Event Report from Oracle CloudWorld 2024 – The Evolution of AI in HR Technology

In September, the H3 HR Advisors team attended Oracle CloudWorld 2024 –the tech company’s massive user conference and technology showcase, which was held in Las Vegas.  This year’s iteration of CloudWorld included several new HCM product announcements, updates on Oracle HCM’s overall growth and progress, and key customer success stories highlighting the impact of HR technology on business and HR transformation. While there were numerous HCM suite product updates and enhancements announced at CloudWorld, there were two significant product announcements we’d like to recap and analyze here on H3 HR Insights – the release of Artificial Intelligence tools in the form of a collection of new AI Agents, and an important update to Oracle Dynamic Skills capabilities.  

In this piece we’ll explore the new set of Oracle AI Agents, how they represent the next phase of AI technology for HR, and how these Agents can help HR leaders enhance employee experience, improve HR service delivery, and generate positive people and business results for the organization. 

What are AI Agents? 

Last Fall at CloudWorld in 2023, Generative AI capabilities were just beginning to be introduced into the Oracle Cloud HCM suite (Gen AI Version 1.0 if you like) and covered common (but necessary) use cases like an AI-assisted job description generator, the summarization of employee feedback received during the year to help inform annual performance reviews, and an AI tool to help create employee goals. These and other use cases formed a powerful and accessible set of new capabilities for customers. Oracle executives estimated that at least a quarter of their customers used these new AI tools. 

This year at CloudWorld, Oracle announced its next generation and evolution of AI capabilities in its application suite, a new group of functions called Oracle Artificial Intelligence (AI) Agents.  

Artificial Intelligence Agents are software programs or systems designed to autonomously perform tasks or make decisions based on data input, pattern recognition, and predefined goals. In enterprise applications, AI Agents can process vast amounts of information, learn from data, and continuously improve their performance using machine learning algorithms and natural language processing. In enterprise applications like Human Resources, Supply Chain Management, and Finance, AI Agents are designed to automate routine tasks, provide predictive analytics, and enhance decision-making, improving efficiency and accuracy while reducing manual effort. 

At their core, the new Agents in Oracle HCM take the Generative AI version 1.0 capabilities and extend them into more fully realized and automated processes that are designed to help employees and managers complete their work more efficiently. 

Unlike traditional automation tools, these AI agents integrate Generative AI technologies that bring human-like characteristics such as reasoning, memory, and critical decision-making into the process. This allows organizations to deploy Agents to automate strategic parts of HCM business processes more dynamically and flexibly without the rigid structures of rule-based systems. 

The Agents use AI to fully automate end-to-end business processes like New Hire Onboarding or Career Planning and can deliver personalized insights, content, references, and recommendations for action, all in the context of specific business processes and in support of specialized user roles. 

For example, an AI Agent deployed for New Hire Onboarding can help with important functions such as answering new employee questions about their first days on the job, understanding and conducting benefits enrollment, providing guidance on important required forms and processes for payroll compliance, offering personalized recommendations for training content to help with their adjustment to their new role, recommend experts and potential mentors, and finally helping to acclimate the new hire to the company’s policies and culture.  

These AI capabilities are all embedded directly in the New Hire Onboarding process and in the context of the specific company rules and policies. The Oracle AI agents help to dynamically and securely use data from Oracle Cloud HCM, additional company-specific documentation (like company policies or benefits plan documents), and even external, connected data sources to generate up-to-date, source-identified, and contextually relevant information and assistance to complete the process. 

The initial announcement included 19 separate AI Agents for HCM, with capabilities in employee lifecycle management, career and performance development, compensation and benefits management, and compliance and information management. 

Agents are The Next Wave of AI in HR Technology 

The major takeaway from this announcement is that these Agents and the processes they support represent the next important step in the evolution of AI capabilities in HR technologies. They take the power of Generative AI and extend it by understanding context, creating personalized experiences and scaling to meet the needs of any organization of any size to support increased efficiency and consistency. While Generative AI 1.0 mainly manifested in text creation and summarization, these new Agents support much more complex processing and are likely to become the new standard of AI deployments in HR technologies.  

Agent technologies represent an important advancement in capability over earlier manifestations of Enterprise AI tools. Agents can operate with greater autonomy, make decisions, learn from new data and feedback, and adjust their actions accordingly. Earlier AI systems were often limited to performing highly specialized, rule-based tasks. These systems required explicit programming for each action and couldn’t learn or adapt beyond their predefined functions. 

AI Agents can also leverage contextual data (e.g., user history, behavior patterns, or environmental factors) to deliver personalized responses and solutions. For example, in HR, AI Agents can tailor training recommendations based on an employee’s career stage, skill set, and goals, improving the relevance and value of the system’s output. Earlier Enterprise AI systems were often context-unaware, unable to adjust their responses or actions based on situational nuances or personalized user information. 

Finally, Agents can seamlessly integrate across various business systems and functions. For instance, an AI Agent in HR can work with payroll, learning and development, and employee feedback systems to provide a comprehensive view of employee performance. In supply chain management, AI Agents can integrate with ERP systems, procurement, logistics, and inventory management tools to optimize the entire workflow. Older AI models were typically siloed and designed to work within specific departments or functions, with limited ability to interact with broader business workflows. 

Agent Capabilities in Oracle Cloud HCM 

At Oracle CloudWorld, Oracle announced the availability of 19 distinct agents across four HR functional areas (Employee Lifecycle Management, Career and Performance Development, Compensation and Benefits Management, and Compliance and Information Management). Examples of these HCM Agents include an Internal Mobility Assistant, a Personal and Employment Details Assistant, a Learning and Training Advisor, and a Leave and Absence Analyst. Over 50 AI agents were announced across the entire Oracle Applications Suite at CloudWorld. 

The HCM agents are all embedded in the Oracle Cloud HCM platform and can be enabled by customers as they need to be deployed across all areas of the suite: HR, Talent Management, Payroll, Workforce Management, and Employee Experience. These Agents can assist organizations in all areas of the employee lifecycle – recruiting top talent, new hire onboarding, upskilling the workforce, driving better performance, managing compensation, and many more. These powerful AI agents can help organizations improve their HR functions’ performance by making process execution faster, more innovative, reliable, and more personalized. They can empower businesses to achieve significantly higher efficiency, scalability, and consistency levels, leading to a more effective and streamlined HR function. By leveraging AI agents, organizations can transform their HR operations to better meet the challenges of a dynamic and complex environment. 

Conclusion 

With these announcements at CloudWorld, Oracle has made it clear that it understands the criticality of helping organizations both take advantage of advances in AI technology, while helping HR to deliver world-class service and insight to talent decision making. 

Oracle is committed to pushing the envelope on innovation and impact for its customers and has made a major step forward in the HR tech AI marketplace. In our opinion, Oracle has moved ahead of the market with their announcements and new innovations, and it will be interesting to see how the market reacts.  

Our next Insights piece will examine the other major Oracle Cloud HCM announcement from CloudWorld – important updates to Oracle’s Dynamic Skills capabilities.