July 26, 2017
On July 18-20th 2017, I attended the PeopleSoft Re-Connect conference hosted by Quest international users group in Rosemont Illinois. The conference is a collection of individuals focused on the PeopleSoft community and gave everyone a good picture of the current state of the PeopleSoft market. I have included 3 highlights in this story to help shape my perspective from the event.
Highlight #1- PeopleSoft 9.2
PeopleSoft 9.2 is such a dramatic change from earlier versions it is taking organizations some time to fully adopt the new features. For example, an organization may be using Fluid, but has not started using PTF to automate testing in future PUM releases. As the complete adoption of 9.2 comes into shape and organizations have developed a Selective Adoption strategy for new PUM images released, they will be able to realize more value in the product line.
An observation that can be distinguished regarding PeopleSoft 9.2 is that it gives you the flexibility to choose how you want to apply the technology in your organization. If you want to let it sit there, you can do that. If you want to take on new features there are plenty and you can do that with selective adoption, based on your schedule. If you choose to maximize the value, it does take planning, the right resources, and consistent communication with the business community.
Heartland IT consulting hosted a session, “The PeopleSoft of the Future” and invited existing clients to join us for the interactive session. There were many highlighted parts of the discussion explaining best practices during and after your 9.2 upgrade. A special thanks to Wendy Plante, Paul Minke, and Priyanka Chakraborty for being featured contributors. At the end of the presentation, each contributor shared their version of PeopleSoft 9.2 in a short 140 character tweet like comment. If you were in the room, what would you have shared with the community?
Highlight #2- Oracle’s relationship with PeopleSoft
It depends who you talk with at Oracle and if you are talking to the field sales team, they typically tell you that cloud is the only option and PeopleSoft is dead. In a key note session hosted by Paco Aubrejuan and Marc Weintraub, you could easily tell that the product was alive and well. We just need to understand the change in how the message is communicated.
Oracle has invested a lot into the development of PeopleSoft and making the product a long term solution making it easily consumable for existing customers. Inversely, they have invested nothing into the generation of new customers to implement PeopleSoft. They have invested some into the messaging to existing customers and have left that up mostly to the community. In the past, you would visibly see PeopleSoft, however, the investment into the actual product behind the scenes is significant.
The message is communicated to the marketplace in a different way. Oracle hosted a session dedicated to customer questions, not Oracle marketing. PeopleSoft has now become a customer driven product that’s voice, growth, and enhancements are going to be customer driven and complemented by consulting partners and user groups.
Highlight #3- Quest International User Group
Quest has recognized the shift in Oracle’s communication and has picked up the responsibility here. The event was well planned and contained a lot of content in a short conference that enabled customers to realize the most important data rather than be distracted by mixed messages. They involved Oracle as a part of the conference, not the whole event.
Some of the stats on the event were a slight increase in attendance year over year with 10 additional customer organizations in attendance and over 400 customers. Seeing new faces at a conference like this is valuable as it refreshes the presentations and ideas distributed throughout the event.
We are looking forward to seeing everyone at future conferences like Oracle Open World October 1-5 2017 in San Francisco and Collaborate April 22-26 2018 in Las Vegas. As you are building your schedule of events for PeopleSoft focused conferences in 2018, you should consider PeopleSoft Re Connect at the top of your list!!
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Blog Written by:
Patrick Donlin
Heartland’s CEO and President of Sales
