Mind The Gap - Marketing to Adoption - It's Fun

I'm getting ready for Oracle Open World, what do I need to do? What do I need to Learn? Where do I need to be? Who do I need to see?

Every day, every hour my mailbox has another invite or marketing email, and the diary is getting busier and busier. 

I love OOW, it is about Oracle showing their roadmap, and marketing their current portfolio. As a partner I want to be part of that current portfolio message, and am pleased that this year I will be part of the DHL story; but just as important is understanding the roadmap.

My role as Alliance Director means I need to understand all new initiatives in Oracle and determine if they will have a use in what we do at Certus. Then I need to keep an eye on them from the first marketing, until the time they are adopted by customers and make sure we partner, learn and invest at the right time. The problem is, we never know how long that gap will be.

As a user group leader it is even more difficult, we can't deliver content in everything Oracle are talking about but we do need to keep people informed, and then understand the adoption pattern as it emerges.

Think about existing, mature products, like the database or E Business Suite. Development talk about the innovation they will bring to the next release for about a year before the release notes start to appear, and then after release, we see early adopters and many theoretical sessions before adoption starts to become mainstream. It can take several years between release and half the customer base adopting.

For my world, the SaaS, the Fusion applications took almost 7 years from Idea to Release, and several years before there was more than just a handful of users, but roll forward 5 years and we have many, many customers and a significant number who have renewed their 3 year subscriptions. The Gap from marketing to adoption was wide, but it has been a great journey and I personally have loved it. AM loving it, the favourite part of my job is talking to customers, understanding where they are now and then helping them create their strategy to move to where they need to be. Then I love to share that collective insight with user group members.

A more recent example of this is #PaaS4SaaS. I have been talking about this since Oracle first started their journey about 4 years ago. At Certus we stated early on how important this would be for SaaS customers. We got educated, we selected our partner eProseed, we worked with development and UX and OPN. Adoption has been slow, for new products, rather than just the next release of technology, part of this 'gap' is recognising use cases., but they are here now and we have several projects in progress. I am particularly enjoying the Low Code part of #PaaS4SaaS.

So what will be the new messages at this OOW, and which gap will I be minding next? ...............

The Black Art of Marketing

I am a director of UKOUG and when I first joined the board I took a real interest in how the board actually worked. In UKOUG we do not outsource our services they are provided by our own staff, in our own building. This autonomy is much desired and envied by other groups but has its own challenges. As a director I am responsible for the future success of the company and the legal requirements such as trading, accounts, staff health and safety. I took a diploma with the Institute of Directors and was very proud when after much late night studying and writing my professional evidence portfolio and facing a panel of peers I was awarded Chartered Director in 2006.

One of the subjects I enjoyed most was marketing and especially the subtle marketing such as viral marketing. I have written before about how the ACE Program taps into the powerful messaging someone outside Oracle has. The fact that I talk about Oracle with passion and yet an equal amount of cynicism is recognised by Oracle as being very effective (even if they don’t say so out loud). The ACE Program is an example to all organisations. One place I could never work is Oracle itself, and they probably would not want me anyway.

So this week I found myself at my local IOD annual dinner. The chairman of the IOD in Northern Ireland is Joanne Stuart who coincidentally used to work for Oracle and I have known her for many years. This year as an after dinner speaker Joanne had invited BJ Cunningham. I didn’t know how global a brand he is and to be honest I had never heard of him before. I can’t say I hadn’t seen him before as we checked into the hotel at the same time and he was quite a character, wearing his tuxedo under an olive long length parker, I was tempted to ask if he had left his moped outside.


BJ is an entrepreneur who pushes everything to the limit. He believes in doing the unexpected and has not always been successful but he loves what he does and has a fantastic story to tell. His main claim to fame was the ‘Death Cigarette’ now I am not condoning smoking but you have to admire his thinking. He says look at the problem to find the answer. Everyone knows that smoking is not good for you, yet tobacco companies try everything to make you buy their products, governments do the ‘right thing’ but banning advertising and printing health warnings but they don’t want tobacco to go away they make an awful lot of money from the taxes. So BJ created the ‘Death Cigarette’ put a skull and crossbones logo on them and in a two fingered salute to the tax man found a legal loophole. He had seen people evade prosecution for non payment of VAT on cigarettes and alcohol brought from Europe by declaring them for personal use. He also knew that the legal definition of an agent acting on someone’s behalf meant that they were an extension of the person they acted for. So he set himself up as a cigarette agent! Eventually the tax man caught up with him and he ended up in court where the judge said and I can’t do the wonderful French accent BJ used but imagine it “In law you are correct, but the law was never meant to allow you to do this, so you are wrong and therefore guilty”, hard to argue with.

