HCM solution providers talk a lot about listening to customers and delivering a great customer experience. And I must say that most of the providers Brandon Hall Group analysts talk to in our almost daily briefings and demos are truly making strides.
The team at Oracle HCM Cloud provides a great example of how an organization should go about engaging – and learning from – their customers. Oracle HCM Cloud, now in its 12th release, is a strong product that is getting better. I’ll save analysis of the solution itself for another date. After attending the HCM Cloud Analyst Summit this week near San Francisco, I came away impressed about how Oracle HCM Cloud leaders have listened to customers and put their ideas to work to improve the customer experience.
Release 12 of Oracle HCM Cloud features more than 500 new features, 2 new services, 116 country localizations, and enhanced vertical industry support in the public sector, health care, higher education, retail, manufacturing and professional services.
The most impressive statistic, however, is that 80% of the enhancements were driven from customer suggestions.
There is no better way to succeed than to listen to what customers want and need, and then take action.
That customer centricity is driven by Oracle’s rich online customer community, Customer Connect, which received 100,000 interactions per month from 20,000 active community members. More than 7,200 ideas have been generated through Customer Connect to date (that’s all Oracle customers, not just HCM).
Now, obviously, Oracle is a huge provider, but that is a serious commitment to customer input – and to taking that input and actually doing what it takes to turn good ideas into a better reality.
Oracle is focused on customers succeeding after they buy the product. Alan Bouris, Group Vice President, HCM Cloud Development Operations and Customer Success, said customer success is driven by the HCM Cloud Center of Excellence. The CoE captures and promotes leading practices and standards for product implementation and adoption. The CoE has direct involvement in HCM Cloud implementations and deploys Implementation Success Managers and Customer Success Managers to provide active support and advise from the start of implementation through the renewal process. This is in addition to postings on Customer Connect, white papers, tools, podcasts, live presentations and white papers.
I’m not saying the Oracle HCM Cloud customer success process is the best – many providers have dynamic processes. But it is a great example of the type of commitment that leading providers must have – and technology buyers should demand. In the end, it will be customers and providers working together that will enable HCM technologies to reach their potential and give companies the results they require.
–Claude Werder, VP/Research Operations and Principal HCM Analyst, Brandon Hall Group
