PeopleSoft Investment Update with Paco Aubrejuan - PeopleSoft NOW! Episode 4.1

Season 4 of PeopleSoft NOW! begins with Rebekah Jackson talking to Paco Aubrejuan. This episode was recorded right after Quest’s RECONNECT Live!  conference had wrapped up. The main theme of this episode revolves around customer success. By the end of this episode you should be able to get an understanding of the following:

1. How customers are involved in shaping the product roadmap and design of new features released by PeopleSoft.
2. How the shift from customization to configuration and automation of lifecycle management is helping in the reduction of costs and enabling easier maintenance.
3. Customers find success by moving their PeopleSoft environments to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).
4. Oracle’s continued support for PeopleSoft and its customers.

This is an important episode that you don’t want to miss. You can watch the entire episode by hitting the play button below

The episode starts with Rebekah and Paco talking about the energy and success of RECONNECT Live! conference. This is soon followed by Paco answering the reason behind why customer success was chosen as the theme at the conference for Paco’s session. There is a reference to the US Army where he talks about their huge expansion of PeopleSoft usage while introducing what the “Expansion Innovators” category is all about.

The discussion then switches to the importance of customer involvement in the product roadmap and customer adoption through the implementation of new features. Paco talks about how Idea Labs has helped customers get more involved in roadmap discussions and also the role of Focus Groups in improving designs and increasing the uptake of the new features released.

One of the features touched upon while addressing new feature adoption is Real-Time Indexing and its rapid adoption by customers. Paco encourages customers to explore this feature and ‘Turn it ON’ everywhere for up-to-date indexes. He also addresses the cost of running PeopleSoft and the improvements that can be made by reducing invasive customizations.

While talking about reducing customizations - Paco states that PeopleSoft has made investments in Lifecycle Management, including frameworks like Usage Repository, Test Framework Repository, and Customization Repository, to help customers identify and optimize their customizations. Additionally, the Three-Way Merge capability allows customers to merge changes with deployed capabilities without reapplying customizations. The focus here is on reducing costs and enabling easier maintenance. Paco also mentions the automation of PUM updates, leveraging Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Cloud Manager to eliminate the need for manual image installations. Now, the most efficient way to manage PeopleSoft applications is through PUM Images running on OCI.

In the latter section of this episode, Paco talks about the increasing number of customers moving their PeopleSoft environments to OCI. This is due to the cost advantages and agility offered by OCI being too significant for customers to ignore. He also states that eventually, we expect all customers will transition to cloud applications, as the Software-as-a-Service model offers lower costs and greater innovation.

The episode concludes with Paco reassuring the customers that those who will remain on PeopleSoft or are in the process of migrating to the Cloud will receive continued support from the Oracle PeopleSoft team.

There's a lot more to discuss, show, and demo. The place to learn more about any of these topics and engage with the PeopleSoft product team is at the RECONNECT Dive Deep Conference in October. This is a virtual event and you will get to interact with Paco, Rebekah, the PeopleSoft product strategists and our global product development team.