There’s no question that the payroll manager plays a crucial role in the success of both HR and Finance. At COLLABORATE 19, there was discussion around the role of the payroll manager during a Cloud implementation, during readiness preparation, during go-live, and when business is simply moving along as usual. While the payroll manager has relatively similar daily responsibilities both on-premises or in the Cloud, there are several roles that the payroll manager additionally takes on during implementation, readiness preparation, and go-live.

Lisa Schwartz, Senior Director of SaaS Applications for Oracle’s Cloud Business Group, discussed the ways emerging technology makes data more valuable in today’s workforce. She started by explaining the idea that data is the new oil. It’s clear that data is not fossil fuel, we cannot run our cars on it, or heat or homes with it. However, in a less literal sense, the analogy applies.

Lori Pierson, Vice President of HCM Transformation at Oracle, laid out five dangers customers should avoid when upgrading their HR system to HCM Cloud. Moving on-premises human resources applications to the Cloud is continuously becoming more and more popular. If a company wants to take its HR applications to the next level, it’s important to take advantage of new technologies and deliver a better experience for current and future employees. Organizations need to prepare for what lies ahead before making the move to the Cloud and learn how to avoid the five dangers Lori listed when upgrading to HCM Cloud.

Sue Shaw, Director of IT Operations for ATCO Group, spoke at COLLABORATE 19 about how to manage change after you’ve made the move to the Cloud. Sue discussed the scope of ATCO’s Cirrus Cloud Project, the types of changes companies may face during Cloud projects, and tools that are available to help with Cloud implementation change management.

Emerging technologies like Internet of Things (IoT) are continuously disrupting organizations and industries. A recent Oracle blog explored the possibility of blockchain playing a role in the future of IoT as organizations continue to adopt the emerging technology to transform their business.

Dorian Daley, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Oracle, and Edward Screven, Chief Corporate Architect at Oracle, spoke about the current threat landscape and Oracle’s strategy for addressing it. The pair spoke about how Oracle is enhancing the relationships with customers by adopting a service model that allows customers to shift the security burden and risk to Oracle. They also covered how Oracle has rebuilt Cloud and the Autonomous Database, so customers are fully equipped to truly protect their data and eliminate human error from the security equation.

Dhvani Sheth, Solution Engineer at Oracle, showed how Oracle Analytics Cloud and Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse can provide useful data analysis and visualization to HR departments. Hiring the right people requires a lot of time, money, and effort. However, hiring the wrong people can be just as costly, if not more so. Without using data analytics to make data-driven decisions, HR departments may be prone to hire based on a cognitive bias that they aren’t aware of. Instead of using traditional techniques, HR can use data analytics and visualization to find patterns within large volumes of data to make insightful hiring decisions for the company.

Rob Preston, editorial director in Oracle’s Content Central organization, wrote an article in Forbes about what speakers and attendees at Oracle’s Modern Business Experience conference had to say about the future of the workforce. The workforce of the future will be defined by more automation, a diverse mix of full-time and contract workers, and rapidly shifting demographics. The most successful employers in that future workforce will be the ones whose leadership teams get ahead of these trends.