How user groups help drive Oracle`s product direction

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Who’s
the Boss
By Leslie Steere
How user groups help drive Oracle’s product direction
F
rom the earliest days of Oracle’s first commercial release, customers have banded
together in user groups to make their
voices heard. They’ve driven product
innovation, contributed enhancements,
planned user conferences, and shared best
practices with each other for leveraging
their investments in the software on which
they’ve bet their careers.
Twenty-five years after the first Oracle
user meeting, Oracle OpenWorld demonstrates the continued importance of user
groups, with more than 80 user group
product, industry, and regional meetings
and 160 sessions delivered by user group
members this year. Worldwide, there are
now 420 Oracle user groups representing more than 225,000 Oracle customers. That’s great for Oracle—the company
gains understanding of customer concerns,
secures good beta-test and pilot-project
candidates, and has an efficient vehicle for
communicating new initiatives to the customer base. But what’s in it for users?
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“We help each other get the best International Users Group
and chief security officer
Participating in a user group
and deputy CIO of the City
is like getting an inside line from our Oracle investments.
of Orlando, Florida, agrees.
to Oracle—especially with
This sharing of ideas and best
“Customers who participate
the International Oracle
practices is what user groups
in Oracle’s user group comUsers Group Community
munity are provided unprec(IOUC), an international
thrive on.”
organization that represents
—Debra Lilley, Deputy Chairman, U.K. and Ireland edented access to Oracle
and promotes the collective
Oracle User Group executives,” he says. “User
group members are able to
interests of the affiliated
participate on regularly scheduled
Oracle global user groups and provides them with one
calls to listen to, and ask questions
voice to Oracle management.
of, senior executives including Cliff
“As a user, I am just a small voice, and it is unlikely
Godwin and Jesper Andersen, to
Oracle will listen to me,” says Debra Lilley, deputy
name just a couple.”
chairman of the U.K. and
“It’s essential that we have a
Ireland Oracle User Group
voice in product direction,” adds
and leader of the Product
John Matelski
Jan Wagner, president of the
Development Committee
Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), “espeof both the EMEA Oracle
cially as Oracle adds to its family of applications with
Usergroup Council (EOUC) and
acquired companies’ products and moves forward with
the IOUC. “As a major partner,
Debra Lilley
Oracle Fusion Applications. As an independent group,
my organization gets a bigger
the OAUG can raise issues collectively, speaking with
voice than I would as an individual, simply because of
one voice. And Oracle is taking us seriously.”
our size.”
For example, when Oracle first announced Oracle
Fusion, says Lilley, users “couldn’t get enough informaInfluence Product Direction
tion. Would they be forced to move to Oracle Fusion?
Part of being heard, of course, is influencing product
Would it have their existing processes in it? How could
direction so the products Oracle develops work in your
they influence Oracle?” The IOUC met with Oracle
environment, addressing your business challenges. User
Senior Vice President of Oracle Applications Strategy
groups make a profound difference here, ensuring that
Jesper Andersen and Oracle President Charles Phillips
Oracle products are developed to work in users’ realbefore the start of Oracle OpenWorld 2004 and got not
world environments as well as in the testing labs.
only an early briefing on the company’s Oracle Fusion
“User group members represent Oracle’s most
plans but also a commitment to work with user groups
active, committed customers,” says Jeb Dasteel, vice
on Oracle Fusion development.
president, Oracle Global Customer Programs. “It’s
To provide a single channel for this collaboration,
imperative that we listen to their needs and their
the IOUC launched its Fusion Channel as part of the
product input. They pave the way for our entire cusProduct Development Committee (PDC), with Lilley
tomer community to really make a difference in the
as the lead. “All user groups have dealt with Oracle
way we develop products, deliver services, and plan for
Fusion in their own way,” says Lilley, who in her day
the future.”
job is principal Oracle E-Business Suite consultant for
The Higher Education User Group (HEUG)
Fujitsu’s Oracle Practices group, “but within the PDC,
experienced this sort of collaboration with Oracle’s
we have shared information and worked on joint initiaPeopleSoft Enterprise. “The user group community
tives with Oracle. Users can submit their Oracle Fusion
had been hoping there would be larger-scope testing
questions via the PDC Fusion Channel, and we have a
of the product,” explains HEUG President Tom Scott.
conference call with Jesper Andersen every quarter, in
“Sometimes when we applied code that had ‘passed’
which he answers current questions.”
developers’ tests, it didn’t work in our databases—
John Matelski, past president of Oracle’s Quest
because we had millions of lines of code, which was
Be Heard
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“It started with customers driving the events we were
far beyond what the development
team tested for. We convinced
Oracle to dramatically enlarge
the testing environment to mimic
real-world environments, and that
made a huge improvement in the
product.”