This is very funny but the point the was trying to make is around the brand and loving what you do. He said a brand is a promise and not a logo. I totally agree and have written about the Saatchi and Saatchi Lovemarks concept, which I talked to BJ about later, he was impressed I knew about it. Regardless of the product his business case stacked up and he was able to borrow money. In his talk he also had a humorous look at business cases and their later success. I have to say at this point I wondered exactly what he was smoking as to an audience of 400 people in Belfast, In the Europa which has the dubious honour of being the most bombed hotel in Europe, he decided to use religion as his case study. The business case of a virgin birth and the ultimate sacrifice may not sound a good investment but whatever you believe it is successful, with a great logo and phenomenal following. You could have heard a pin drop until he finished, I think he may have been the only person to survive religious humour in the history of N Ireland. But he was not making a joke at anyone's expense, he wanted people to think about the concept of the brand.

He went on to say to be successful in your business you must love yourself, your product and your customer, success is not just about the money. I so agree, I am not the best paid but I feel I am successful and it made me think of a recent blog posting in the same vein from Cary Millsap

It was a fantastic and thought provoking look at business, and later I spoke with BJ and I asked him about how he markets himself. He doesn’t yet really but is thinking about it and I know he will be successful. I suggested he do more short videos and put them on youtube. His story is funny and yet has a great message. Video is the new pod cast, blog etc, you only have to look at the Miracle Channel to see how powerful it can be.

In a way I am in marketing, I am selling the brand of UKOUG here in this blog, the promise that ‘We serve the Oracle Community’ and less obviously the brand of my day job where the attributes I display are in tune with their philosophy. And yes I love what I do.

BJ I apologise for any inaccuracies in my memory.

Listening to User Groups

One of the values of belonging to a user group is being part of a voice that is listened to. This is not just an empty boast, Oracle do listen to UKOUG, we share our survey data with them and we agree action plans where necessary.


I am very proud of how UKOUG have been central to what user groups have done with Oracle around Fusion Applications and they have listened to us. Right back in the early days we were asked to talk to marketing about the messages we were hearing, and a few weeks ago I was asked to speak again to marketing as they start their first campaigns to sell Fusion Applications this was a great honour for me personally but it also cements the value of the user group.

As a direct result we are working together with marketing, and our Fusion Days early in September were because we worked with each other. They asked me to speak on Andrew Sutherland technology panel.

We worked with marketing to time our Fusion Day, which totally filled up in hours, so we worked again with the presenters in Oracle Development all flying into the UK, and they agreed to do another day. That was full as well. The feedback I got on the day was great, bringing demos to our members. Look out for a article from Colin Terry, who hosted the first day in his new role as UKOUG Council member.

We are working with Oracle on an applications day they will have later this year where again I will be part of the panel, and then we have UKOUG conference where you will get more Fusion content.

I talk a lot about Fusion technology and applications, but others in UKOUG are working just as hard on other areas. This is part of the value we bring to you.

The Applications Previously Known as Fusion

When Oracle first mentioned Fusion I thought it was just going to be a project name, called something different on release. Oracle announced that they were going to take the best of the functionality from each of the applications they owned, their own original E business suite, PeopleSoft, J.D. Edwards, and Siebel and the 'fusion', built using modern technology and open standards, the next generation suite of applications.

 

The name stuck, the marketing started but a term appeared was coined - 'Fusion, Confusion', which  really annoyed me because the Fusion applications story I thought was quite straightforward.

What did confuse people at this stage was the technology I was always being asked if it was going to have Oracle forms and reports I thought they were quite clear that this would be a new technology stack on their award-winning database. In my role leading the Product Development Committee I presented to the Apps marketing team at Oracle in 2006 about how users worldwide understood the Fusion project. On e of the points we made was more than half of those surveyed were:

Unaware of middleware’s importance to applications

 

Not long after that (and we don't take all the credit) Oracle introduced Fusion into the Middleware stack name, calling it Oracle Fusion Middleware. I guess this made it clear there was a link between Fusion Applications and the Middleware but I’m not sure it clarified it very well.

