Oracle PeopleSoft integration

Oracle's PeopleSoft is a suite of enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications designed to assist in the day-to-day execution of various business operations. PeopleSoft applications include human capital management (HCM), customer relationship management (CRM), financials and supply chain management (FSCM) and enterprise performance management (EPM).

PeopleSoft HCM allows users to execute common HR tasks, such as approving a promotion transaction, managing their team, viewing a pay slip or editing personal information. Similar to other HCM software such as Workday or SAP SuccessFactors, PeopleSoft HCM users can analyze employee and organizational data to boost employee experiences, increase operational efficiency, and more. Similarly, PeopleSoft’s CRM tool can be customized to fit sales, marketing or service industries. PeopleSoft also offers business process management (BPM) tools, allowing users to set up orders and workflows, as well as automate processes.

But unlike “born-in-the-cloud” HCM or CRM software such as Workday or Salesforce, which are engineered for cloud deployment – where functionality upgrades are automatically released and every user is always on the latest version – PeopleSoft users must purchase on-premises and private cloud implementations and are responsible for creating their own maintenance schedule. And the reality is that even long-time players like PeopleSoft only perform a fraction of the business functions required in a modern enterprise. As organizations expand their digital HR capabilities to deliver an employee 360-degree view, they must connect to other HR systems.

PeopleSoft integration challenges

Oracle recognized the demand for integration with third-party applications, resulting in its Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA) along with its Oracle Fusion Middleware integration layer. Specific to its PeopleSoft software, Oracle offers PeopleSoft Integration Broker to perform integrations among internal systems and third-party integration partners.

Oracle Fusion Middleware and PeopleSoft Integration Broker may suffice in the early stages of an HR digital transformation, where organizations commonly aim to connect or migrate data from an on-premises system like PeopleSoft to a cloud-based HCM solution, like Workday. However, tools like Oracle Fusion Middleware and PeopleSoft Integration Broker require specialized expertise to access and manage integrations. On top of this, pre-existing SOAP web services and tightly-coupled, custom code that connects these legacy systems complicates the process of moving to or coexisting with additional cloud-based HR software.

Further, after organizations complete the initial cloud-based HCM implementation, it’s common to then supplement this HCM with non-HR-specific applications (e.g. workflow optimization with ServiceNow, people analytics with Tableau, etc.) to tackle additional use cases and fully meet HR objectives. Adding diversified software to the HR landscape results in complex integration needs.

Other challenges include:

• Developing integrations between on-prem legacy HR system and cloud HR software. Providing secure, governed connectivity between legacy HR systems and SaaS applications requires developers to navigate the differences between antiquated and modern file formats and transport protocols.
• Moving existing integrations from on-premises HR systems to the cloud. These existing integrations often need to be rebuilt to preserve existing functionality.
• Migration has downstream consequences. In moving data to a cloud-based HR solution from a legacy system, data must still be accessible to HR experiences in the same way that it would otherwise be, regardless of the stage of migration.

PeopleSoft integration with MuleSoft’s Anypoint Platform

Rather than a model tightly coupled with custom integrations built by Oracle specialists, organizations should construct their HR digital infrastructure as an application network. An application network connects applications, data, and systems through APIs that expose some or all of their assets and data on the network.

MuleSoft’s application network and API-led approach allow users to achieve greater speed and scale as consumers from other parts of the business can access, discover, and reuse assets, e.g. the same “worker 360” API might contain data from legacy and hiring systems, and can be used to deliver data to multiple use cases like a mobile app or analytics platform.

In the context of digital HR transformation, APIs can be used as follows:

• System APIs: expose data across business applications or data stores, such as SaaS or legacy HR databases. Exposing this data through APIs enables the shared consumption of data throughout the HR digital ecosystem.
• Process APIs: Process APIs consume and orchestrate data exposed by System APIs, and represent common business processes that interact with and shape data. They exist independently of the source systems from which that data originates as well as the target channels through which that data is delivered. These APIs are typically built and managed by lines of business IT functions. Different Process APIs can be used for multiple purposes including:
  • Query data: e.g., grabbing aggregates, roll up data across multiple sources (data from those sources made available via system APIs per source). Multiple process APIs can be used to pull different views appropriately for each employee.
  • Execute actions: things that affect change such as:
    • Updating employee data as needed.
    • Triggering of an action by one system to another system to move along a business process.
    • Migrating employee data (which may also be transformed along the way) from one business application to a new target (e.g., another business application or a data store) that has been named the system of record for a domain.
    • Transforming data to align to central standards (i.e., for data governance).
  • Abstraction layer for migration: Process APIs can serve as an abstraction that allows for consistent access to the same set of data for downstream applications while migration from on-premises legacy systems to a cloud-based HCM occurs. In other words, top-level experiences can still get the data they need despite a backend HR migration happening.
• Experience APIs: a way to transform data and services so that they are consumed by the intended audience, all from a common data source. Experience APIs can filter certain data out for different employees and/or extend different presentation formats, which vary by consuming device or channel. For instance, Experience APIs could be used to directly channel appropriate employee data to generate a mobile experience, employee portal, people analytics platform, etc.

By building and using these APIs to extract and channel data into experiences for their employees and HR administrators, an organization builds an application network for their HR digital landscape.

Further, effective digital HR transformation demands speed and agility. With MuleSoft’s 200+ out-of-the-box connectors to HR databases and operational systems (including Workday, SuccessFactors, ServiceNow, Oracle Taleo, and more) along with pre-built templates (from Workday and ServiceNow Employee Aggregation, Workday to SAP Worker Employee Migration, etc.), IT teams can quickly implement common process logic to meet digital HR transformation demands.

Learn more about how a united application architecture enables ERP integration.