Ventana Research Analyst Perspectives

It has been three years since Oracle hosted a CloudWorld event live in Las Vegas, and it is clear the time has not been wasted. With 12 new releases since the last event, the Oracle human capital management product team has made significant advances in both product and service. Three areas of note: Oracle HCM’s continued focus on personalization of experience, meeting the HCM needs of the healthcare industry and advancing the Oracle Cloud Recruiting offering.

This analyst perspective, personalization is key to employee experience and retention. Oracle Cloud HCM has made significant inroads into personalizing the employee experience and optimizing engagement through the Oracle ME experience platform, released in April 2022. The platform provides contextual, guided experiences that strengthen workplace experiences and allow managers and human resources users to track and act on employee sentiment in near real-time time. As announced at CloudWorld, Oracle will continue advancing personalization opportunities with the introduction of Experience Design Studio 2.0, which allows non-technical users to create pages and workflows specific to an employee type, job role, function and other categories, using rules-based functionality that requires no coding. This enables productivity and engagement for HR users typically tasked with designing the individual onboarding, learning and compliance-based activities, and also for those on the receiving end whose experiences are tailored based on geography, role, experience and interests.

Oracle Cloud HCM has made a concerted move to meet the unique needs of the healthcare industry with the acquisition of Cerner, a premier electronic medical records technology system in the first half of 2022, adding to its existing healthcare-related capabilities such as insurer payor systems. Oracle has extended its industry reach by introducing HCM-related functionality – from recruiting and talent management to demand- and skills-based scheduling, 1099 payroll processing and analytics. Most notable is Oracle Dynamic Skills, which helps identify skills gaps and promote upskilling and reskilling to ensure there is enough talent available to meet the complex requirements of patient care. The overarching aim is to improve productivity through system interconnectivity, allowing clinicians to focus on positive patient outcomes and reducing burnout by enhancing the employee experience. I view this deep dive into the healthcare industry as a natural and intelligent response to the market, which will only continue to become more difficult as clinicians and non-clinicians leave the profession in unprecedented numbers and fewer choose to join. The interactivity of people and people operations, supply chain and finance is heavily pronounced in this industry, and Oracle is well-positioned to capitalize on it through its cloud platforms overall, and specifically its cloud HCM platform enhancements.

There have been significant advances in the Oracle Recruiting product since its inception, and the product team continues to focus on functionality that adds value to both the recruiter and candidate experience as well as improving productivity throughout the recruiting process. The release of Oracle Recruiting Booster brings:

• Hiring event promotion and support, including registration and attendance tracking, candidate relationship and communications management.
• Two-way recruiter/candidate messaging via SMS and/or email, directly through Oracle Recruiting.
• Interview management, with single-view viewing of all candidate and interview information in one centralized location, and automatic identification of interview times based on hiring team availability.
• Expanded capabilities in Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA) for communication, job-surfacing, application and interview scheduling, all conversationally from within ODA.

This new functionality improves candidate and recruiter experiences by allowing candidates to move through the hiring process with considerably less friction than in traditional recruiting applications, and frees recruiters from largely administrative or repetitive tasks so they can focus on building relationships and having meaningful engagement with both candidates and hiring managers. The latter is a primary benefit of thoughtfully implemented digital assistants, and applies beyond ORC, extending into all of Oracle Cloud HCM. I assert that by 2025, intelligent virtual assistants using artificial intelligence will be able to discern intentions to better address employee issues and answer questions without time-consuming rerouting or escalation, benefitting over three-quarters of organizations.

Oracle continues to evolve its Cloud HCM capabilities in response to – and in advance of – the ever-changing needs of the workforce and the workplace. Moreover, the focus on the service component of its SaaS offerings was ever-present at CloudWorld, with key customers taking center stage for candid conversations about their own experiences with Oracle as a business partner and not just a provider of products. As organizations consider replacing their core HCM or recruiting systems, I recommend Oracle Cloud HCM be included in the evaluation for applications to meet the workforce needs.

Regards,

Quincy Valencia