 

When Fusion Applications were released late 2010 and people started looking at what was needed they were all too well aware of the technology stack. It is a very complicated with lots of components and requiring an enormous amount of hardware, it was almost a step too far for most organisations. The availability of Fusion in the Cloud has changed this, and most are happy that when deployed in the cloud they don’t have to concern themselves with the middleware.

 

Cloud deployment is definitely the way forward and last year Oracle decided that all applications that could be deployed in the cloud be given the name of Cloud Applications. Those applications I would have called traditional are now known as On-Premise Applications. Cloud applications includes not only Fusion but also some cloud acquisitions such as Taleo. Over a year ago I sat through a partner webcast that went through this, Start by deployment option, Product Family, Product Name, and was truly confused. This year Oracle marketing wanted us to stop using Fusion in our UKOUG marketing and when we held our Apps Transformation event most of the post event feedback from people who didn't attend was 'I didn't realise this was about Fusion'. At Collaborate the organisers stuck to Fusion as a theme for this reason.

So for a while the term has been interchangeable but not now at Oracle Open World I didn’t hear one Oracle person say Fusion in relation to applications. * a comment to this blog show some sessions did have Fusion in the title, which I guess agrees with my point until people understand the name change we have to keep saying Fusion so they know what we mean.

Interestingly if you google Fusion Applications today (19 Oct 2014, as this will change) you can find pages on Fusion Applications but if you navigate you find Cloud Applications   

Technically I believe it is still Fusion on the price list but that will change too. So whilst I will try to use the right name I am sure we will all know what I mean if I forget and say Fusion!

Oracle Modern Business Experience

I spend a lot of time at conferences and expected to enjoy the Oracle Modern Business Experience last week, I didn't expect to be simply blown away.

The targeted marketing obviously worked they say there was over 6,000 registrations, however I still had an advert for it on my Facebook today 3 days after the event.

As you know my area is the Cloud Applications (formerly known as Fusion) and probably 75% of this event showcased customers who have made the move. It is amazing that to think there are so many users today, just a few years ago it was a struggle to get a reference customer and when one did speak you saw them rolled out at every event. Today there is a abundance.

As ever I was like a mother hen, proud of my several Certus customers who gave presentations about their projects and took part in customer panel sessions.

I was privileged to attend the Oracle Women's Leadership event on the first afternoon and the speakers were so inspirational. 

The first session was a panel session 'Grab the Power to make the Change': 

Safra Catz talked about being a tiny women in Wall Street and not being taken seriously, so instead of fighting it she went after customers from the emerging tech industry, and then eventually moved to Oracle.

Joanna Fielding from HSBC and Kimberly Ellison-Taylor talked about how they had sponsors who held them be recognised for their talents. Later I spoke to Kimberly for quite a while on the value of the afternoon to men, however would women have been as candid if they had been there? Perhaps they should have a video link :)

Emma Codd from Deloitte talked about Respect and Inclusion and the work she has done in her organisation, the video she had made for their program is brilliant.

Then there was another panel on "marketing to Millennials' with Amanda Jobbins VP of EMEA Marketing at Oracle, Catherine Walker from Vodafone and Maria Topornicka from Middlesex University and Alex Broadley from Hang Technologies, who inspired us that at only 22 she was doing so much.

There was a lot of thought leadership sessions that were not Oracle specific and I enjoyed several of those but, and if you follow me on twitter you already know, my favourite session of the two days was Dr Brian Cox. It was amazing how much he packed into a standard presentation.

I heard many people say that this event was better than Oracle Open World for Cloud Applications and that shows it was a game changer. They will be posting some content here

And remember if you are interested in what it takes to move to the Cloud Applications, UKOUG have just the content you need 

DOAG 2016

I sat down this evening to write about UKOUG and realised I hadn't blogged about DOAG 2016.

As I say every year I have venue envy at DOAG, but that aside I enjoy the event.

The day before the conference there was an EMEA User Group Presidents meeting and I represented UKOUG. This is the 3rd year this has happened. It is good to just discus what different groups are doing and how they work with each other to capitalise on each other's conferences instead of clashing. We also talked about how to User Groups cater for Cloud? This is a difficult one, user groups are about what their members are doing now, and keeping them educated with what Oracle are doing. We have to be able to predict what that means, how much existing and how much futures to include. But more about this on my UKOUG posting.

