Oracle taps generative AI to streamline HR workflows

Oracle Corp. today announced new generative AI features for its Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM) offering, making it easier for enterprises to automate time-consuming HR workflows and drive productivity.

Underpinned by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), the new AI capabilities will help with tasks like writing job descriptions for a new role or quickly drafting an employee survey. These capabilities form part of a broader AI shift happening at Oracle and are expected to expand in the coming months.

However, Oracle isn’t the only one moving the needle to improve HR workflows with gen AI. Last month, enterprise resource planning (ERP) leader SAP also announced similar capabilities through a partnership with Microsoft.

How is Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM getting better?

Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM is an end-to-end cloud solution that enables HR teams to manage every stage of the employee lifecycle, from attracting, screening and hiring talent to onboarding, managing payroll and helping with skill development.

Now, taking the platform to the next level, Oracle is adding three generative capabilities into the loop: assisted authoring, suggestions and summarization.

With assisted authoring, as the name suggests, users will be able to leverage built-in prompts to generate content and focus on higher-value tasks. For instance, it could be used to write job descriptions, create automated goals covering detailed descriptions and measures for success and generate HR helpdesk articles to help employees.

Accelerating day-to-day tasks

The suggestions feature also revolves around content but works automatically, providing teams with useful recommendations to accelerate their day-to-day tasks. For example, it could recommend questions for a survey being designed or give advanced career development tips to help managers better groom their workforce.

Similarly, summarization helps teams by providing a quick summary of content such as an employee’s performance overview, considering their managers’ feedback, goal progress and achievements.

“With the ability to summarize, author and recommend content, generative AI helps to reduce friction as employees complete important HR functions,” said Chris Leone, EVP of applications development for Oracle Cloud HCM.

Leone noted that the company has already identified more than 100 high-value scenarios for generative AI in HR and is just getting started. 

“With the help of customers, who drive approximately 80% of updates to our products, we are continually embedding new use cases that enable organizations to embrace continuous innovation and perpetually improve HR processes and productivity,” he added.

Using proprietary data

Depending on the use case planned, enterprises can use their proprietary data to refine these generative AI capabilities and make them more suited for specific business needs. This kind of control will not only improve accuracy but also help keep sensitive and proprietary information safe.

“Oracle is quickly adding AI capabilities to its business applications, and HCM is a frontrunner with generative AI being able to achieve unprecedented efficiencies for managers, employees, and HR professionals,” said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and VP at Constellation Research.

“Oracle has an edge over its HCM competitors thanks to OCI’s superiority running generative AI workloads in the cloud,” Mueller added. “With apps and infrastructure engineered together, Oracle can deliver cheaper, faster, and more integrated processes that create competitive advantage for enterprises.” 

Notably, the generative AI update for Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM comes just a couple of weeks after the company revealed that it was developing a new cloud service with Toronto-based Cohere to make it easy for enterprises to train their own customized LLMs. The news was shared by Oracle’s founder and CTO Larry Ellison during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.