(vibrant orchestral music) >> Hi, I'm Peter Burns and welcome to another CUBE Conversation from our beautiful studios in Palo Alto, California. I'm actually very excited about today's conversation because we'll be talking about the potential of human beings, of people within organizations, given this tumultuous change in this digital transformation. And to help talk about some of these crucial issues we've got, Emily He from, who is senior vice president of HCM Cloud marketing from Oracle. Emily, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me. >> So let's just jump right into it. Let's start by, I mean Oracle's got to interesting approach. Cloud a customer, the idea of bringing the Cloud or forming applications into Cloud services. So why don't we start, what is going on with HCM Cloud at Oracle? >> You said exactly the right thing: which is, we have a very unique approach to the cloud. So we spent the last few years completely rewriting our HCM application for the Cloud. And when I think about 11 years ago when iPhone first came into being, a lot of the HR, HCM vendors rushed to embrace the mobile interface because they think that's the panacea for user adoption. As long as HR software as existed, we've always had issues with user adoptions. The early Cloud vendors really just moved their applications to the Cloud and their focus is to simplify the user interfaces by delivering this modern user experience. The problem is, that didn't really solve the fundamental user adoption problem. There data quality issues, data security issues. The work flow was cumbersome and the user interface wasn't friendly enough, right? So when Oracle started rewriting the Cloud a few years back, we took a very different approach because we already had hundreds of thousands of customers. And they had real business problems. They had complex business problems. So we're asking fundamentally very different questions. The questions we're asking is: How can we use the Cloud, and move our customers data to the Cloud by allowing them to manage the data autonomously? So we can insure data quality, data security. And how can we make the work flow so flexible that they can adjust their business processes to meet the ever changing market conditions. And lastly, how can we push our user experience to the next frontier by embracing Chatbot, voice UI, AI and deliver that really human experience. And that's exactly what we have in Oracle HCM Cloud. We have the Auntie Anne solution, and we're doing really interesting things to push the user experience to the new frontier. >> Well, that's one of the reasons why I'm so fascinated by this topic is 'cause in many respects, as you said, HCM used to be just a set of HR processes: pay roll, hiring, separating. There was just a set of processes you had to do to comply with local employment laws. >> Exactly. >> But now we're talking about using technology to do much more, to actually mediate the activities of human beings in more complex ways, incorporating a different ways of thinking about incentives so that human facing systems, supported by AI, augmented by AI allow this incredible resource, that exist with most organizations to be more productive, more fulfilled, happier and ultimately a better resource to customers. Have I got that right? >> That's such a great point. And that's why I'm so excited about the possibility AI brings to the world of business applications. If you think back on the way we approach applications in the past, we architected business processes and we used technology to deliver to those business processes. So it's an input based system and a predictable output will come out. With AI, now you have all these data from different sources and you can get insight from the data, but more importantly, the system is now suggesting actions, it's suggesting decisions, and human beings can use those insight to create more solutions. And we're also in a situation where potentially robots are working alongside humans. So what is the definition of workforce anymore? Do we include machines in our workforce management solutions and how do we think about that? And I'm personally fascinated by the possibility of having machines augment human tasks and look at the world in a completely different way. >> Well, I think you brought up this interesting point earlier, this essential point earlier that there's been an adoption problem associated with some of these complex people-oriented applications. It might very well be that as we rethink these applications and we focus more on how AI and other types of things can augment the way people work. Because a lot of employees are saying, wait a minute, I'm not process driven. I have a set of responsibilities. I have some agency within this business to serve customers. So how can we bring together those things so that the people can do what they're suppose to do. It might actually increase the likelihood that these HCM applications get adopted. Whaddya think? >> Yah, exactly. If you think about the way we're using enterprise software now, it's actually not very natural, fun or human. Every time you go through the same process, you fill out the form and some outcome will come out. Now I don't think anyone is thrilled to come to work and use enterprise software application. It's almost like you have a coworker and every time you see him, you're having the same conversation. What's your name, what's your address, what's your phone number, right? And in contrast, the way people are engaging with consumer technology is totally different. I use Siri, and I use Google Maps to navigate my traffic. And my kids have hour long conversations with Alexa. Telling jokes and ask science questions. My son is getting Siri to do his homework, math homework, which is very distressing for me. But that's a different conversation all together. And I think that's the way humans want you engaged with enterprise technology. It's already happening, so it's really our collective work, organizations responsibility to bring that type of technology to work, but like you said, there