The actual conference runs Tuesday to Thursday but with being there Monday as well I needed to get back to the UK, so asked DOAG if I could have all my sessions on the Tuesday. Thankfully they said yes.

I had three talks, An update on PaaS4SaaS, my 'What does Digital Disruption mean to the Oracle Ecosystem' and "UX tales from real implementations'. I had good audiences and great questions. All developers should strive for good User Experience and they can all learn from the research Oracle has done for own development.

Oracle marketing held a number of closed sessions to hear from users on their thoughts about Cloud, and this included a session for the EMEA Presidents. The main outcome was the sense that Oracle are simply marketing at everyone, and talking about nothing else.

In fact I even felt my hotel was in on the Oracle Marketing.

The travel was fine although I did have to spend a night at Stanstead airport as there were no easy travel options, but it all went smoothly. I stayed in a lovely small hotel, although I am not too shore about some of the other 'establishments' on the same street!

So a short trip, no time for the markets or shopping, but two great evenings, Thanks TO OTN for the ACE dinner and DOAG for the overseas speakers' dinner. A really good user group meeting and a fantastic day of sessions.

Hope to be back next year.

Planning the IOUC Meeting

I said last week how I was getting ready for the IOUC meeting. Well yesterday was the travel, and in an attempt to save money I have flown BHD – LHR – Chicago – SFO, quite direct but over 24 hours door to door, still a good opportunity to catch up on email and finish my slides for RMOUG, edit an Oracle Scene article and clear my to do list (almost).

I was actually typing this above the Rockies on the final, bumpy leg of the journey. I arrived about midnight and was hoping a few friends would still be at the bar so I could have a nice whiskey (Irish spelling) before collapsing into bed.

Today I had meetings all day, first with the FMW team to have the VM images of apps on my ACE FMW kit updated, then a meeting with the new Oracle Marketing executive for Fujitsu, this is an important time for my organisation as we manufacture Sparc and X86 for Sun. Then I met with Applications Marketing to understand their current and planned campaigns.

Tuesday I am meeting with the person behind Fusion Functional Setup Manager, I was privileged to see this before Christmas and have promised a blog entry but need to check out a few things.

I also am meeting a friend from the Fusion GL team, I would like to say it is because of some dark secret, and in a way it is, I have said before most of the brains behind Fusion are British and this is another x-pat who asked me to bring out squeezy marmite.

Then it is lunch with the user experience team and then an afternoon in the labs. The evening is an EOUC dinner, where X user group leaders have managed to make the journey out to HQ

Wed is the big Sun event, being broadcast live from HQ and I am privileged that user group leaders are being rewarded with VIP invites. Then it is straight into the User Group Presidents meetings. The evening kicks of with a reception.

Thursday starts with my committees first meeting at 7.30, then we have a full program of executive briefings and the same on Friday, problem is there are 4 streams and between Ronan, James and I we need to try and cover it all. Another reception Thursday gives us another chance to network with other user group leaders.

Friday I again have a 7.30 committee meeting and a lunchtime one to plan our next project and the main meetings finish about 2.

I will stay on and have a few more meetings , I have tried to fly out the same day before but my brain is just buzzing and the journey is simply too much. I will quietly start all the actions I have taken, write up notes, email people, update this blog and attempt to clear up the ‘day job’ which hopefully I have kept on top off as the week has gone on.

Then Saturday a quick chance to shop, quiet lunch and the long journey home starts. I will be in my house about 6pm Sunday, and hopefully ready to start bright and early Monday morning. Lucky I don’t suffer from jetlag, I am back n the US, Denver in just 2 weeks for RMOUG.

Marketing

BMI Inflight Magazine

I often finish a tweet with the tag '#Ilovemyjob' or say so in a blog, I am extremely proud of what I do in Fujitsu and the company itself. I may be old fashioned but I have been with the same employer for 23years.

Heathrow Airport Ireland Jetty

Fujitsu though didn't used to have much open marketing in the high street and even in parts of the IT world, and often I felt we were missing out. It has changed over the past few years and now I see it all around me, and I like it

Copenhagen Airport

These pictures are some of the ones I have spotted in my travels, which centre around airports, clever placement.

