As Published In May 2007

Doris Wong: PeopleSoft Enterprise

The combination of PeopleSoft and Oracle brought together some of the best technology people in the world, and it transformed Oracle into a software company with more applications and technology customers than any other company in the world. Doris Wong is honest about the challenges she's faced as vice president and general manager of Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise applications. She was also upbeat as she spoke about PeopleSoft Enterprise 9.0. As she noted in her interview with Profit, this release of PeopleSoft Enterprise, called the Extended Value Release, offers customers major upgrades in every single area—from human capital management and enterprise learning management to enterprise performance management, and more.

Currently: Vice president and general manager, Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Applications Prior to Oracle: ASK Computer Systems Education: Bachelor's degree in business administration with an emphasis in business information systems, San Francisco State University

PROFIT: What's been your biggest challenge at Oracle?

WONG: This release has been huge—it's the culmination of a more-than-year-long project to deliver the enhancements our customers are asking for and integrate core components of Oracle Fusion Middleware with PeopleSoft applications. There are three themes around this release—No. 1 is around technology, where we're continuing to extend the value of the release by bringing next-generation technology into the PeopleSoft platform. This means that our customers don't have to go to Oracle Fusion to be able to take advantage of that; we're bringing that technology into our current release and our current platform—for example, we now have a service-oriented architecture and Web services enablement. We also brought in XML reporting. Again, this is our next-generation technology with Oracle Fusion, but we brought that into our PeopleSoft products today.

PROFIT: What's been the reaction from customers?

On Oracle Fusion Doris Wong There are some great things about PeopleSoft that will influence Oracle Fusion. Our human capital management [HCM] suite of applications is the best of breed, the strongest product in the market. The capabilities we have, the breadth, the functionality, the business processes, all of that we can bring to Oracle Fusion and make sure that it offers the best HCM product.

WONG: It's been fantastic. I spoke with one customer who didn't even know that, in release 9.0 and our PeopleTools 8.48, we have the capability to have a service-oriented architecture and deliver out-of-the-box Web services. He said, "Wow, that is really a compelling reason for me to move forward to that release." He needs this architecture in his environment and he can do that on the PeopleSoft products, he doesn't need to move forward to a next-generation product to have that capability.

PROFIT: What's the second theme?

WONG: Best-in-class business processes. For every single one of our product areas, we reviewed the business processes and reviewed feedback from our customers, so we could continue to focus on enriching and enhancing the business processes. For example, in the area of workforce management, or talent management, we've looked at the business process around that entire lifecycle of applications and identified the features and functionality that we can add to continue to enhance and provide a tightly integrated business process for our customers. We did it for workforce management, and we're doing it for our business processes in all areas of PeopleSoft.

PROFIT: And the third theme?

WONG: Superior ownership experience. This is an initiative that started with our PeopleSoft applications two years before the acquisition, where we really were focused around the total ownership experience. It was a program designed around lowering the total cost of ownership and improving our products for our customers. We wanted our customers to be able to upgrade the applications in a seamless, low-cost manner. We supplied them with tools that would allow an easier implementation and architecture that allowed them to easily integrate disparate systems.

PROFIT: How have you used the feedback from customers?

I Love My Job Doris Wong I love the challenge of taking something and making it successful. Whereas before I might have just focused on the product development side, I'm focused on a broader level now, covering all aspects of the business, whether it's working with our salespeople, our customers, our partners—with every part of our ecosystem for PeopleSoft.

WONG: A lot of the product enhancements, especially around superior ownership experience and best-in-class business processes, are customer driven. Release 9.0 is focused on the customer, and whenever I talk about this with customers, they can totally relate to what we're doing because they know what the pain points were in previous products. But knowing that we continue to focus on these issues and work on enhancements—well, they're excited about it. They want to know how they can make us aware of the challenges that they have today. To that end, we've created a PeopleSoft customer advisory board that has allowed us to work more closely with our customers. Our goal is to have our future road maps customer driven.

PROFIT: What's the most common question you're hearing from customers, and how do you answer it?

WONG: The most interesting questions are focused on technology. PeopleSoft supports multiple databases—not only Oracle, but also IBM, Microsoft, Sybase, and Informix. Customers want to know that, as part of Applications Unlimited, we are continuing to support those databases. It's interesting that people think that when we're talking about bringing in new technology to the PeopleSoft platform, that we're really talking about replacing what they have, and we're not doing that. We're providing a choice.