PeopleSoft Highlights from Oracle Applications Day

For the last 15 years, as Cedar Consulting and now Version 1, we have brought the PeopleSoft community together for a day of product updates, customer stories, insight, and knowledge sharing.  It’s always a great day, meeting our customers and friends in the PeopleSoft world. We’re glad that so many made time to join us – over 100 PeopleSoft customers for this year’s virtual Oracle Applications Day, even though there was no free coffee or lunch involved!  It was great to be able to connect with the community in this way and let’s hope next year we’ll be doing likewise in person. This blog will summarise the PeopleSoft Stream highlights,

Keynote from Robbin Velayedam, Oracle

Robbin Velayedam, Senior Director of Product Management at Oracle presented his PeopleSoft keynote on the latest product development enhancements and roadmap for PeopleSoft HR, Financials and Campus Solutions applications.

PeopleSoft Investment Strategy is in 4 key areas:

• Simplification and modernisation – Ongoing delivery of enhancements through regular PUM Images.
• Analytics – Kibana visualisations, embedded analytics and decision support tools.
• Cloud and emerging technology integration – including PeopleSoft Cloud manager, developing more ChatBots, IoT Asset Monitoring Cloud, AI & Machine Learning.
• Frameworks to eliminate/reduce customisations – Drop Zones, Event Mapping, Pluggable App Engine and Configuration tools.

Other highlights include:

• The continuous, customer-driven roadmap for PeopleSoft focuses on Confidence, Continuity and Commitment.
• There continues to be a large global install base helping to shape the new features and enhancements in the products through Focus Groups and the Community Ideas Space. Product Roadmaps are published for all products via http://www.peoplesoftinfo.com
• You can be confident that investment, innovation, and support will continue. Oracle has no plans to end investment or support of PeopleSoft, with Premier Support rolling through to at least 2031.
• How can PeopleSoft customers leverage the cloud?
  • Consider the value of running your PeopleSoft systems on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Don’t look just for cost savings but also look for opportunities to automate and optimise your PeopleSoft systems.
  • Explore other Oracle Cloud products and services – ChatBots, Machine Learning, Internet of Things and other Oracle Cloud Applications.

PeopleSoft Live Q&A Session with Robbin

Questions throughout the session included:

• How is Oracle seeing the Kibana up-take in PeopleSoft? What are plans for Kibana in PeopleSoft going forward? What do I need to take advantage of Kibana?
• How much is Oracle changing the PeopleSoft applications and moving them forward?
• How much is Oracle investing in Financials and Campus?
• What are some of the new significant features being developed for future releases?
• Will Single Sign-on be supported in PeopleSoft?
• And more…..

Once again, a big thanks to Robbin for his support of Version 1 and taking the time to share his insights with the community.

Customer, Functional and Technology Sessions

17 other sessions were run throughout this full and varied day (and these can all be watched on demand – just sign up from the link below).

Customer Stories

Allen & Overy discussed how they used PeopleSoft features in response to the COVID-19 crisis. PA Consulting talked about the ongoing challenge of the recurring patching cycle. The Ferguson migration of PeopleSoft Financials to OCI was showcased and our own Russell Lakin highlighted innovations and continued value-adding enhancements from one of our global clients.

• Agile Deployment of PeopleSoft Features at A&O in response to the COVID-19 crisis
• Ferguson’s Journey to Fully Managed, Cloud Hosted PeopleSoft
• Maximising your PeopleSoft Investment
• The Patching Rhythm

PeopleTools & Technology Update

Graham Smith, Jo Randles, Kashyap Raja and Russell Lakin showcased some of the great features within Tools, from analytics to branding to Cloud, building on so many of the messages from Robbin.

• Kibana – why we think it is great and how to get started
• Best Practices for Staying Current in PeopleSoft Easily & Efficiently
• PeopleSoft Branding: Why the User Interface Matters
• Oracle Autonomous – What does it mean to PeopleSoft customers?
• PeopleSoft Cloud Manager – What’s new and how to make the most of it

Application (FSCM, HCM, GP & General)

Sonal Patel showcased some of the great new features delivered within Financials over the last 12 months, Jo Randles showed how HCM can support clients to achieve staff mobility and Gary Lindsay gave an update from the world of payroll.

• What’s new on PeopleSoft Financials?
• Assessing workforce skills & enabling internal mobility with PeopleSoft
• What’s happening in Payroll?

PeopleSoft Security

Graham Smith, Greg Wendt and Russell Lakin discussed several areas of security interest, from best practice security within PeopleSoft to data depersonalisation to MFA/authentication.  In addition, Graham and Greg were joined by the team at Hays for a security roundtable discussion.

• Custom Tool to Help you Depersonalise your PeopleSoft Data
• Top Tips on Securing your PeopleSoft Application
• PeopleSoft Security Roundtable
• Reduce PeopleSoft Audits Time from Months to Minutes
• Integration Single-Sign-on & Multi Factor Authentication for Stronger Authentication

In Summary

There is as much going on in the PeopleSoft world as there has ever been and the PeopleSoft streams captured this in terms of Oracle’s directions and updates, client stories and thoughts from the Version 1 team.  It was great to have so many people together, despite the obvious challenges. Remember that you can sign up below if you missed out on the day to rewatch the key PeopleSoft sessions!