Helsinki security tray

I am very proud of a few things, UKOUG, my committee at the IOUC and my being an ACE director, whenever I see something from them I feel good, and that is how I feel about these adverts.

PaaS4SaaS have we got past the marketing?

At the end of 2014 at OOW one of the big announcements was PaaS4SaaS. I spent a couple of months working out what that really meant and how we at Certus could use it to add value to our Cloud customers.

Like with all new ideas, much of the first phase is about the marketing and explaining the context which is what I wrote about in my post in the run up to OOW.

So I have spent most of 2015 talking about what this really means to SaaS customers in the ERP and HCM world, and the message must be getting through.

The Certus team including me have several opportunities at the moment and we are working through the solutions with our partners eProseed and Oracle, to see what we can deliver. These are big opportunities which will take a while to agree, build and deploy and are part of much bigger solutions, but this is really exciting.

Remember our strategy is to extend with the same UX as in SaaS, not a quick extension that looks like a bolt on.

And just to prove we have the right strategy, Profit Magazine have just announced their most read articles for 2015, and I have two articles on PaaS4SaaS at 3 and 4 in the list.

Looking forward to what that means in 2016, and already got a few presentations lined up, and you can always read my white paper.

Passing on the Baton, Still Supporting the Team

As you will have seen in today's UKOUG eBulletin my participation on the board has come to an end. The time has come to hand over the baton to Neil Chandler and leave the organisation in the very capable hands of our current board.

It is a little bit sad. I know it right to go but I also feel there were things I had not finished however the board are perfectly capable of taking over.

As I start the hand over I had the chance to reflect on what I have achieved in all my time on the board, both this period and the earlier period which ended with me being chairman and then president:

• I have championed regional events which lead to both Ireland and Scotland. 

• I have worked hard to welcome our 'acquired' communities of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Hyperion, Siebel etc into the wider user group world.

• I'm most proud of what I have achieved not just with UKOUG but with user groups worldwide over the input to Fusion Applications.

• In 2008, I was awarded the Oracle Magazine, User Group Evangelist of the Year for that work on Fusion.

• Bringing the User Experience team and their labs to UKOUG

• I've bought Women in Technology and Next Generation initiatives which although we are always looking for better ways to make a difference are at least on the agenda.

• On a personal note, UKOUG gave me, as it has many other members of the Oracle ACE program, an opportunity and stage, to learn my craft as a presenter and the opportunities to share my Oracle knowledge. I will certainly continue to do so.

• I also grew my career through UKOUG, many years ago when first joining the board I undertook Director training from the Institute of Directors, jointly funded by UKOUG (in the main via a grant) and my then employer Fujitsu. Through that and many, many hours of hard work I gained my Charted IT Professional, Chartered Engineer (Software) and Chartered Director. 

But it hasn't all been easy, user groups have many challenges, I have seen Oracle change beyond recognition, both through acquisition and their move to Cloud. The global crash put great pressure on training of all kind and usergroup events struggled with both attendees and exhibitors. Digital disruption has also bought social marketing which now competes with in person marketing. Oracle are a big competitor too, not a month goes by that they don't have an event or meetup. More personal to UKOUG, we have had a succession of interim leaders since James Haslam left and now with James Jeynes having moved on there is again lots to think about. I still believe user groups have a big role to play, our independence from and our ability to influence Oracle are a big benefit to our members and the meeting of like minds to learn from each other should never be underestimated.

Paul Fitton our President has talked about the current Project Reach which looks to address the current challenges and I know that those involved will all work to overcome them with exciting new ways of working. My most recent job at UKOUG was to revise and re-issue our Mission and Values.

I want to thank all those who I have served on the board with, Ronan Miles for his mentorship, Burt Spence for his original encouragement and more recently Fiona Martin. I also want to thank the staff led by Karen McCormack. It hasn't always been easy but we have always delivered.

Most of all I hope I have encouraged others and that I don't need to be on the board to do.
I'm not leaving UKOUG, I am still leading the Applications conference this year, and hope to volunteer in a number of other areas so you haven't heard the last of me.

EMEA User Groups in Brussels

The EMEA Oracle Usergroup Community or EOUC meets twice a year. It consists of all the presidents of user groups in that region. I am not officially a member as I am not the UKOUG President, but I do have a role as leader of the Product Development Committee.

