Sneak peek into Fusion HCM

Got to attend a Fusion HCM demo couple of days back and I have to say that I was left extremely impressed with the features on offer. Here are some of the points that struck me, which I feel will go a long way in establishing Fusion as a strong contender in the HCM marketplace:
1. Excellent inbuilt and graphical analytics including predictive analytics with a first of its kind module called Workforce Predictions.
2. A wide variety of hosting options including on-premise, public cloud, private cloud etc.
3. Excellent User Interfaces and integrated web2.0 features. As we all know, the fusion team has put a lot of research and emphasis on the UI and it really looks very impressive.
4. Plug and use compatibility with other Oracle HRMS suites like PeopleSoft, e-biz, JD Edwards etc.
5. The various modules seemed to be integrated with respect to analytics and presentation rather than being individual silos - thus giving organizations a comprehensive view of it's people.

All in all, the features on display in the demo (need to put the disclaimer that it was just a prepared demo!) were extremely impressive and somehow I feel that Fusion HCM is going to make a sizeable dent in the HCM market space.

PeopleSoft App Store: Expanding the idea

I had talked about the idea of a PeopleSoft app store in two previous posts. You can find them here and here. I went on to expand the idea a bit on the prodding of Ryan Martiny of iResume. Some key areas from the thesis is presented below. The below details represent my intellectual property and anyone wanting to quote this or expand on this can do so after consulting with me.

We already have proven and working models around us with regards to an App Store, so my ideas around this is nothing radical. The basic concept would mirror the already existing App Stores, in the sense that it will serve as an online marketplace, providing a common platform for developers and customers to interact. But considering that PeopleSoft is an on-premise enterprise software, we will need to tailor the App Store to best suit the requirements of PeopleSoft customers as well as to come up with a delivery model that will be ideal for an enterprise software.
As I look at it, there can be 3 distinct categories of content that can go in this store: (a) Apps (b) Database scripts (c) Books/Training guides/Red papers etc. Delivery of this content will vary depending on the nature of the content. For example, database scripts and content like books etc. can be directly downloaded from the app store. But, it will be interesting to think how best to deliver the apps themselves. I foresee that the installation of a lot of apps will require an impact analysis from customer to customer and this presents us with two options. One option is to let the customer download the app directly from the store and the customer itself takes up the impact analysis and installation of the app. In this case, the app store nor the developer(s) of the app would provide any ongoing support and the customer would acknowledge that they will be downloading and managing the app at their own responsibility. The second option is to let the customer download the app from the store, but leave the impact analysis and installation to the developer(s). In this case, the customer would be provided with the contact details of the developer(s) such that the two parties can interact for further installation and support. The app store will house all items required for the installation of an app, i.e. PeopleSoft project, DMS scripts, all necessary documentation, any necessary installation guides etc. Any app purchased through the app store will have to be downloaded from the app store itself and it will be illegal for participating developers/development houses to directly deliver the installation package of an app to the customer.

Posting content in the store
Considering the nature of software we are dealing with, it will be required to enforce strict quality control on the software that will be posted in the store. The credibility of the developer is extremely important in this case as it will be required for those who generate the content to provide on going support to customers. Considering all these factors, only those developers/development houses that pass certain criteria will be allowed to post content in the app store. Any content that is posted in the app store will have to go through a review process and has to be supported by all necessary documentation like functional design document, technical design document, installation guide, installation objects like project, DMS scripts etc. and detailed test cases. Minimum coding standards will also have to be maintained. Only those developers/development houses that can adhere to these restrictions will be able to post content in the store.

Categories:
The following categories can be provided in the app store. Each app posted in the store can be put under these general categories and customers will be able to search for apps under these categories:
1. HCM 2. FSCM 3. CRM 4. Campus Solutions 5. Security 6. Reporting 7. Integration 8. Portal 9. Mobile Apps 10. Upgrade

General website features:
The following general features can be provided in the app store:
1. Utility to rate an app by customers.
2. Utility to ask for peer customer feedback on a certain app.
3. Feature to share an app with a friend.
4. Feature for customers to suggest apps that they would like to have.
5. Feature to compare apps so that customers can compare apps with similar functionality for price, customer rating, number of times downloaded etc.
6. Utility to find an app that the customer wants. This can be done by a series of questions which the customer can answer and at the end of the process will be presented with a list of apps that suit their requirement.
7. List of top rated developers/development houses.
8. App of the week.
9. Regional focus - I think it will be great to have apps that have local/regional focus and even apps that cater to local language. This will greatly enhance the attractiveness and compatibility of apps to customers.

All of this can be supplemented by having offline conclaves of developers, providing an app challenge etc. that should help foster the developer community.

Revenue sources:
A percentage of sales of each app can be withheld by the app store management. Relative pricing should be adopted. That is, the fee withheld will vary with the price of the app - with lesser fee being taken for cheaper apps and more for costlier apps.
A flat fee can be charged to qualify as an app store certified developer/development house.
Ads of development houses can be put on the web or if this might dilute the usability/branding of the store, a separate section/link can be provided where featured companies/products can be displayed. This is more like a pure advertising page of PeopleSoft companies/products.  Sure that there will be takers for this as the app store will generate good amount of traffic.
Developer platform - independent developers who do not have sufficient support/infrastructure to qualify as a certified development house could be provided a platform/environment for developing apps. The store will retain a higher percentage of the sales proceedings of such developers.