The HEUG carried that
testing theme even further when
it volunteered to do onsite testing
for Oracle of Oracle’s PeopleSoft
Enterprise Financials suite. “The
HEUG wanted to be part of an
effort to both get ‘real’ users in
front of applications before the
products were released and to
offer ‘real’ testers to Oracle,” says
Scott. The HEUG worked with Oracle to find higher
education end users who would spend up to two
weeks in Pleasanton, California, testing the software.
“This was a real win-win-win,” says Scott. “Oracle
got real-world end users in front of the soon-to-bereleased software, higher ed got a prerelease look at
the software and an opportunity to help the development team better understand how the applications are
used, and the HEUG institutions that provided testers
got some serious hands-on exposure to products they
would be soon be installing.”
The Oracle Database 11g beta
program “is an example of how we
help Oracle with its enhancement
process,” adds Independent Oracle
Users Group (IOUG) President Ari
Kaplan. “It’s a very positive two-way
relationship. We’re one of the leaders
in coordinating user membership as
Ari Kaplan
part of the Oracle Database 11g beta
program. Outside of the beta process, we work with
our community to prioritize the enhancements we
would like to see Oracle build. So when Oracle spends
the time and energy and money to build something,
it knows that people will use it to solve real-life and
business issues.”
And Oracle couldn’t be happier with the collaborative, engaged relationship it enjoys with the user
groups, says Oracle’s Jesper Andersen. “These customer groups are dedicated to providing insightful,
thoughtful input to help us define the content and
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functionality of both near-term and long-term application releases,” he says.
Oracle user groups come in international, regional,
product, industry, and special interest flavors; for
users in regions in which American
English is not the primary business language, product localization
is obviously a critical issue. For
that reason, the EOUC and AsiaPacific Oracle Usergroup Council
(APOUC) have established a new
Wolfgang Scherrer
task force focused on localizations.
“This multinational task force is working closely
with Oracle product management responsible for
localizations to optimize the localization development process, identifying necessary localizations and
working to make this important issue easier to handle
in the future,” says Wolfgang Scherrer, vice chair for
the EOUC and solution architect at the European consultancy firm infomArt GmbH.
“Localization is very important here as well,” adds
APOUC Localization Committee Cochair Daniel
Strassberg, “because the Asia Pacific region is growing
at a tremendous pace and into countries that would
not have been considered frontline a few years ago.
Localization looks at issues of payroll, taxation, and
basic local accounting requirements. Our committee
is driving the requirements of the user community via
a single channel and preventing the wheel from being
reinvented again and again. It’s a perfect example of
the IOUC/Oracle collaboration.”
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running, and that is still the case today.”
—Judith Sim, Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President, Oracle
The Photo Group
Network and Share
Oracle user conferences have always been about networking, and this year’s Oracle OpenWorld conference
focuses especially on helping users find and create communities of all kinds. It’s not just about Web 2.0 collaboration and coolness—it is also about making sure
Oracle customers have the best avenues for connecting
and sharing experiences and ideas.
“With different user groups coming from various
regions and countries around the globe, we are able to
share knowledge and best practices in a global way,”
says Scherrer. “This helps members enormously in
today’s business world, where even smaller companies or business units are working worldwide and are
faced with questions and requirements they never had
before.”
“The EOUC and its members are critical to customer success,” confirms Alfonso Di Ianni, Oracle
senior vice president, EU Enlargement Countries.
“In our region, through sharing customer best practices, we can help them leapfrog their competitors,
no matter whether they are in small or very large
markets.”
For developers, Oracle’s constant drive to innovate means that
software gets more powerful and
flexible all the time, but it also
means keeping up. That’s where
the Oracle Development Tools
User Group (ODTUG) plays a
key role. “In the wake of new
John Jeunnette
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products, partnerships, mergers,
and methodologies at Oracle, we
make it our job to help developers stay on top of these changes,
so that developers who have bet
their careers on Oracle can continue to be successful,” says John
Jeunnette, ODTUG president.
“The results of networking
may not be as tangible as some
other benefits, but networking is
invaluable in learning about how
others use their Oracle investment and how they have achieved
success,” adds Lilley. “We help
each other get the best from our
Oracle investments. This sharing of ideas and best
practices is what user groups thrive on.”
