I could not help thinking during these sessions of a software joke told to me by Brian Sommer a long time ago.  It goes like this:

Think about the answer to two questions: “Can I see it?”  and “Does it exist”?

• If I can see it and it does exist, then it is Real.
• If I can see it, but it does not exist, then it is Virtual.
• If I cannot see it, but it does exist, then it is Transparent
• If cannot see it and it does not exist, then it is in the Next Release

So, let’s ask these questions again about Fusion Applications now.  Can I see it?  Last year, I answered “yes, sort of”.  Oracle did demo parts of the solution at OOW last year.  I have had the chance to see more since last year so I know there is more to it, but as I indicated in my earlier blog post, I have not seen the full HCM suite (or full suite of any Fusion Applications).  So, the answer is “yes, to some degree”.

Does it Exist?  Last year, I said:

That is probably the more interesting question… Certainly there are “edge” applications such as Social CRM that do exist… However, based on the information provided to date, it is difficult to know exactly how much of the Fusion Application Suite is built.

It is still difficult to know.  We know the planned scope at a broad brush, but the detailed feature/functions have still not been communicated.  Last year, I also said:

there was no firm commitment on delivery dates for the first release of the Suite or any indication of early customers that were implementing the Suite.

There is a firmer delivery date (sometime in 2010).  We also know that some customers have been testing the solution.  However, testing parts of the solution is not the same as implementing it.  As I said last year, early customers that implement and go live are the real litmus test for “does it exist”.  So, does the first release of the full suite of Fusion Applications exist?  Not yet.  Will it exist in 2010?  I think it will.  However, they need to start implementing early customers soon to make that a reality.  Hopefully, Oracle will provide more details soon about the detailed functionality that will be delivered in version 1.  Customers want and need this information to make informed decisions about their application strategy.

What do you think about Oracle Fusion Applications announcement?

Step 1: Upload your presentation or case study document to an appropriate site (if it is not already already on a site) where you can control the use of the document.  Scribd and Slideshare are good examples.  I do not intend to store copies of case studies in the database, just URL pointers.  These sites will provide you a URL to directly access the document.  Also, vendors and consultants can also add case studies to the database and pointers to their web sites (please indicate if there is any sort of subscription required as shown in the Gartner examples already populated).

Step 2: Enter information about your case study.  Below the list of existing presentations, you will see fields to provide a summary of your case study and a link to the site where the case study is stored.  The contact name and e-mail address (and phone number if provided) will not be publicly displayed.  I have asked for that information if follow up is needed with the person submitting the case study for technical reasons.

After you enter the required information, you can add additional descriptive data about the case study including: organization size, industry, geographic scope, project phase(s), functional scope, vendors and consultants/systems integrators used

Step 3: Search the database for relevant case studies using the provided filters.  Obviously, the more case studies added to the database, the more useful the searching mechanisms will become.

I have added a link to a page on my personal blog as a permanent access point (with these instructions).  Also, you can link directly to the database as well (it is probably easier to enter the data by following the link than it is to use the embedded version in this blog post).  I can also provide you the code to embed it on your site if you would like to make it available (like I have embedded it into this blog post).

Please let me know if you think this is a good idea or how it might be improved via comments to this post.

I provided some context about how the user needs are changing and what they can do to better align with those needs.  The reaction of the audience was relatively subdued (I hope it was not my delivery!).  There were a few people who asked questions afterwards who seemed to feel this was an issue for them.  However, many, I think, felt that this was not that big a deal.  They were working with the users and understanding their needs.  I have seen enough self-service projects stumble to know that just dealing HR or Finance users is not enough, you have to reach the ultimate end users.  Am I overstating the importance meeting these more casual user needs?  Do you think IT is doing enough to understand these needs?

Thomas and I also had some briefings with the product strategy folks for both EBS (Anand Subbaram) and PeopleSoft (Tracy Martin along with Paco Aubrejuan the new GM of the PeopleSoft BU). From a PeopleSoft perspective, I admit I was actually pleasantly surprised.  Even though 9.1 is a little later than expected, they plan to add quite a bit of functionality including cascading goals in Performance Management as well as a new Succession Management capability (delivered with core HR — so no additional licensing required).  In addition, Oracle is revamping compensation management in 9.1 (re-writing and adding to the existing capabilities and better integration to ePerformance), adding new Talent Management Dashboards to its Workforce Analytics product (the one based on OBIEE), and bringing out a new employee survey tool (tentatively called Workforce Connect) which leverages customer survey tools from the Siebel CRM solution.  Also, in terms of leveraging Siebel CRM, Oracle is creating what it termed “Fusion Edition” applications the first of which will be what is called Talent Pool Management (TPM).  Fusion Edition applications are edge applications meant to work with PeopleSoft, EBS, and Fusion.  The name is a bit of a misnomer as it is really focused on Candidate Relationship Management (marketing and communicating with passive candidates) not talent pool management as one would think of it in Succession Management.  The next Fusion Edition application expected is Talent Review (sometime in 2009).