are many open questions we have to answer. >> And not the least of which, it's just not mediate, having an interaction with a machine. But also having conversations and having machinery be able to pick that up. Be able to turn that into subsequent tasks and actions so that human beings are spending more time on the creative side. And I know you have some great examples of this. Companies that are rethinking, so how they go from a human being attended to a customer problem and how that person, perhaps far away from a normal IT process, can actually quickly translate that into something that can scale within the business. >> Yeah, exactly. Yesterday, I think I mentioned this to you before, I was listening to a podcast about how Airbnb is architecting their customer experience and the way they do it is when they think about their ideal customer experience, they have one customer in mind and they really focus on re-imagining how they can deliver this wow experience, but once they nail the experience, then they got good feedback from the customer. They use machines to scale that to millions of customers. And I think that's going to be the way people want to work in the future. Human beings are uniquely good at being creative, problem solving and that's what they enjoy doing. So if we can have them focus on those tasks and have the machines help us scale things that we know will work and use them to get insight to further fine tune the experience, that'll be such a better way to work. >> I totally agree and I think that one of the important derivatives of that is the idea that increasingly we're talking about more collaboration, recognizing and amplifying the strengths of individuals and bringing them into a work force so that everybody is more confident, more comfortable and capable of working together. Certainly that's something HCM wants to do. But it also creates a new question and we spent a lot of time on theCUBE working with executives, like yourself, talking about this. How are we going to incorporate additional diversity into the workforce with an attacking with other worlds, how do you see this whole process coming together? So technology can make it easier, can liberate the potential of a lot of diverse people within a workforce. Yah, I am a huge believer in diversity. I think diversity is good for the workforce and I personally spend a lot of time promoting diversity in the leadership rank. And there are a couple of things: One is, we definitely can use software to foster more diversity in the work place. For example, if we use software to screen resumes, we can eliminate some of the demographic data to reduce bias and the software also has the ability to, for example, help us identify the ideal candidate from looking at our existing employees and come up with the right criteria, so we can get the right candidates on board. But I also think, in this new world we still have more work to do to psychologically set ourselves up for leadership positions. And I talk to a lot of women and this is the advice I usually give them: The first thing is, this applies to both men and women. You need to, really be conscious of the kind of the personal brand you're building and when I talk about personal brand, I don't mean that you go on Twitter and tweet about your personal life and tweet sheer content. It's really about being conscious about the value you are trying to exhibit at work and use your day to day actions to demonstrate those values, and that will help you create a reputation that will have a stronger impact on your career than anything else. The other thing I notice about women is, the strength for women is, women are naturally empathetic so we're very collaborative, we want to help each other, but at the same time, sometimes that can hold us back because you don't want to hurt other people's feelings by stepping forward and taking on leadership position. And men are usually much better at raising their hands and saying, "I'm ready for this position." So I think women can learn from men, and the way to do it is something I call Micro Bravery. And that is, I believe courage is a muscle you can exercise. The more you use it, the better you'll be at it and if everyday you can push yourself to do something that you're uncomfortable with, maybe it's giving someone performance feedback or maybe it's standing up and presenting, maybe it's coming here and having a conversation with you on tv. The more you do that, the more you are going to take risks and the more comfortable you will be in stepping into those leadership positions. The other thing that I noticed about a lot of women is when they have a family, they hesitate to take leadership positions. Because they think they're part is now the family and they can't do both. I firmly believe we can do both. As a matter of fact, I think being a parent makes you a really good leader because there's so many lessons you can learn from being a parent. One of the things I find helpful is, now that I have children, every time I make a tough decision I always ask myself: If I make this decision and I tell my kids, would they proud of me? If they told me, they make this decision would I be proud of them. So it kind of help you bring humanity to work and really strengthen your moral compass. So those are things I usually tell women to be more effective at work place and hopefully they, more women will assume the leadership roles. >> I love hearing that in theCUBE. So just to quickly summarize. We've talked about how women in particular, but overall, we're going to get an increasingly diverse workforce that's going to be applied to increasingly complex problems and the powerful role that software can play if it's set up right to facilitate collaboration, facilitate interaction, augment the human experience, so we can do more, do more productively, make everyone more happy. >> Exactly, I couldn't have said it better. >> Emily He, the senior vice president of marketing at Oracle HCM. Thank you very much for being on theCube. >> Thank you so much for having me. (dramatic music)