Oracle HCM Cloud Reviews

The Talent Management solution is one of the best available in the market, and even other areas, like Core HR and Compensations, are highly customizable for a cloud product.

Automates payroll and automated integrations via web services, which have reduced man hours and increased compliance.

Learning Management on cloud is relatively new and has scope for improvement.

Four years.

Rarely.

No.

I would rate it as seven out of 10.

SAP. Switched as it was very restrictive and less customizable.

It takes time to get your head around it, but once it is done, it looks easy.

Pricing is competitive with good discounts offered.

Not applicable.

Good for an organization size of over 500. For best results, go with a seeded product implementation and try avoiding unnecessary customizations to the product.

• Business intelligence is integrated with the product.
• Gives real time information about employees and processes for managers.
• A self-service BI to key business users.
• Managers can have their analysis delivered in any way: Dashboard, table reports, analysis, charts, etc. with no development cost.

• Talent review (Nine Box) online: An HR specialist can manage their talent review meetings entirely within the system. This includes meeting planning, execution to management of action plans post-meeting.
• It is possible to change a person, add comments, add developments or performance goals, tasks, do a promotion, transfer, manage a salary or even perform termination. All this is done with no extra documents, Excel spreadsheets, or reports.
• All information is on one screen, available to the HR specialist or managers at the meeting to review and take the necessary action.

• Best fit analysis feature: Helps you to identify the correct position for the correct employee. You can visualize all gaps that you have in the current position or for the next level in your career. You can also compare two employees to see the difference between them or compare them to a specific position or job.
• If you are planning your succession plan, you can use this feature to check who is the most suitable for the position, comparing requirements for the position or comparing competencies, and skills and qualifications of the current employee in the position. All information that you gather in the sub-processes of HR goals, performance management, and development plan is available.

• Mobile and Social: This solution has a social network for your company where you can manage knowledge sharing and collaboration. Communities, chats, kudos, etc., can all be used to support your HR processes, such as goals and performance management. This can be done on your mobile device.

Before the solution implementation, our bonus compensation policy was based only on profit and loss results.

We believe that this approach is not the best. In the end, you put all your employees at the same level, increasing the difficulty in identifying talents and paying for performance.

We decided to implement a goals and competencies evaluation process. This will adjust bonuses according to performance. We define all relevant organization goals, give them a weight, and then design a process.

The recruiting process needs work. This is the only module that is provided by other applications and it is not integrated. You need to ask Oracle to "integrate" both applications. This is done with no additional cost, but it is still an outside application.

Although you can turn on the integration between them, it is a different application. You lose all the benefits provided by the integrated modules in Oracle HCM Cloud.

The recruiting solution standalone is a great tool for the recruiting processes. However, when you use it with the entire solution, you may experience some problems. This is the case, especially if you have a process that is a little bit more complex than the usual process.

I have been using this solution since Version 5, in 2013.

So far, no stability issues have been experienced.

So far, no scalability issues have been experienced.

I would give technical support a rating of 2/5. Despite having an SLA contract, the technical support is still terrible.

We have experienced some cases when implementing the solution for our customers, where a service request was created with Priority Level 1, Production. The problem took more than a month to be fixed. This is a service that definitely must be improved by Oracle.

Some examples that we experienced with technical support:

• Dumb questions such as "Did you press the button X to confirm?"
• Same requisitions by different people
• "Provide me with the 'how to' for the issue," but the 'how to' was already attached to the SR
• A conference call was scheduled and then cancelled 30 minutes before it was supposed to start.

We didn't use other solutions previously. We went straight to the Oracle HCM Cloud Solution.

The initial setup is pretty easy to do. It takes no more than a day to do it. If you have a simple process that fits with the solution proposition, then you can implement it pretty fast. Almost the whole setup is performed with step-by-step pages, which reduces the complexity. Day-by-day changes can be performed by a key user from the business with minimum training.

