Oracle updates HR with Peoplesoft 9.1 | Bangkok Post: tech

WEB TECHNOLOGY

Oracle has launched Peoplesoft 9.1, bringing HR up to date with the latest in web technology while updating its modules to exceed the best niches that the competition has offered.

Tim Darton, Senior Director for HCM at Oracle, explains the new features and modularity of Peoplesoft 9.1.

Speaking to journalists in Bangkok, Tim Darton, Senior Director for HCM (human capital management) solutions at Oracle, explained how Peoplesoft 9.1, the third release since Oracle's acquisition of the HR specialist in 2004, was the one of the most important releases to date.

Peoplesoft 9.1 is a combination of a new toolkit, Peopletools 8.5 and the applications release, Peoplesoft itself.

When people talk about HR, most talk about end-to-end but what they mean is still top-to-bottom. Recruitment happens in one department and gets passed to someone else. What is needed is end-to-end HR from planning, hiring, on-boarding, setting business objectives and starting the employee working all in one holistic view.

Peoplesoft brings all those views into one. For instance, processing a pay increase in the past meant linking to three to four different applications from salaries, performance reports and third party industry salary reports. This meant the HR person would lose context. 9.1 brings all those views into one.

People has an iPhone application, iReceipts, that allows users to take a picture of a receipt with their iPhone, put in some details and have their expenses automatically processed. The Peopletools toolkit will allow for more and richer applications on a variety of mobile devices in the future.

The new Peoplesoft application has been updated with full dynamic HTML and Ajax to make better use of screen real-estate with context sensitive pop-over, predictive search, partial screen refresh, zoom into tables without losing context, public and private tag clouds, RSS feeds and everything else that the 20-year old graduate used to Facebook will be expecting of a modern web-based IT system.

Peoplesoft 9.1 is modular. For instance, with the new casinos being built in Singapore, they would need to focus on recruiting solutions. It also for the first time does not necessarily need a rip and replace of the old core system. Many modules will work with Peoplesoft 9.0 as well as 9.1.

A new feature is e-performance management. This is about setting the key goals, the balanced scorecards at a high level and then cascading them down to the individual who can then know exactly what his performance is measured against. It is also now possible to push performance indicators to people outside the organisation and effectively automate the manager's role.

The performance management module also recognises that employees in modern companies are often grouped together for projects and then they are disbanded. E-performance allows for multiple performance documents by different appraisers to be linked to one employee and has a workspace feature for managers to actually manage the HR aspect of new distributed development and collaboration.

Forced ranking of employees is now accompanied by live bell distribution curves to ensure an even distribution.

Another new module is called Succession 360. This was written from the ground up. Key roles in the organisation are defined and the successors are mapped graphically as well as their readiness to take on the job. If the successor is ready but the person is not going anywhere, the system automatically identifies a retention problem as he may leave for a better job elsewhere.

Peoplesoft 9.1 is fully localised to Thai legislative requirements and the localisations are supported by Oracle, not a third-party systems integrator. Fields are all double-byte capable and there is a translation benchmark, but the UI itself remains mostly in English.

Darton said that before the financial crisis, a lot of focus was on business intelligence for expansion and mergers and acquisition. Today the focus is more inward with e-Performance being the most popular module as organisations look to align business with goals more closely.

He also said that customers did not want to upgrade their systems every year or 18 months and would rather have an upgrade when there is a meaningful reason to do so.

Darton said that there was a change in HR and a streamlining and automation of tasks. Instead of leave approval, the idea now is that all leaves are approved if they meet the rules. The idea is to automate as much as possible in HR and leave only a small core group who are analysing and creating strategies rather than doing lots of paperwork.

Relate Search: launched Peoplesoft 9.1, Speaking to journalists in Bangkok, Tim Darton, Senior Director for HCM