The New Metalink Fiasco & Lessons for HCM Implementation

I am sure, many of us were a frustrated lot over the weekend when Oracle switched over Metalink over to the new Avatar!
Users experienced numerous problems ranging from unable to log in to finding the SR numbers revamped and some going dizzy when the Flash player hung up at 90% mark. The outage lasted more than a day, for sure and my mailbox was flooded with die-hard fans of the Old Metalink spitting their venom over the new makeover.

Yes, its true, it appears that the folks at Oracle didnt get their act correct - not that they have got it right on all earlier occasions, but something drastic seems to have been missed out when the cutover happened. Did they not anticipate the load? This may probably not be the case because afterall, Oracle wasnt releasing anything spectacular - like a MJ-This is it. There are pretty slim chances that their severs crashed due to an upsurge in hits. It appears that the folks at Redwood Shores' blue towers missed some links in the Performance testing which led the users to vent their venom.

Anyway, that brings up an important parallel. Imagine such a situation when a fragile module like Oracle Self-Service goes live. It is very essential to have a solid back-up plan to handle any eventuality including ability to extend the life-support of the legacy systems, having a trained front-end helpdesk staff to handle questions from the users and guide them in navigation etc.

A poorly planned Helpdesk is bound to create a high degree of frustration for the new users leaving a bad patch that takes a long time to clear up. It is very important to incorporate these factors into the Project plan and prepare for the contingency and mitigation.

Talking about poor support, I remember seeing a mail from a frustrated end-user to his manager "This is the worst application I have every seen. If you have paid 1 cent for this product, let me tell you - you have paid too much" !!

I will leave you to guess what the product / application was.

HRMS and KM

Okay, there is a lot to write about this, but first I have to share my thoughts on Content Management and Social Software. While this concept is not part of any HRMS suite, I see the distinct possibility of a social networking site within the intranets of organizations and the managing/regulating of that may fall into the HR domain. I will be expanding the thoughts on the same in subsequent sessions.

A recent article by Gartner found that the term Knowledge Management (KM) ranked 40th among their search terms. 40 is a very high score considering their tens of thousands of terms. Innovation and KM, sometimes can be seen as two sides of the same coin. Innovation often is based on certain brilliant ideas, like flashbulbs that go on while oberving someone doing or saying something, or observing someone's conversation about something etc. Ideas from here could lead to something new, and an entirely new idea or product or concept may be born.

Technology is only a tool that enables KM and is primarily focussed on capturing knowledge into a "usable" or "explicit" form. As a matter of fact, content management is often touted as KM in most organizations. But there is a vital step that is missing here. How do you enable people to share their knowledge?
As I see it there are two aspects to this issue. The first is, what I term as a 'Soft Issue' is that the workforce should be motivated to come forward and share their knowledge and collaborate with each other. This is actually the most difficult part too, as it involves the organization culture, the organization's policy and processes. It is here that the Human Resources team can play a vital role. They can act as catalysts to create a learning culture and foster a employee-friendly environment. More about that term in a subsequent blog.The Second aspect, is that of the enablement of the employees to collaborate. While it is vital that an environment is created that is conducive for sharing and learning, employees need to have the necessary mechanism or tools to do so. Enter "Collaborative Software" tools that allow people to connect and share their knowledge.

Collaborative tools have, to an extent bridged the gap between Content Management and Colllaboration, but still there are considerable gaps that needs to be filled in. Social Software, is another tool that is being touted as the panacea to fill this gap. Social software like facebook, twitter, blogs are essentially a platform to vent out the thoughts, ideas, express opinions and frustrations. This could be in the form of a text, image (photos), videos (like Youtube) etc. In fact Blogs and Youtube could perhaps be the germinating grounds for the next generation of business enterprises and drive innovation.

However, the one gap that can't be addressed by any software system is that Human emotion and motivation. This gap is perhaps, the most critical, and can only be filled in by the management through a well-thought out policy, HR practice coupled with a reward-for-performance measures.