Of course, if your process is complex, the setup will be more complex.

Don't forget to include the implementation cost of an Oracle partner, and not only the subscription, in your cost benefits analysis. (Business plan, ROI, payback.)

On the other hand, the cost of maintenance, upgrade, infrastructure, and support is already included in your subscription.

We had the opportunity to work as a project manager of a SAP SuccessFactors projects for one of our customers. This introduced us to more details about the SAP Solution, not only as a competitor, but with customer’s eyes.

Forget about customization. If you are looking for a solution that can be changed and tailored according your company business rules, don't go with this solution. Overall, this solution provides Human Resources sub-processes best practices and a large amount of flexibility to attend to a lot of business process requirements.

It is designed in such way that end users can do their jobs without knowing much technical details. Most of the functions can be handled by an analyst, which in turn, removes the dependency on the IT department. This makes the user self-driven and ultimately increases user satisfaction and human productivity.

1. Collaboration was never so easy. The collaboration of activities in Fusion HCM are much more instinctive as compared to Oracle EBS (anther ERP from Oracle, on which Oracle HCM Cloud is based).
2. Fusion HCM is synchronous with human behavior.
3. It helps to identify potential talent.
4. Graphical and pictorial presentations of team performance tracking and the employee directory allows goal allocation.

The payroll part of the product requires more changes, which I feel are already in the future release of the product.

I've used it for over three years.

Deployment is awesome.

Scalability is awesome.

Implementation is straightforward, provided the implementor has an HR process and legislation-specific knowledge. There are a few Oracle propriety tools and techniques that one has to learn and apply throughout the implementation.

HCM Cloud is built on the latest robust middleware "Fusion Middleware". It includes all great features that come from PeopleSoft, EBS, JDE, Sibel, Hyperion, Taleo etc.

Easy to learn from technical and functional point of view.

We have done our first ever implementation of Payroll and Absence module with over 10,000 people in North America. My advice is to keep yourself up to date with the product and attend the training that Oracle offers.

Return on investment is always a major consideration when making an investment in your company. Here are some key best practices for HCM solutions that you can utilize to increase your return on investment and lower risks:

• Identify your HR processes, and select a complete HCM solution: You need to determine the HCM capabilities that are required and their interaction with each other to maximize business. The key is to understand the interaction of the related HCM processes in different modules and select an HCM solution that allows you to deliver a complete solution without starting a new process at every turn.
• Identify the integration points with other non-HCM applications and solutions: You need to take into account the standard integration of HCM modules with other applications like, Procure-to-pay, Project Accounting, and Internet Expenses etc. For instance sharing the HR position hierarchies for procure-to-pay workflow processes ensures that the procurement managers making purchases are managers with the appropriate authority to make the types of purchases they are making. Considering the need for these integrations will reduce ongoing technical costs and enable greater automated workflow from the solutions implemented.
• Identify international scalability and data ownership compliances: You need to ensure availability, redundancy and performance at all global locations by taking into account the global scalability feature of the HCM solutions. For instance, Multi language support ensures that the managers don't need to maintain separate systems and will help bring together key processes and data thus maximizing business results. Data privacy norms, which differ by country, needs to be considered and long term control of data should be maintained.

• Employee and manager self-service
• Online performance review
• Talent management capability
• Mobile capability

• The ability to update your information online from any device is invaluable
• Performing performance reviews online
• Removing the need to use paper
• Giving the data to produce the analytics

These weren't possible before we had this system.

Time Management solution. The native mobile application TAP is in great need of improvement. Apparently, a new version is coming in R12, so we look forward to seeing this.

I have been using this for four years.

In the early releases of the solution, we definitely experienced stability issues. But since R9, the stability has improved considerably. The mobile app TAP is still quite unstable and needs lots of improvement.

We have not encountered any scalability issues.

I would give technical support rating of 3.5/5.

In the beginning, it was poor. Over the last two years, support has improved greatly.