We have been to Brussels before, it is centrally located and has good air conncetions, but normally we are in a hotel rght by the airport, this is very convenient but this time we were in the city centre and it gave me a chance to catch the Open Top bus and do a quick tour of the city I have visited before and seen nothing off.

I wanted to be there to talk about how usergroups were included and thanked in the Fusion Apps launch, and how Applications Marketing want to work with usergroups as they do their rollout sometime next year. I think this is so important, long after the marketing machine leaves town, customers will be asking their user group leaders questions.

The latest meeting took place in Brussels on the 12 & 13 October, but this meeting was very different as we were joined by some of the Java Community Leaders. I am not sure what they thought about us ahead of the meeting but we certainly learnt from each other and by the end we realised that apart from our ‘dress’ we were closer than we thought. I should explain they thought we were more formerly arranged than they are which shows in their less formal attire. They had much to teach us, especially around their use of technology for digital content, which they were readily happy to share with us.

It really doesn’t matter how individual groups are arranged or what their leaders wear, the beauty of all user communities that are truly independent is that their steer is from their members not from any vendor or umbrella organisation.

This brings me back to Oracle the Vendor. They created the regional communities and the top level IOUC when the number of user groups meant they could no longer deal with all separately. I think that was a very important move and it has on the whole been very successful. There was perhaps too much bureaucracy to start with, having boards in each community but they have now gone. However the regional groups outside the US have a very important role to play. Yes all user group leaders are included and invited to the main IOUC Presidents Summit in January but it is not practical for everyone in the regions to attend. San Francisco is not a cheap option for a small usergroup struggling to keep afloat in these economic times or where the cost of living means their entire budget would go on one trip. For the past few years there have been elected ‘spokespersons’ in EMEA who have represented and feedback to their colleagues in EOUC. Their expenses were funded by Oracle but are no longer, I think is a big shame and I don’t really understand why although as I said at the start I am not a member and am not privy to all conversations. However the Presidents want a spokesperson and at this EOUC meeting agreed that they would fund the costs between themselves, such was their commitment. The term spokesperson has been replaced by Ambassador which I think is more fitting and I am delighted that Heli Helskyaho (Finland) and Janni Ekelson (Benelux) have agreed to represent till the next EOUC meeting.

 

I think I have said it before but UKOUG and the DOAG (Germany) are the biggest two user groups in EMEA and whilst we support all our EOUC colleagues we would not be the right people to represent the smaller groups. This must come from within them.

Thank you Jackie and Marcia for arranging the meeting and for my invitation; Mary Lou for flying over to keep us in check and to Lenz Grimmer, Oracle MySQL Community Relations Specialist EMEA for the great photos.

Benelux User Group OBUG - Experience 2015 - 24th March

Experience 2015, was held at Evoluon which used to be a science museum owned by Phillips Electrical which practically owned Eindhoven, the town were it is located. The centre is no longer a museum but a great conference venue.

The exhibition was fantastic, Oracle were out in force and and Jeremy Ashley had bought over 6 people from the UX team, including Vlad Babu (@vladbabu), who had been drafted in for Budapest. All the major partners from the Benelux region were also in attendance and the Customer Experience team had their journey mapping workshops available. We had these at UKOUG in December and they are a fantastic way to understand where you need to concentrate / enhance your solutions. What I don’t understand is why are they being limited to the CX product family, I can see value in what they do for HCM and ERP, less so I agree but still valuable.

My first session was my now properly prepared ‘Are Cloud Applications Ready?’ and it was a lunchtime session so I expected a small audience but actually I was happy with the number, and later I did ‘PaaS4SaaS’ and had an equally good number.

The keynote at the start of the day was Jeremy Ashley (VP) and Andrew Sutherland (SVP) who had never worked together before but it just flowed. They had made a videobefore and another compelation after which just shows how much value they bought to the audience. At the end of the day the final keynote was Matthew Banks from the CX team, and my, did he command the stage and make everyone sit up and listen. I need to get him to UKOUG.

The delegate numbers could have been higher and I know from personal experience how disappointing that can be, you put so much passion and personal effort into an event, you get the venue, the exhibition and the sessions and the keynotes right so why not the audience? We at UKOUG have had the same issues around what is coming, members traditionally look at what they are doing today and how to get more out of it, and expect that anything about the future is for their boss or will be simply marketing. It isn’t just marketing, and for your personal development it is important to understand what is next.

