As Published In May 2007

Lenley Hensarling: JD Edwards EnterpriseOne

It's been a busy three years for employees and customers of JD Edwards: first came its merger with PeopleSoft, and then, shortly after that, with the coming together of PeopleSoft and Oracle, JD Edwards joined the Oracle family of applications product lines. But JD Edwards EnterpriseOne General Manager and Vice President Lenley Hensarling is energized by change. With the latest release of his product line, Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12, Hensarling notes that continuous innovation has been the defining characteristic for the product suite over the past decade, and the latest release continues this trend with innovations across most modules for every industry. But more than just specific functionality, Hensarling really came to talk about the path the companies have taken to get to this point, and how customers have reacted—and benefited—from the changes that have taken place.

Currently: Vice president and general manager, Oracle's JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Prior to Oracle: Senior vice president of marketing for Enterworks; vice president of engineering for the NetWare group at Novell Education: Bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Texas at Austin

PROFIT: Can you tell us about the thinking behind the merger with PeopleSoft?

HENSARLING: Before the merger, we looked at what was happening in the marketplace and what would be in the best interest of both our shareholders and our customers, and we decided that being a first mover in the consolidation of the enterprise software industry was the way to go. [Oracle CEO] Larry Ellison and [Oracle President] Charles Phillips were set on this course as well, seeing the value in aggregating the enterprise software market. The aim for us was to achieve critical mass by merging with a larger company such as PeopleSoft—so we did that. But the criteria for critical mass was scaling up at the same time. Oracle started pursuing PeopleSoft to the same end, and now with the combination of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, and others, Oracle really represents that critical mass we felt was necessary in order to provide value on an ongoing basis to our customers and shareholders.

PROFIT: How has the reaction been from JD Edwards customers and employees during this time of change?

HENSARLING: What's been interesting for customers and employees is the increased opportunity at each of these points of acquisition or merger. If you look at the R&D spend and the resources that Oracle brings to enterprise software, this is something that all of the JD Edwards installed bases benefit from. And it's been good for employees, particularly on the development side, because we now have direct access to all of the Oracle technology—database technology and Oracle Fusion Middleware.

PROFIT: What's really turned the corner for customers as far as moving ahead with their technology decisions?

HENSARLING: One customer of ours used both JD Edwards and Oracle and they were thinking about automating another part of their business. They wanted to go with JD Edwards but they weren't sure we were going to continue to make investments there and they weren't sure about the Oracle Fusion future. But we talked with them and one of the things that really drove them to decide to make the investment on the next big area of their company and roll out JD Edwards (which they're in the process of doing) was the fact that we had bought G-Log. This gave them a solution to something that was staring them in the face in terms of increased transportation costs due to energy prices fluctuating, primarily upward, and they saw a lot of value in the overall strategy that Oracle has. The Oracle strategy is a combination of organic growth through our R&D investment, combined with an approach of looking out into the market, seeing where innovation is happening, doing acquisitions, and providing integrations to the existing product lines, as well as clearly defining a next-generation future where that functionality will all be under one architecture with Oracle Fusion. And when customers really started to understand that, they became very positive about Oracle and about how they could move forward.

PROFIT: How is Oracle investing in this product line?

I Love My Job Lenley Hensarling We're privileged to get to see inside so many companies and see how so many things work. My joke with my wife is that when we drive down the road, when we go to the grocery store, I always say, "That's my customer and that's my customer." We get to know how all of it works. When we see tomatoes in a grocery store, we know the concerns of the farmers and how they make their businesses profitable, we understand how the tomatoes get there and who's involved, and we understand the needs and the problems and the opportunities that the grocery store owner faces.

HENSARLING: There are two real vectors of change in the way we're making these investments. One is focused around the architecture and technology, and Oracle Fusion addresses that; so there's a next generation of enterprise software that Oracle is working on based upon a service-oriented architecture that is allowing us to build new product capabilities.

The other vector is what I call business process innovation, or evolution. That's something that goes on continuously and it's really driven by changes in business practice. It's innovation by our customers and by leaders in the industry. Our customers have to adapt and take advantage of those changes and we're putting those things into all the different product lines based upon where the vertical strength is for each product line. If you look at JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.12, we made a big investment around the agricultural and business aspects of food and beverage production. We had a lot of customers in that space, and we saw that they did not have a strong integrated solution for some of the business processes that were key to their business. They were using old homebuilt legacy systems to support areas such as crop production management. We saw an unmet need in this market, and working closely with customers, we put together an integrated and comprehensive solution for grower management, contracts around purchasing of crops, and wine production.

PROFIT: As you've talked to customers about the upcoming release, what's the most common question you hear and how are you responding to it?

HENSARLING: What's interesting is that we did a survey and found that less than 50 percent of our installed base knows what Applications Unlimited is. We're hearing a lot of questions about that. The ones who have heard about it are very happy about it, but the ones who haven't remain unsettled and doubtful, so we're making a concerted effort to get that message out and to tell them what we have delivered. So we'll talk about the releases we've done since the Oracle acquisition, which are very visible investments, and talk about the investments we're currently making and the next releases that are in process so that our customers can really see the value we continue to add to each of the product lines. We'll also talk about how the acquisitions that are being made, like the purchase of Demantra for demand management, demand planning, and trade promotions, and G-Log for transportation management, are not just for Oracle Fusion and not just for Oracle E-Business Suite, but rather bring value to all the different product lines and customers.