Speaking of sometime, that is when PeopleSoft 9.1 is expected in 2009 (though indications were that it would not be the beginning or end of 2009 so expect it to be released over the course of Q2/Q3 for new customers).  However, some of the most interesting things going on were with PeopleTools.  PeopleTools 8.50 includes a number of noteworthy features, but the one with the most immediate impact is the new Ajax-based User Experience.  PeopleSoft 9.1 is built on PeopleTool 8.50, but it is backward compatible to previous application releases.  So, 8.9 and 9.0 customers that want to enhance the user experience can do just a PeopleTools upgrade to get the necessary capabilities.

For those EBS customers out there, things are a little more definitive.  Version 12.1 is coming in Q109.  It too will include new succession management functionality (as well as Profile Management based on the design from PeopleSoft 9.0).   There are a number of incremental enhancements across the rest of the product line from interview management in iRecruitment to setup enhancements and better market data integration in Compensation Workbench.

I also went to Gretchen Alarcon’s presentation on Oracle’s HCM vision.  She did a good job laying out the trends (thanks for the plug) and how Oracle is looking at opportunities around workforce planning and modeling and predictive analytics.  It was a pretty good size crowd and it was a little surprising to see no one was really doing anything with predictive analytics.  There is tremendous potential business value in the right applications of planning and analytics.  What do you think?  Will the hype around social software and HCM overshadow the emergence of workforce planning and analytics? 

• Complete. Open. Integrated — This is the main theme for the conference which I saw repeated in a number of presentations.  Here is my take on what Oracle intends it to mean:
  • Complete — Oracle is very focused on industry solutions.  That is, providing a comprehensive footprint for specific target industries.  It used the Communications industry as an example and cited its footprint in 2004 and how it has done a number of acquisitions which it has integrated together since then to fill out its solution map (the solution map is not an original Oracle concept, but it has been put to good use)
  • Open — Oracle has been pretty consistent in its support for a variety of standards and allowing customers to “plug and play” where possible.  It has created an abstraction layer in Oracle Fusion Middleware (OFM) that includes common business objects, web services, and reference process models that customers can use out of the box or adapt with the tools as necessary.
  • Integrated — This is where Oracle’s Application Integration Architecture (AIA) comes into play.  Oracle has taken industry standards along with a modern integration architecture (leveraging process model-driven integration with an enterprise service bus and standard integration definitions).  Oracle had a number of customers touting the benefits they thought they would achieve, but almost all were still in the process of implementing (this is not a new topic, it was hot for Oracle at the last OpenWorld).
• Delays
  • We knew this from pre-briefing prior to OpenWorld, but it pretty much is official now (and has been suspected for far longer).   There will be no suite of Oracle Fusion Applications delivered in 2008.  We published this (Gartner subscription required) in 2007 based on an interview with John Wookey about Fusion Applications.  Oracle had indicated at that time the first release of the suite would be in 2008.  Then, we published this (Gartner subscription required) when we started to have concerns about whether or not Oracle would deliver Fusion Applications in 2008 when John Wookey left Oracle.  The first phase will be edge applications, like the Social CRM applications, which have been delivered in 2008.
  • PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.1 will not be delivered in 2008.  I do not know if Oracle committed publicly to this date, but they had been indicating privately that 9.1 would be delivered in 2008, not 2009.  HCM is the first pillar to be delivered in 9.1 and given the scope of the release (including new applications such as Succession Management and a rewritten Compensation Management), it is understandable that it would take some time.  However, release 9.0 became generally available in December 2006 (see Oracle’s Lifetime Support Policy for more details).  So, it is going to be well over two years before the next release.  In a market where new releases from Talent Management application vendors come out as frequently as monthly, that is a very long time.  More to come on version 9.1 in a later post.
• Social Software Strategy — I am not going to discuss this too much now as I am still trying to understand Oracle’s strategy here.  Suffice to say that there are a number of products out there including Oracle Collaboration Suite (been around for a long time), Beehive (announced today and prominently placed in the opening keynote), WebCenter (the UI for Fusion Applications that includes some elements of social software), and PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal (that also now has some elements of collaboration included with it).  As soon as I get to the bottom of it with some clarity, I will post again.
• Upgrades — As I was communicating with my colleagues and attending sessions, it became clear that sessions which discussed Applications Unlimited (Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, JDE, etc.) product vision/roadmaps and upgrades were among the most popular.  I think that supports what we have been seeing in our inquiries in terms of the primary concern for customers:  is this the right time to upgrade and if so, to which release should I upgrade?  There are some sessions on Wednesday around Fusion applications.  I would imagine they will be popular for similar reasons.