Random Idea: Using Wikis for project documentation

Disclaimer: The idea being detailed below is not new and I am sure is in practice in a number of organizations, but documenting it as I am yet to come across companies that have used this.

I strongly feel that it would be great to adopt wikis as the primary medium of project documentation, especially when it comes to support/maintenance projects. The features and convenience offered by a wiki product is much more and superior to the conventional practice of using word processing documents as the documentation media and a content management site like sharepoint as the central documentation repository. The major advantages of using a wiki are:
1. Easier access (or discovery) to documentation as a wiki is web based and no need for users to remember folder navigations and file names.
2. Easier editing and maintenance.
3. Pages can be logically linked to each other - this is the biggest advantage that I see. The major drawback I experience with traditional documentation is that one document does not link to another and it doesn't provide a continuous reading experience. In a wiki, linking of interconnected documents/pages is possible and this will lead to a far improved user experience.
4. Tagging would be possible in wikis.
5. Wikis are much 'lighter' than traditional documents and would take up much lesser storage space.

Q&A: Creating default payable time for exception time reporters

Q: "I have some question on the setup of the exception time handling. Our req is to default the hours for all salaried employees and only report their vacation and sick days. We used the WorkGroup and setup a schedule and defaulted the hours. And ran the time admin process..Is there something we are missing. can you please throw some light"

A: "You are missing a rule in your rule program to default all hours to a particular TRC. When you setup Exception time reporters and assign an Elapsed schedule to them (or to the workgroup), Time Admin will generate the hours, but there will be no TRC attached to it. Unless there is a TRC for the rows in IPT1, Time Admin will not generate payable time.
Use the delivered Default Hours rule template to create a rule to default all hours without a TRC to a particular TRC and add this rule to the rule program of the workgroup"

Principal goes live on Oracle Fusion HCM

As news goes, the financial services giant, Principal Group has gone live on Fusion HCM. Follow the media release below:
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/358769

DMS script to export T&L rules

 Time and Labor rules can be moved from one environment to the other using DMS scripts. Oracle support site has a complete DMS script listed for the same purpose. For quick reference I am documenting here the list of scripts that I commonly run to migrate rules. Do remember to append necessary 'WHERE' conditions for each statement.

EXPORT TL_RULE_DEFN  
EXPORT TL_RULE_STEPS
EXPORT TL_RULE_CONDS
EXPORT TL_TMPLT_RULE
EXPORT TL_TMPLT_RULE2 
EXPORT TL_SQL_BINDS
EXPORT TL_SQL_INSERT
EXPORT TL_SQL_JOIN
EXPORT TL_SQL_JOINFLDS
EXPORT TL_SQL_OBJECT
EXPORT TL_SQL_SEL_FLDS
EXPORT TL_SQL_TABLES
EXPORT TL_SQL_UPDATE
EXPORT TL_SQL_UPDBINDS
EXPORT TL_SQL_WHERE
EXPORT TL_SQL_WHRBINDS
EXPORT TL_SQL_EXPRESSN
EXPORT TL_RULE_PGM
EXPORT TL_RULE_PGM_DTL

Note: In version 9.1 PeopleSoft has come up with a utility to export and import rules between environments. Using that will eliminate the need to remember and manually execute the above mentioned DMS scripts

Infor report on Mobile Workforce Management

http://blogs.infor.com/workbrain_watch/assets/RIS_Infor_CR_081710.pdf

Random Idea: A Facebook 'Like' or 'Share' on PeopleSoft pages

The 'Facebook share' and 'like' buttons are commonplace in most websites today. I think it will be a wonderful idea to have this feature in some of the PeopleSoft pages, especially the candidate facing pages in Recruitment. This will allow candidates to share the job postings on their Facebook/Twitter profile and should help spread the word!

Absence Management Forecasting Errors

Errors received during Absence Management forecasting process can be confusing. Utilizing this post to note some of the errors and resolution for future reference. Will keep adding to this list. Do leave a comment if you want to contribute to this post!Peoplebooks has a section on these errors, but the cause of the issue is not correctly/completely documented in most cases.

477 - No Absence event present error. Check the forecasting template and ensure that a workflow status of 'Saved' is part of the forecasting template.

480 - This error is mostly caused by an issue in the setup. Revisit especially your process list setup to ensure that all elements are present in the process list and that all formulas are validated.

487 - This issue has been resolved by adding a finalized calendar to the forecasting calendar group with a period that starts before all possible retro start dates.

