PwC and Oracle Alliance

Optimizing HCM’s journey to the cloud for improved talent management

  • Blog
  • 5 minute read
  • January 13, 2025

Jeff Greenberg

Principal, PwC US

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Three large companies share successes and lessons learned from their HCM transformations

Regardless of industry, human capital management (HCM), as a business capability, is becoming ever more complex in today’s world. Many companies are feeling the urgency to streamline and automate their HCM systems to manage their increasingly global, diverse workforces. Whether they are just embarking on their HCM cloud journeys, designing for cloud-based HCM, or expanding and optimizing their existing HCM systems, most organizations must eventually grapple with legacy technology, underused HCM technology or lack of visibility across their organization — or all three.

Moving to a cloud-based HCM system, such as Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM), can provide companies with more opportunities to engage their existing and future workforce, increase transparency across the organization and maximize the full potential of their HCM investments.

At Oracle CloudWorld in Las Vegas in September 2024, three leaders of large companies from very different industries and at various stages in their HCM journeys shared what they learned from their experiences and why they chose PwC and Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM to modernize their HCM environments.

Align processes and change management across the entire organization

For one company, bringing HCM processes and operations from across the organization onto a single platform was a priority. One US nonprofit healthcare organization discovered the importance of alignment as it weighed the decision to take a phased or all-at-once (“big bang”) approach to implementing new HCM, supply chain, finance and payroll systems. Since their goal was to gain transparency across the organization, it needed to find a system that could handle 17 different companies (and their associated unions), 186 benefit plans and 900 pay elements.

At first, the organization chose a “big bang” approach. But as it examined its business units with the guidance of PwC, it realized that a phased approach would allow the company to dedicate time to key processes and ensure, most importantly, that staff would receive paychecks on time due to the complexity of the organization. The phased approach allowed the company to develop change management plans and strategies early and test them with a small percentage of the organization. Now, with Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM implemented by PwC, not only does the company have visibility across the organization, but it also has a single platform to manage and develop talent across all 17 of its companies.

Work with an implementation partner that has your back and isn’t afraid to pivot

HCM systems and their associated products are a large investment, so planning is critical. For one of the largest entertainment and gaming companies in the US, its HCM system needed to not only support over 55,000 team members across 50 properties in 30 states, but also handle acquisitions, 130 unions and various state employment rules. The company wanted to maximize its existing HCM investment, which meant adopting the full Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM suite plus Oracle Payroll across each of its business units.

When the company identified requirements for a system integrator, it looked for an implementation partner that could recognize what was unique about the company and customize its approach. PwC stood out because it could understand what would be effective and serve as an extension of the team. That meant the ability to pivot — because it would cost more to deploy a solution that wasn’t fully utilized than to change course and customize to the business’s needs.

As a result, the company is now on one system and fully poised to take advantage of all the opportunities with Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM, including artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. One of its wins is being able to engage the talent within the organization because its HCM system takes care of administrative tasks, helping free its HR professionals to work on more strategic projects.

Choose an implementation partner that is a good fit for your organization

When HCM systems reach the end of their useful lives, companies have a hard decision: keep pouring money into the system and hope it works, or upgrade. One restaurant industry leaders identified that it did not have the systems or processes in place to support the company’s growth and knew it needed an implementation partner for its HCM, enterprise resource planning (ERP) and enterprise process management (EPM) transformation. The company wanted all three systems in one, as well as a system that could keep up with its business, so it chose Oracle’s suite of products.

The company found PwC’s willingness to be a trusted advisor, its Oracle expertise, and its ability to listen to be a compelling combination. PwC became their implementation partner not only because of the organizational fit, but also due to PwC’s unique model system that brings the implementation to life and visualizing real-life scenarios. For the company, that resonated as a user-friendly way for the team to see how decisions would impact the business during the design phase — before more costly implementation.

Nimble, flexible HCM regardless of industry

The differences between these three companies are many, but their HCM goals have more in common than not. Thanks to the sophistication of Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM, industry-leading knowledge and Oracle product guidance from PwC, all three are well along in optimizing their HCM journeys to the cloud. Working with these two powerful partners empowers companies to choose a path forward based on their needs, with true understanding of the impacts and benefits of their choices. Working with PwC enables companies to receive direct and attributable value for their Oracle Cloud investments; in fact, PwC has been recognized by Oracle as the Worldwide Customer Success Partner of the Year for the last two years in a row.

Contact us to learn more about how PwC can help you get the most from your HCM investment.

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