Workplace Technology News: Oracle Continues to Enhance Enterprise Cloud Applications and Analytics Capabilities

by Steve Boese

At a recent Oracle Live “Future of Business” presentation on November 2, 2021, Steve Miranda, Oracle’s EVP for Applications Product Development shared some important updates to the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications suite, as well as announcing new analytics capabilities for Supply Chain Management.

In Steve’s opening remarks, he reiterated two of the most important business challenges facing organizations today – significant disruption to global product supply chains; and the “Great Resignation,” a manifestation of the difficulty many organizations are seeing in finding and retaining their talented employees. While there are certainly other challenges facing businesses today, (sustainability, health & safety, etc.), it’s these top two – supply chains and the competition for talent that are most interesting to me, and ones where I would like to highlight how the Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications and Analytics Cloud help organizations address.

It is no secret that global supply chains are under serious pressure and scrutiny – just tune in to any news program lately and you are likely to see at least one story of a consumer product or business to business component under short or even non-existent availability. Understanding and managing your organization’s supply chain has never been more important and more challenging than today. Oracle is helping their customers meet these growing and rapidly changing supply chain challenges with Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain Management & Manufacturing (SCM) and with the latest announcement, with new Supply Chain Management Analytics, delivered in the Oracle Cloud.

Oracle’s SVP of Analytics Development, T.K. Anand, described the Oracle Cloud Applications as the “Systems of Record”, capturing transactional data for the enterprise, and the Oracle Cloud Analytics solutions as the “Systems of Insight,” providing the organization with rich, real-time, and actionable information to support decision making.

Supply Chain Management Analytics joins the previously released Oracle ERP Analytics and Oracle HCM Analytics solutions to continue to build on the most complete suite of cloud applications and analytics capabilities today. This completeness of coverage allows organizations to generate cross-functional insights into their most important and pressing business issues. Specifically, Oracle SCM Analytics delivers insight into the essential aspects of supply chain management – spending, agreements, purchasing, receipts and more. And since the Oracle Applications and Oracle Analytics suites encompass ERP, HCM, and SCM, organizations and functional area leaders can much more easily create and share powerful analytics spanning the entire organization without having to create complex, costly, and hard to upgrade custom reporting using third party tools. With this release, Oracle continues to innovate and lead by enhancing the breadth and capabilities of both their enterprise application offerings and their supporting cloud analytics coverage.

Later in the presentation, John Galley, Chief Human Resources Officer from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, a 90,000+ employee organization shared some of the highlights and benefits of their transformation and adoption of Oracle Cloud HCM technologies. UPMC plays a critical role in the health and wellbeing of their community, serving as a backstop for seriously ill and hard to treat patients. The 600 person HR and Payroll team at UPMC is charged with the important job of attracting, hiring, developing, and retaining the best talent possible to accomplish the organization’s mission.

At Oracle Live, Jane Boyer, the UPMC Vice President for HRIS shared how the organization is leveraging HR data and analytics to gain insights on their most pressing HR and talent challenges – first year turnover, retention, and diversity and inclusion. The goal is to use data combined with AI, to drive more predictive insights allowing HR and the management team to be more proactive in developing and implementing programs and initiatives to address these challenges.

Additionally, UPMC is relying on data and analytics to really understand and diagnose HR and talent challenges before jumping into a new solution, I.e., data helps separate what is really happening from what is often shared in one-off anecdotes and outlying incidents. Finally, UPMC shared an excellent and timely example of how HR was able to use data to prioritize and optimize the prioritization of COVID-19 vaccinations across their large and diverse workforce – enabling UPMC to ensure effective and equitable outcomes for their teams.

Overall, the Oracle Live event provided a concise and informative update on new innovations, forward-looking vision, and some tangible outcomes from key customers. You can replay the Oracle Live event on demand here.