tasks. And he doesn’t just want it to look like a social network, he wants it to tap into some of the power of social networks as recruiting and referral resources.
He also spoke to the importance of the built-in analytic tools; “The bad news is you get a lot more candidates that you have to sift through using these social techniques,” Ellison said. “That’s why we have these analytics that help you identify the very best candidates that you want to start interviewing right away.”
Ellison also touted the systems ability to aid in retention noting how its review process has built-in a constant risk analysis that measures right down to the individual employee. Driving it home in the closing of his keynote address he pulled no punches, “We have the only HCM system that has an integrated social network,” he said. “We’re the only one that has integrated recruiting and social sourcing inside of the core HCM system. We’re the only one with integrated learning management and the only one with predictive analytics throughout the system.”
Is Oracle HCM right for your HR department? That may be a question best answered by experts who have experience not only with Oracle HCM but all of Oracle’s products, both cloud-based and on-premise. As with all systems your specific needs will be different than other users and understanding how you are going to meet those needs sometimes requires special insight.
Still there has been an increasing interest, on the part of HR departments both large and small, to find better tools for the difficult job of Human Capital Management. An abundance of applicants mixed with a shortage of qualified candidates is causing most HR departments to seek ways to sort more quickly, get employees on-board and productive faster and keep the good ones longer.
It’s fairly clear that Ellison and company believe that solution is Oracle HCM.
