As promised Oracle is now supplying Oracle Fusion Applications on Windows. Most system administrators and installers will probably say, why is this important?

Bringing Oracle Fusion Applications to Windows makes the application more accessible to the ‘common man’. Let’s be honest, the majority of IT does have knowledge and access to Windows, a smaller part has knowledge of Linux and an ever smaller part has any experience with IBM AIX and Oracle Solaris, not even to mention the availability of these two operation systems for the common IT. Since Oracle Fusion Applications is made up of so many Oracle components, Oracle Fusion Applications has attracted the interest of not only the ERP community, but also the attention of other communities like DBA’s, Middleware/Integration specialists, etc and they all want to get a taste of the future.

As information technology is here to stay in HR and its role in future HR execution will increase evermore, I thought it might be a good idea to add a blog every now and then about the role of HR-IT in HR. Shortcuts will be taken and assumptions will be made in my postings but always with the idea to better understand the pitfalls in HR-IT.

This posting describes pitfall # 1…

A best practice vs a best system.

The title of this blog is a quote made by Dave Ulrich, HR guru extraordinaire. The quote is a prelude and inspiration to this blog, and perhaps many to come.

Ever wondered why ERP projects do not reach their full potential?

As PeopleSoft consultant I encounter many organisations that wish to implement their old ways of doing things in a new application (or additional module, upgrade etc). This goes as far as wanting to redesign part of the application by (i.e.) removing fields, changing field labels, changing workflows or page layouts to make the new install look as much like their old HR application as possible and HR processes to remain the same. Organisations seem to be more than willing to take the additional investments involved, while being adverse to budgeting additional funds to actually change their way of conducting HR.

Truth be told, I am not at all against building bespoke work in a vanilla application. I do feel however it must be done for the right reasons. Adversity to change is not one of them.

The end result of such a project is that a brand new application is implemented, but the optimum level of real progress for HR has not been reached. Some might even go as far as calling such a project a success.

Many organizations think implementing an ERP application alone will bring real change to the way they are conducting their HR. Expecting HR to become more efficient and deliver a higher quality of service at the same time.

Real change can never be achieved by only making new HR-IT available in any organization. (Yes I’ve said it!)

So if implementing a new application alone does not do the trick, is there a better approach?
It starts with the realization that a best system is needed.
When Ulrich made his quote, he did not imply an IT system. In Ulrich’s mind an ERP application like Oracle, SAP or PeopleSoft (can’t recall him mentioning Microsoft funny enough) is a best practice.

A best system is the sum total of all that needs changing in your organization to bring about real change in your HR organization.

Here’s a list of suggestions:
o Consider your future needs
A change project of this magnitude takes time. Avoid the risk of ending up with an outdated project deliverable.
o Changing your HR services catalogue
Re-evaluate all the services HR is delivering in your organisation. Will all services remain in the to-be situation?
o Changing your HR processes
Re-evaluate all of your HR processes. With it comes the difficult task to re-shuffle responsibilities in your organization and mapping standard delivered ERP processes on your process catalogue.
o Changing your HR organization
Once the HR catalogue and processes are re-evaluated it is time to map these on your existing HR organisation. Will all roles remain? Do new responsibilities emerge? What about headcount?
o Consider a change readiness evaluation
Is your organization ready to take the big step? What needs to be done to have the projected change accepted by all involved? (including your external vendors)
o Visit a friendly neighbour
HR is a generic process for the most part. No need to start from scratch.

So what about SaaS applications then? How do they fit into this story? To be honest, I have not figured it out yet. But it can’t be accidental that Oracle decided not to offer its state of the art Fusion applications as a multi tenant SaaS. Who knows? Larry might even agree with me :-)!

Greetz,
Ramon Schliszka

Greetings all,

My name is Michael van Adrichem and I am one of the Oracle UPK specialists in Logica in the Netherlands.

In the upcoming months I will try to keep you updated about the latest updates and developments of the Oracle UPK tool.

For the people who are not familiar with the Oracle UPK tool, a short introduction is in place.
In this blog post an overview of the UPK tool will be given.

In the upcoming blog posts I will explain the different process parts of which a complete UPK implementation project consists off.

Chapter one: UPK Overview
What is the UPK?
In short, the UPK tool can be divided into two categories:

Organisation:
User Productivity Kit (UPK) is a unique solution that enables an organization through contextual / content sensitivity, in an efficient manner, to create, manage and publish all documentation, training and other support materials for applications.

Users:
A simple tool that allows users to quickly manage Oracle Applications (with importance of training and saving on training).

So to clarify, the UPK tool is one of the easiest ways for an organisation to train their employee’s in new systems. The UPK will take the role of a virtual guide and try to train them in a simple but effective way.

In a previous post I mentioned a new feature of PeopleTools 8.52: Dashboard. With this feature you can create custom dashboards with pagletes that provide information about a certain business area. Oracle didn’t stop here and also added Interwindow Communication (IWC).

Interwindow communication is a frame-to-frame messaging mechanism that enables browser window objects—such as pages or pagelets—to be aware of and react to field-level data changes that occur in other window objects that share the same browser window. Interwindow communication enables you to publish field-level changes as they occur so that any subscribing page or pagelet becomes instantly aware of the change and then, can act on it in real-time. Administrators, subject matter experts or application developers configure page fields to respond to either changes in value or a mouse click. When the triggering event occurs, the application posts a string-formatted message. Because of partial pagelet refresh functionality, subscribing pagelets can then respond within the context of the data contained in the message. Interwindow communication supports component-based pagelets and noncomponent-based pagelets (iScript-based or other Pagelet Wizard pagelets).

Oracle has added another great feature to PeopleTools 8.52:

Dashboards

A dashboard is an overview consisting of pagelets containing information about a certain subject. Until now you were able to add pagelets to your home screen or workcenters. Because you only have one PeopleSoft home page, you are limited in the number of pagelets you can add to get a clear view of what is happening in your business or which actions you need to take. Workcenters did add some additional productivity, but you are limited to add pagelets only to one frame of the browser.