In closing, Thomas and I had a good chat with Charles D’Souza from Emirates Bank (HQ in Dubai).  It has implemented implemented core HRMS, self-service, learning management, performance management, some compensation management and succession management (which some of its own extensions to Oracle) on E-Business Suite R12.  It is also about to embark on an implementation of iRecruitment as well.  If you are an EBS customer looking for an understanding of what is possible (to support upgrade planning) in Talent Management on R12, this is a good customer reference.  

It is always good to get the customer viewpoint, I have a number of customer sessions on the agenda for tomorrow and Wednesday.  If you are an Oracle Applications customer, what do you think the highlights were for Day 1?

• MyTaleo (a portal-style user interface with personalization capabilities)
• Talent Scorecard (drag and drop dashboard widgets)
• Modal Usage (navigate in multiple ways through a particular screen — includes Table of Contents to navigate a requisition and Quick Filters to more easily narrow a long list of candidates)
• At-a-Glance Summaries (extends the Taleo Talent Card metaphor to recruiting)
• Outlook Integration (Taleo Inbox is extended to support Recruiters’ ability to capture candidates)

In Performance Management, Taleo has been quietly adding new functionality (for example, a “n-box” capability will be out shortly for succession management) as well as adding customers (they have licensed Taleo Performance to 12 customers).  In addition, it announced Taleo Business Edition (BE) Performance (available in November 2008) which is targeted at the SMB market (below 3,000 employees) and integrated with the existing Taleo BE Recruiting solution.

Another major announcement was Taleo’s equity investment in (with an exclusive option to buy) Worldwide Compensation (WWC).  WWC is a relatively new entrant to the compensation management software space, but started by building a global library of compensation and benefit regulations and practices (which WorldAtWork makes available to its members).  Once it had learned more about the requirements for global compensation, it built a software solution.

The vision also includes development planning.  Taleo does not plan to offer its own LMS, but plans to integrate with existing LMS.  What it wants to do is provide value around the LMS by offering solutions that focus more informal and experiential learning.

Thomas (via web conference) and I spent a lot of time with Taleo today going through Taleo Performance and WWC for the Magic Quadrant for Employee Performance Management (EPM) Software research.  I am not going to comment on our findings at this point (Gartner clients should feel free to set up an inquiry if interested) because we still have a lot of work to do including getting feedback from some of the early customers.

Speaking of early customers for Taleo Performance, Taleo had a panel of early adopters talk about their experience implementing the EPM solution as part of a broader talent management strategy.  The group, TeleTech (David Gilbert), Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (Larry Mohl), and Freeport-McMoRan (Kyle Peavler), discussed the drivers for change in their organizations, the challenges they overcame, and the benefits they achieved.  It was interesting to hear them talk about the importance of usability in their decision to choose Taleo and how it was key for getting buy-in from various stakeholders.

How important should usability be as a selection criterion?  I have found the usability is a little bit like beauty.  It is in the eye of the beholder.  It depends quite a bit on what you are used to and what you want to accomplish.  It is different from organization to organization and from stakeholder group to stakeholder group (what HR and IT think is easy to use may not be the same for employees and managers for example).  What do you think?  Is usability overrated or underrated?

