The art of the analyst “mini-summit”

I have written before about well done analyst summits here and here. Last week I had the opportunity to be part of a very well done mini-summit – a little over 4 hours – just before the start of Oracle HCM World. Walking in, I was cynical much could be accomplished in that compressed time frame but Oracle managed to squeeze in very different perspectives

a) Chris Leone, SVP Product Development for HCM, did a rapid fire start – he provided factoids on Oracle momentum like 100 new go-lives in quarter, 15 million+ employees on Oracle HCM products, 30% attach rates as customers are buying other cloud functionality in addition to HCM. He demoed new functionality as in the family of work/life apps. His passion balanced with the crisp manner in which he marched through 50+ slides like one above set the right tone. In a nice touch, his slides were available for us to walk through as Chris spoke.

b) Next there was a panel which provided the field perspective. Tony Kender, SVP Global HCM Cloud commented on the competitive landscape, and handled tough questions like how Oracle’s past reputation as an aggressive on-premise vendor affects its cloud competitiveness. Bertrand Dussert shared what he hears from HRO at large customers he is always visiting. ML Maco and Scott Stoll provided more of the mid-market perspective.

c) Differently from other summits where vendors show product demos, Oracle allowed each of us to go hands-on an iPad. Even more impressively for a vendor which often has confusing NDA guidelines, I took screenshots on my tablet and they happily emailed them to me – one is featured below

d) Mark Hurd, CEO then took questions. Then and later in his keynote, he provided details of Oracle’s employee demographics (the mix of 18% Baby Boomers, 44% Gen X and 38% Millennials surprised many of the conference attendees) and the demands Oracle’s recruiting (3 employment applications every minute), training and other needs puts on its use of the HCM software.

Well paced, lots of different perspectives – look forward to more of these “mini-summits” from other vendors.