It still needs improvement. Often, it takes a long time for support to respond. They sometimes move issues between countries and shifts. Mostly, the support is good, though.

We had a paper-based system.

We implemented the solution for other customers, so it was straightforward. But it's not something that could be set up without an implementation partner.

Buy the product at Oracle year-end because you get bigger discounts.

We are closely linked to Oracle, so we chose Oracle.

Use the right implementation partner and ADOPT rather than ADAPT. Take the solution as it is delivered and don’t try to adapt it to your needs.

SaaS solution that reduces cost of ownership and maintenance

Offers free upgrades with the latest features and add-on capabilities for modules that we require

Oracle provides two upgrades for their cloud HCM solution each year. These upgrades include enhancements to existing functionality, new functionality, or introducing new modules that can manage business processes more efficiently.

For example, at the initial stage, we got core HCM modules that were helpful in managing employees and organizational details.

With subsequent free upgrades, we got the ability to use social connects like chats, group discussions, and online meetings.

With further upgrades, we kept on getting enhanced user experience with revised UI, mobile applications, and iPad-dedicated applications.

These upgrades are part of our service agreement. As long as we keep paying subscription fees, we keep on getting these upgrades for free.

Our organization covers three states in India and 4 in US. Employees are spread across these regions and need to access HCM system on-the-go. Oracle HCM Cloud offers subscription based services to system that includes web based interface, and mobile and ipad application. A simple net connections and credentials are enough for employees to access system and utilize HCM related services like time sheet, leave or personal information update.

In addition to this, inbuild chat system helps employee keep connected with each other and HR Representatives for day-to-day tasks and follow-ups if required.

Our organization is spread out over a wide geographic region. Using cloud-based technology, we assure that all employees and HR teams have a seamless experience from their desktop, on-the-go mobile application, or iPads. They can utilize functions like absences, timesheets, and expense management with a decent internet connection, anywhere and anytime.

As the product is cloud based, it is a heavily standardized system.

There is little or no option to customize business processes, features, or integrate the few exceptional business processes to work with the existing product.

The majority of HR functions are standardized in terms of transactions in the system. However, each organization has peculiar functions, such as their forms.

As of now, there is no functionality in the system to accommodate such exceptions. They do have functionality to incorporate some in other products. These are excluded, especially for cloud HCM.

I have been using this solution for over three years.

We faced stability issues during the nascent stage of implementation, but none after that.

As a part of our service agreement, we provide services to a number of users over a geographic spread and during peak usage times. This communication helped us manage scalability without any challenges.

Technical support, during some stages, was a bit of hassle. As the product is now stable, we have fewer instances that require support.

We used a customized system provided by a local vendor. As our organization grew, we needed a better solution that would work for us and across various geographies.

The initial setup was a bit of challenge. There were issues to take care of such as new terminology, functionality, and legislative requirements.

From our experience, we would recommend to go for a basic system and functionality at the initial stage. Switch to additional (non-essential) modules if, and when, the organization needs better functionality.

Implementing all modules or features in one go might increase implementation time and complicate the process.

We evaluated three other products. Two of them were from local vendors and the other was Workday. As Workday is officially not supported for India, we had to rule that out.

Owning to our past experience with local products, we chose to go with Oracle. The system is supported in all geographic locations that we operate in and has a good presence with clients to reference.

Definitely use it.

The most valuable features in this product are computing, gross to net calculations and straight specific logic.

They give a good package compared to other companies, which was beneficial for our organization.

Not sure because the DBA team is taking care of this issue and I am QA.

It has great scalability and overall a user-friendly product.

In regards to the technical support team, sometimes they are busy and sometimes from the company point of view, you need to track someone specific instead of direct support.

We are using so many products.

Some companies have their own payroll systems, whilst some prefer Oracle Payroll Cloud. So, it all depends on their requirement.

