Six years after one of Oracle’s biggest acquisitions, users of PeopleSoft Human Capital Management software continue to receive updates to their core HR package, as they did again late last week with the release of a new feature pack for Oracle PeopleSoft HCM 9.1.
Under its “Applications Unlimited” program, enterprise software purveyor Oracle has vowed to support a raft of applications it has acquired during a multi-billion-dollar spending spree that dates back to the middle of the last decade. Early in 2005, Oracle closed its vigorously contested, $10 billion takeover of leading human capital management software vendor PeopleSoft, a move that cemented the HCM component of Oracle’s E-Business Suite. Later that year, Oracle went on to swallow Siebel Systems, which substantiated the ERP vendor’s CRM credentials.
Late last week, Oracle released Feature Pack 2 for the 9.1 version of PeopleSoft Human Capital Management, an update that Oracle said delivers a “consumer-like self-service” experience to HR personnel and business users. Embracing the “consumerization of IT”—the trend of imbuing enterprise software with the fluid user experience found on smartphones and tablets—Oracle has added a search-based navigation function that allows users to perform quick lookups from any page to receive contextual results. A department manager might type a worker’s name into the search function, Oracle said in a statement, to pull up documents on that employee’s performance, salary, career planning, and related activities.
[Check out the HCM Software Buyer’s Guide for more information on human capital management software.]