At UKOUG we are working hard with our conference and SIG committees to try and get the balance right, but we don’t have the magic formula either, perhaps this is something to discuss at the next EOUC meeting, lets see if another Usergroup has solved the problem?

But OBUG, it was a fantastic event and you should be really proud.

Certus-Solutions, Six Months In

Six months ago in September I joined Certus. They got ‘Cloud’ and had great ideas and success that I wanted to be part off.

I guess most of what I do comes under the title of enablement.

Get the Certus name more widely known, and yes I am speaking, blogging, tweeting and simply being known as working for Certus but it their success with customers that makes them stand out.

They retained, gold for UKOUG partner awards for Training and moved from silver to gold for Fusion, no small feat and much appreciated these are customer voted for awards. In the Oracle partner awards they were short listed for both Cloud Applications and Specialized partner, which for a company that does not resell, and 3 years ago were unheard of, is amazing.

Certus stated they wanted to move into the world of PaaS toprovide extensions to SaaS where it was the right thing to do. This was a major exercise just separating the reality from the marketing in the run up to Oracle Open World, and then digging deep into it. I have spoken at length about where we are on this journey, and you can follow it on my guest posts for Oracle as well as my own and of course on the Certus webpage. Winning a partner award, the first partner award for Cloud at the Fusion Middleware Community Forum was unexpected but much appreciated. Certus does believe that sharing our knowledge is the right thing to do, yes perhaps it does help competitors but it also gives us leads and partnering opportunities.

I am also working on references with our customers and this is so interesting. I came from a world of mainly large public sector and now I am working in all sectors and several mid market organisations that would never of considered Oracle in the past. This is an area I really enjoy, it is so easy just to remember the challenges of a project, but when you look back at what has been achieved you can be really proud.

I come from an EBS Financials background and Certus have depth in HCM so I have been doing a lot of learning, but as I have been a manager for many years I did at least understand what HCM processes were.

As Certus builds its profile that means the website as well and I have been helping marketing with content that helps visitors understand a typical Cloud Journey, and how we have helped others.

When I started on September 1^st, one of our customers had not even signed a contract. JT, formerly Jersey Telecom, needed a system that could support them today, including all their acquired companies who were not yet integrated, but also support them as they grow. Their people are key to their success and an enterprise HCM system was needed to underpin that. Roll on 5 months and the first two phases are live and I am working with them on submissions to Oracle Open World. They have a great story to tell. Oracle have already asked them to be on the customer panel for the HCM ModernApplications Day, recognising what a great achievement this has been.

JT took us into Australia and we have set up a satellite offering there, training initially but want to work with local partners as they start their journeys to the Cloud.

I love teaching and started with Certus delivering UX education on behalf of Oracle, and hope to do more of that. Certus deliver all the HCM Cloud training for both Alliance & Channels, and Oracle University and we are hoping to do more ERP training as well.

Working with customers at the start of their journey, when they haven't even made a decision to go yet, but want to understand options and strategies, this is the bit I love most. I have worked with a number of potential Cloud customers around ERP as well as HCM.

I have also done some authoring, a bit unexpected but one customer needed very specific training in compensation management, this normally only happens once a year so they wanted to ensure it was captured at a very detailed level to ensure they could do this next year without help. I loved doing it.

I have got involved in a number of partner forums with Oracle, not just FMW but also Cloud and PaaS, Oracle need field feedback and in return you get access to product management who will give you heads up on what is coming, and help you with your ambitions.

Certus also get involved with beta testing of Cloud Applications, which for us is a constant role as there is an upgrade every 6 months. Being asked is an honour and being asked again shows that you are valuable to them.

Certus not only implements Cloud Applications we have an Engage Business Support Services, a wrapper to help customers with coexistence and through upgrades, not because they are difficult, they are not, but to help them understand and decide what new features to implement or use. Our customers trust us to be alongside them as they make each step in the Cloud.

My contract with Certus recognises the need for investment to stay a thought leader and the support from them is phenomenal. Being an ACE director takes effort and time but the rewards outweigh that, the network into development and product management, time and time again pay off, but I have seen so many supported to reach ACE Director but then get swallowed up and loose it a few years later.

Certus is the leading HCM Cloud implementer in the UK and wants to move towards that in ERP. I want to be part of that journey and after 6 months can defiantly say I made the right choice.