Oracle have been spending a lot of time developing the HCM Cloud product, and it's now a full-featured product set as far as I'm concerned. It covers the core lifecycle of an employee, all the way through from hiring somebody, managing their employment during their time with the organization, all the way through to terminations at the end. Absences are managed, time and labor is there to manage people's working time. It's a fairly full-feature function set.

With the product being in the cloud, that means that the users don't have to worry about having servers on premises, they don't have to worry about all the infrastructure, all the upgrades. They have to test upgrades, but Oracle Cloud Services will provide all of those services as part of the subscription to the product. From a technical point of view, it's a really easy thing for an organization to manage. From a functional point of view, it's a really simply solution to use as well. From the current release, which is release 11, Oracle have introduced what's known as the simplified user interface. All of the screens that every type of user is going to use all look the same. They're really simple to use, so it does what it says on the box. Clean screens, not much information on each screen, and really intuitive to use.

I think Oracle HCM is a full-feature product. It's perhaps that some of the parts of the product need expansion. I come from the UK and we deal a lot with people who want a UK-based, legislatively-based payroll service. There are certain very specific things that have to be done that would be different from other countries. Currently, there are still some important gaps in that. Oracle are addressing that and they have a release program, and later this year we expect to see some of that come in. I think I'd like to see Oracle focus on the key components of the system rather than perhaps some of the more fluffy areas that not everyone is going to use.

A lot of people ask about scalability. That's one of the real benefits of Oracle in the cloud. Say you're an organization that's got 5,000 employees and you do an acquisition and you take on another 5,000. Then Oracle scales for you. You just raise a service request and say, "I need my database to be doubled in size." You haven't got to go through all the internal problems you would have if it was on premises. It's a highly scalable product.

When you're in the cloud you have a three-way relationship. Usually between the customer, their implementation partner, and Oracle themselves. Instead of Oracle just being a software vendor, they've now become a service provider. They have to provide the service to make sure it's up 24/7. They also have to provide the support. The support is really good for Oracle. People who use their older legacy system, E-Business Suite, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, they use the same functionality within the system to record service requests so everything's exactly the same as it used to be. It's just it might be a different group of people supporting you. The product's now been out there for three or four years and it's becoming mature enough that there's people within Oracle who know how to support that.

One of the big issues at the moment that I think customers have is that the need to make a decision. If they've got an on-premises system, do they stay with that? Do they upgrade it? Get the next version, or do they move to the cloud? Now that's an individual decision for different companies and everybody will have their own reasons for why they decide to move to the cloud or why they don't. I think some of the benefits of moving to the cloud, that you don't have to manage that infrastructure anymore. Also, I think it's fair to say that Oracle really are developing the cloud. That's where all the innovation is going. Although they do update their legacy systems, we see more and more of the innovation going into the cloud first. I think that will just increase over time.

I think there comes a point when a customer who is thinking about moving to the cloud is going to think, "Well, if I buy an on-premises system and I keep that for the next five or 10 years, is that system going to be a bit of a dinosaur quite quickly?" Whereas cloud, it's in its infancy and I guess it's got a longer shelf life at this point. I think it's a decision that will be made differently by different companies. What we're seeing in the market is that more and more people seem to be moving to the cloud now.

I think when you're choosing a solution for the cloud, you've really got to look at is that vendor growing its application portfolio? Is it developing it? Is it bringing out new features? Is it giving you something that is scalable? If I want to grow my organization, will my application grow with me? I think they're the important things. Secondly, I'd look at support. Does my vendor provide the right level of support for me? If I'm a global organization, does it cover me following the sun around the world 24/7, 365 days a year?

I think when you're implementing in the cloud, it's a slightly different process to implementing on premises. There are still certain things about a project which will always be the same. For example, the customer has to do certain tasks and that will still take them as long as it always took them. The implementation partner will have to do tasks to ensure the customer understands what's going on so all of those things are the same. What you find in the cloud is you're buying a service. That service can be stood up almost immediately, and you're paying for it from day one, so the customer needs to see something, needs to see an ROI very quickly. What we do when we implement is we show them in week one what the system will look like. We put some of their own data into it and we go through quite a rapid implementation process.