Sometimes networking does have very tangible
benefits, however. “The City of Orlando was able
to resolve some issues we were experiencing with
upgrading Oracle’s JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Xe
to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.10,” says Matelski
by way of example. “By leveraging relationships
with other public sector organizations that had
similar issues during their upgrades, the City was
able to save more than $5,000 in consulting dollars,
which made it possible for us to go live on time and
within budget.
“Sharing knowledge with people who work on
similar practices is helpful for immediate problem
solving as well as for engaging vendors in discussions related to longer-term solutions,” adds Matelski.
“These best practices are not just limited to Oracle
products and services but rather extend to the entire
ecosystem.”
Look online (oracle.com/technology/community/
user_groups) or in Oracle Magazine, and you’ll see an
impressive lineup of regional user group meetings for
any month of the year. Those regional meetings, says
Matelski, are one of the great benefits of belonging
to a user group. “By having a regional venue where
customers can get together, network, share lessons
learned and best practices, and take advantage of educational sessions, organizations can maximize their
ownership experience and lower the total cost of ownership of their IT investments,” he says.
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“Customers who participate in Oracle’s user group community are provided
unprecedented access to Oracle executives.”
—John Matelski, Past President, Quest International Users Group
“Being a part of a user group enables customers to
have a direct voice into Oracle and a linkage to other
HCM users,” adds Carolyn Hayden-Garner, president of the Oracle HCM Users Group (OHUG) and
executive director of payroll for
the Dallas Independent School
District. “OHUG’s forum allows
users to collaborate and get
immediate responses to day-today operational issues. The onestop Web site offered by OHUG
Carolyn Haydendirects users to pertinent inforGarner
mation relative to their business needs and keeps them informed of application
releases. Customers who participate in users groups
are more likely to be successful during implementation, upgrades, and testing.”
Be the First to Know
User groups also provide a useful conduit through
which Oracle can reach its customer base and, conversely, through which customers can receive timely
and relevant information. “As a customer of any
company the size of Oracle, it is often very difficult to
keep up with all of the announcements that may affect
me,” says Matelski. “By being involved with the Oracle
user group community, customers get information
directly from Oracle and its trusted user group channels, which is typically more accurate and timely than
information received through second- or third-party
sources.”
Indeed, the PDC recently piloted a new way of
educating users in advance of new releases, Lilley
points out. “More than 120 hours’ worth of Webcasts
with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 content was
available to users three months before the product was
generally available,” she says.
When Oracle President Charles Phillips
announced Oracle Applications Unlimited at the
COLLABORATE 2006 user group conference,
Matelski adds, “it was clear that he wanted to
show the community how much Oracle appreciated the input user groups had contributed.”
Oracle also announced Oracle Application
Integration Architecture at user group events, a
gesture that didn’t go unnoticed by the IOUC.
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Oracle OpenWorld: Where You Connect
You have plenty of opportunities to check out the
various user groups this week, beginning with Sunday’s
Sixth Annual Oracle Users Forum (Moscone West
and the San Francisco Marriott, from 8:00 a.m. to
5:30 p.m—open to all registered Oracle OpenWorld
attendees). Special interest group meetings throughout
the day focus on a variety of products and services;
technical and best practice user group sessions also are
scheduled.
Sunday through Thursday this week, you can
network with members of Oracle user groups at the
User Groups Pavilion (Moscone West, Lobby Level 2),
which is open during exhibition hall hours every day of
the conference. Meet representatives from the APOUC,
EOUC, HEUG, IOUG, ODTUG, OHUG, OAUG,
and Quest International Users Group to ask about the
benefits of membership.
And watch for the user group logos in your session
guide, indicating user group presentations—more
than 160 user group sessions are planned for the week.
“It started with customers driving the events we
were running, and that is still the case today,” says
Judith Sim, Oracle chief marketing officer and senior
vice president. “We have a highly structured approach
to collaborating with our 420 independent user
groups, customer advisory boards, and key customers around the world. These programs are all about
working with our customers to ensure the bestpossible experience with Oracle.”
So go—join a user group. Influence products,
provide feedback, network, get the inside track on
what’s coming from Oracle, and gain unprecedented
access to Oracle executives. There’s no time like
Oracle OpenWorld to make the move. ■
Leslie Steere is a senior editorial director in Oracle’s Marketing
Communications group.
LEARN more about Oracle user groups
oracle.com/technology/community/user_groups/index.htm
VISIT the User Groups Pavilion at Oracle
OpenWorld
Moscone West, Lobby Level 2
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