I started at Gartner in May 2002 at the tail end of the last of the last recession.  At that time, vendors definitely were struggling.  However, by 2003 vendors were growing again at healthy rates.  There was pent up demand that vendors filled in 2003.  It is hard to gauge the impact of financial sector crisis on the HCM market.  There could be a ripple effect that causes organizations to cut budgets or at least be more conservative with investments (as well as budgets for 2009).  It is important to realize though, even if the worst happens and the HCM market slows down for a period of time, that it should come back strong because the underlying drivers still remain:

• Demographic shifts will continue
• The need to attract and retain top talent for critical jobs will still remain
• The need to develop the next generation of leaders will still be there
• The desire to align pay for performance may be even stronger (because people-related costs are such a high percentage of total cost in most organizations)

What do you think?  Is the HCM market heading for a credit crisis/recession-driven downturn?  Is demand strong enough to weather the looming storm?  If the market does decline, how fast will it come back?

• Mobility in the external labor market has made it difficult for employers to invest in training and development.  By the time the investment is ready to pay off, workers can leave for other, often higher paying, opportunities.  These new employers do not have to make that training investment and do not have to recoup those costs so they can pay more.
• Uncerltainty about the demand for resources is not going to go away.  What is key is how you handle the uncertainty.  Doing workforce planning where you can understand the range of likely possibilities and craft sourcing strategies appropriately is key.  It is also important to know the cost/benefit tradeoffs of both overshooting and undershooting planned demand.  If you are going to err, make sure you error on the right side (and again craft sourcing strategies appropriately).

For more check out my recent post (including a link to information on Peter’s book).

I had a chance to go to a number of breakout sessions at the conference as well.  Kelley Baker and Troy Heflin from Volvo Group (the rest of the conglomerate after Volvo sold the car business to Ford) did a great presentation on workforce planning and analytics as it relates to issues of the multi-generational workforce.  They showed a lot of great macro-environmental data that they used to engage senior leaders in the conversation about multi-generational workforce issues.  Once engaged, they were able to look at critical workforce segments (as defined by the business through survey techniques, not HR).  They found that 41% of employees in critical workforce segments were eligible to retire in the next five years (either would have 30 years of employment or be 62 years old or higher).  In addition, 21% of employees in critical workforce segments were eligible to retire immediately.  Based on these findings, they crafted a number of talent strategies to deal with these emerging talent gaps. 

I also attended a session by Carolyn Nimmy from Capgemini on Corporate Social Responsibility.  What I found most interesting was the efforts to ingrain this in the culture.  Related to talent management specifically, they talked about the linkage in one of their programs, the Naandi Foundation (which helps Girl/Child education in India), to higher employee engagement.  In addition, they have used the Naandi Foundation for leadership development.  Specifically, employees from Finland have worked in India on assignments for Naandi Foundation.  This has built bonds with local employees (building on their “One Team” approach to client engagement) as well as giving them inter-cultural knowledge (IBM has similar types of program).  They know this work has improved their employment brand in Norway and Finland, not to mention India.  Capgemini is still working to understand the impact on issues such as retention.

I was very impressed by the work done at Scotiabank (presented by Cory Garlough).  They have really thought through how to put together a whole employee research metholodolgy using surveys and other data collection techniques.  These use this data to answer specific research questions that help them make better decisions about their talent.

I also heard from Providence Health & Services, an early customer for Kenexa’s new 2X platform and the upcoming (Q408) Kenexa Recruiter 2X solution.  So far, they have been impressed with the improvements (over the original Kenexa Recruiter solution) especially in terms of usability.

I would be remiss if I did not mention Kenexa’s big news at the conference.  They have acquired the code to a global, J2EE-based Learning Management System (contractually they are not allowed to say who they bought it from but my description should provide some clues) which forms the foundation for Kenexa Learning Management (KLM).  The solution is available now and Kenexa plans to move it to the 2X platform by the end of 2009.

The not so good news is that Kenexa lowered its guidance for the next quarter and the rest of 2008.  Kenexa’s stock price is down considerably today (~25%).

Update

Plateau has asked me to update this post and indicate that its executives unequivocally deny that it is the vendor that sold the rights to the code that Kenexa is using in KLM.

A quarter of the Fortune 1000 have selected HR chiefs from outside divisions, according to the Center for Effective Organizations …

Many HR organizations on the leading edge of Workforce Analytics practices (that I have spoken with), for example, have had senior executives that came from outside of HR (and the HR profession).  However, I have to admit I did not realize that it had become such a common practice.  The Workforce Management cover story about Kohl’s and the move of its CEO out of that role to focus on Talent Management is certainly unique.  However, in my view, it certainly bodes well that HR organizations are getting an influx of talent from the business.  It can only benefit HR by improving alignment with the business.

What do you think?  Will this influx of ”non-HR” executive talent change HR organizations (and the HR profession) for the better or not?

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