ERP App Store - The Salesforce.com story

I had mooted the idea of having an app store for PeopleSoft modeled in the lines of the apple app store. Questions were raised whether this is a practical idea and how customers would evaluate third party products and plug in applications to their existing PeopleSoft installations. Valid questions all. But, it turns out that we already have a perfect and successful example of an enterprise app store, that run by salesforce.com. You can find the details here - http://appexchange.salesforce.com/home
This is a working model from which one can take a lot of ideas. As I had mentioned in my earlier post, they have used web2.0 features like community rating and all applications come with details on live as well as offline support.
Let me re-emphasize my underlying conviction about this idea - customers badly need innovative, productivity enhancing, pre-built tools to aid their existing PeopleSoft installations. There is a real need for this (there are very few companies like Grey Sparling, SmartERP etc. who have exploited this need and I am sure that they are doing extremely well! Succeed Consultancy in the UK is another organization I have seen having some innovative tools, but not sure if they have commercialized any of them). Such an eco-system of the product and independent developers is required for products to grow and offer exceptional features to customers. I really hope that some company that has the resources to make this happen would take up this idea and make it a reality!

Integrating inclement weather prediction in Time and Attendance applications

Caution: The below post is the result of some runaway thoughts on a nice sunny Friday evening, you might want to plug your ears because I am about to think out LOUD here!

The weather has been particularly unpredictable and surprising in 2010-2011. We've seen devastating floods in Australia and extreme winters in Europe. My question is, what are companies doing pro-actively to prepare for inclement weather from a workforce management perspective? It goes without saying that inclement weather has a direct impact on the ability of employees to turn up for work - this in turn results in unplanned absenteeism, late arrival at work, early departure from work and lost productivity. So the ability to effectively manage workforce during an event of inclement weather is an important one. More so with the extreme unpredictability of weather conditions that we have been seeing over the last few years.
I have rarely seen an organization having a clear inclement weather policy, so do they have any tools that help them manage this? (Working remotely seems to be a perfect solution, but unfortunately this will not work for all industries).
My premise is that, this is an area that has great impact on workforce management and the workforce management tools should be able to aid supervisors plan their workforce in case of unfavorable weather. So what am I hinting at? My thoughts are that it would be great to have real time weather forecasts integrated with the workforce management suite (especially for locations that are prone to unpredictable weather) and alert supervisors when there is a warning of inclement weather. Here are some features that I would love to see in the WFM products:

1. Ability to integrate with weather forecasting information.
2. Ability to look at historical trends on weather and it's potential impact on workforce planning.
3. Ability to alert in case of potential inclement weather.
4. Identify employees at risk due to inclement weather. This is a tricky part as the ability of an employee to attend work in the event of unfavourable weather conditions depend greatly on the location where the employee stays (what if the weather is going to turn bad for the place where the employee stays rather than the actual work location?), distance the employee has to commute and means of commute.
5. Ability to plan and generate schedule for days with inclement weather.
6. Ability to integrate with the Leave Management/Time and Attendance systems if required to support any inclement weather policies of the organization.
7. Ability to alert employees regarding the change in schedule.

I am sure that the dollar value of lost productivity due to inclement weather is high enough to justify the adoption of formal workforce management strategies/tools to manage this ever increasing unpredictable phenomenon.

The 100th post: Look at the LinkedIn discussion on PeopleSoft future

A highly opinionated discussion has been raging over the last 8 months in the PeopleSoft Community group on LinkedIn on the future of PeopleSoft. You can find the details here. It's an excellent read for all PeopleSoft consultants/organizations invested in/planning to invest in PeopleSoft. I hope you enjoy reading that!
My personal opinion on the subject: The question posed is 'Is PeopleSoft Alive and kicking' and to answer that by looking at the market at this point of time, the only answer is yes. The adoption rate of PeopleSoft version 9.1 amongst customers has been phenomenal (a lot of die hard skeptics have raised the point that there are no new PS9.1 implementations, but just upgrades. This is absolutely not true) and the product is very much alive and kicking today. But, if you were to ask me about the projected future of PeopleSoft, I am convinced that the product will surely lose ground to other progressive products in the years to come. There are a number of reasons for my inference:

1. It will be impossible for Oracle to continue focusing on multiple product lines. The stated strategy of Oracle is to converge towards one single product - Fusion and this will surely mean that funding and focus on other products like PeopleSoft will surely go down. I am sure that Oracle will continue to support customers who are already on PeopleSoft long after Fusion comes out, as maintainance fees represent a healthy part of Oracle's revenue pie.

2. If you follow industry thought leaders like Naomi Bloom, it is very evident that the entire HCM product architecture/code base/data model is undergoing a complete overhaul. I do not think that it will be possible for PeopleSoft to shrug off it's entire product architecture and move towards the new HCM product model - that would be akin to developing a completely new product. This would put the product out of favour with potential customers, who I am sure would prefer the new age HCM suites rather than PeopleSoft.

3. With better integration technologies, organizations are moving towards picking the best vendor for each area of business and integrating data across the various enterprise systems. Given this, we might very well see the disintegration of one vendor providing complete HCM end to end solutions and move towards a model where niche vendors handle their areas of expertise. This would mean that companies that are agile, innovative, fliexible and specialized will gain edge in the future. I am not convinced that PeopleSoft would fit this bill.

Well, these are purely my personal thoughts, but I hope you read the LinkedIn post to gain more insights on this topic.