If somebody asks me to rate HCM Cloud from 1 to 10, I think at this point I'd give it an 8 out of 10. It's getting there. It's a really good product. My company implements it frequently. We've got a lot of business out of it and it's only getting better all the time. The only reason I wouldn't give it 9 or 10 is that I still think there's more that can be done, but I think it's a brilliant product. One of the important things about implementing the HCM Cloud solution is that you need to have a slightly different mind-set, a different approach to implementing it.

The traditional on-premises implementations often took maybe a year or more, would involve a great team of people who would be camped on the customer's site for the whole period, and it would be expensive. I think with cloud, you've got to think of it different because from day 1 that application will work. You need to configure it, but you can customize it, so you have to really understand the product. That's the key to it. We at Certus really understand the product set and we can get the most out of it for our customers because we know we cannot fall back on the option of customizing it because you just can't do that in the cloud. I think it's a different mind-set, really.

The best feature of the product is the middleware where it allows you to create a project and all the required and the optional tasks come pre-configured. So, you don't have to look for, "What do I need to do?" You can follow a step by step from the bottom up or top down approach. You will know that you have done the tasks that you need to do before the whole configuration or the testing process happens.

I am starting the implementation of benefits today of HCM Cloud. I have done EBS, full scale implementation of eight modules on my own for a smaller organization. Another advanced feature is the user interface, it is so smooth. I always say to people that PeopleSoft, is love at first sight, and Oracle EBS is an arranged marriage, because you will learn to love. Whereas, I think Oracle Cloud is also love at first sight, because it does the screens so smooth, things are very accessible.

I think the customer experience, especially with the process flows at the top, where it takes you through the five steps, it has a nice navigation path at the top. So you know where you are at any point of the configuration.

Oracle should make sure all their partners are well trained, so that they can go to the client site and make themselves truly valuable. Instead of just, "Oh, it works this way," that is not. They need to be trained, and I think Oracle is already going in the direction, I think they are making sure that implementations are done in a certain standard way and so on.

There is always room for improvement, and I met with an Oracle HCM person, and he and I are going to work together. He is going to pick my brain on some future release testing, and my HCM expertise, because I have all the credentials and I have worked with the product for 20 years, and in HR as well.

We've been using it since February, so around three months now, but I am doing a lot of research, a lot of studying and I am working with a client. We have actually already configured the HCM Core and the Talent Management, just the goals and the performance.

It seems like it is stable. Well, it is not EBS because I have been working in EBS for 15 years. This is a new product, I think it has been in the market for a few years I believe, but I am glad that Oracle is going in the right direction of making it more end user friendly, functional friendly and adopting into the new technology. We are not bogged down with DBAs and copies and patches and gruel regression testing. All of those thing we don't need to worry in the cloud is much simpler and much more organized. It makes it easier.

It's been able to scale for our needs.

With regard to EBS payroll, the support is phenomenal. With HCM Cloud, I have only created two or three SRs, and so far, not bad, but I wouldn't go to phenomenal yet. They need to earn my trust and respect. You already have a benchmark with the new organization. If you want to find, Why did I give them exceptional for Oracle payroll? Go find out from them, what they are doing that is so good, because the people who support Oracle EBS payroll, they know what they are doing. They call the client, they don't wait, and they don't say, "Go do this, go do that." A lot of support people think that we have to give more information. Yes, it is true in some cases, because if a weird error happens, which is so peculiar to your that no one has heard of, granted, you need to go dig deeper, but for each and every question, support cannot say, "I have to give like 10 hours worth of information," before they can even figure out what the hell I am asking.

So, that is my feedback to support. You have your own people, go talk to them. Your Oracle Colorado Payroll Support Group. I know all of their names, first name basis.