Enterprise Software: Now For Everyone

PeopleSoft Reconnect event happened October 27th 2025 through October 30th, 2025. It was packed full of a lot of information into just a few days. What this post will discuss is a practical recap of the Reconnect sessions, tailored for small teams and businesses, focusing on four areas:

Leveraging AI in PeopleSoft (including BYOA)
UX modernization
Data export/import (DEIU)
Analytics for real-world decisions (not just stale dashboards)

Let’s take a little bit and dive in to what I learned, and how it can help you work smarter.

Leveraging AI in PeopleSoft: AI Isn’t Just For Big Tech

One of the most interesting things that has occurred recently is the Oracle and ChatGPT $300 billion dollar deal, which is rapidly shaping Oracle’s Cloud Interface (OCI) for real-world use. Take Sarasota Memorial Health Care system: Take Sarasota Memorial Health Care System: They use chatbots for benefit and patient questions, powered by Oracle’s Cloud Interface (OCI) . These chatbots tap into real-time knowledge bases, answering questions instantly without constant retraining. This ties in directly to PeopleSoft as well, as they are also using this set up to be able to access direct through their supply and payment databases, retrieving information such as non-PO payments.

BYOA: Bring Your Own Agent

A new major trend: integrating PeopleSoft using Retrieval Augmented Generation or (RAG). Where the query goes a knowledge base, all information is read by the LLM (such as ChatGPT), and a response is given by the AI.

Why is this important?

There is less hallucination: the responses are based purely on your data
There is less cost: Agents are lighter and cheaper than full LLMs
Stronger security: API-based access, controllable and not wild-west web scraping

For small businesses and teams, OCI is leveraged in a way to make AI work better. Oracle’s API/AIaaS approach means you don’t need in-house AI engineers. A good partner or consultant can set it up quickly, at a scale (and price) built for you. This type of technology is no longer just for huge enterprises.

Prompting: A New Necessity

While watching the Oracle event, I saw in real time something that made me stop and simply watch for a minute.

They were showing how to use AI to screen job candidates for a PeopleSoft HCM Business Analyst role. While watching this in real time, I discovered one of the things that is not usually spoken about directly but does need to be addressed, and that is the idea of prompting. Prompting is the instruction provided to any AI, whether you’re talking to a large language model like ChatGPT or Claude, or talking to an AI agent. When using AI, what and how you form a prompt is one of the most important things to take into consideration.

Let’s take the example I saw of Human Resources using AI to determine how candidates align with a job posting for a PeopleSoft HCM Business Analyst.

John Anderson:

8+ years of direct Peoplesoft experience
Deep expertise in Peoplesoft Financials models (GL, AP, Asset Management, Commitment Control)
Proven track record: requirements gathering, functional design, testing, production support
Real-world results: delivered scalable, compliant financial solutions

Chris Johnson:

Functional & Technical Specification Development
REST & SOAP API Integration
ElasticSearch & Anaplan Data Mapping
AI Agent Architecture (LLM-based orchestration)
SQL & Query, Component Interfaces
Business Process Reengineering
Report Development (BI Publisher, nVision)

Then the prompt: “Rank the candidates according to how well they answered for the PeopleSoft HCM Business Analyst Role.”

The AI ranked Chris higher. Not because he was more qualified but because how the prompt was written determines exactly what the AI will look for. Without specifics on what is required, the AI will look for buzzwords. Although John didn’t have the buzzwords in his resume, he did have the 8 years of hands-on PeopleSoft work that was actually more relevant to the job. This is what is happening right now, across the job market. AI decisions and not well thought out prompting is shaping who gets opportunities, and who doesn’t. With a job market that is already saturated with ghost jobs and overloaded qualifications, this is a disaster in the making. Prompting is no longer a skill for a select few. It is a necessity, it’s governance and an ethical issue.

For small teams that use AI as part of a hiring tool: understand that prompting is the policy. If your prompts have bias (even accidental) built in, the AI will amplify it. If your prompt is vague, the AI will fill in gaps with patterns that you won’t know about and may not serve you in the long run.

A quick note on how to prompt successfully:

When you write a prompt for AI, ask clarifying questions such as:

What am I actually asking this AI to evaluate?
What criteria matter most? (Be specific.)
What am I accidentally excluding or overweighting?
Would I be comfortable with a human making this decision based on this exact logic?

Because the AI will do exactly what you ask it to do. The question is: did you ask clearly?

UX/UI Modernization: A Much Needed Makeover

One of the most interesting things about PeopleSoft is that it has been around for nearly 40 years. Updates are here, making the software more cloud-based, with integrations directly with LLMs such as ChatGPT, new capabilities are now available.

Capabilities such as:

Fluid navigation: less clicks to get where you need
Architectural page building: for organizing information and creating dynamic landing pages based on your needs
WebUX Alerts: personalized notifications and alerts based on individual requests
Modern UI updates: Updating the UI for leveraging JSON for much more responsive and even mobile-friendly interfaces
Real-Time Data Dashboards: Making the data analysts happy with less overhead
Content Management: Categorize the content you want in any of the PeopleSoft systems

For small businesses and smaller group adoption: These changes allow for more personalization for what you need and who you need it for. Plus with the user interface easier to use, this is a win for all.

Data Export/Import (DEIU)

In the sessions focused on data export and import, Oracle showed massive improvements aimed at making DEIU easier, faster, and safer, giving that Oracle respected confidence and stability for non-technical users and small departments without full-time developers.

Newer DEIU configurations in PeopleSoft allow for more flexible data movement between modules and external systems. This includes:

CSV & XML Export/Import Templates: Users can now easily define templates that control how data is exported and mapped for import. This streamlines tasks like mass vendor updates, journal uploads, and much improved contract imports.
Simplified Configuration: Rather than relying on IT or developers, business users can now configure and reuse DEIU templates from a UI-driven plug-and-play like interface, saving time and avoiding bottlenecks.
Validation Rules: Built-in validations help catch errors before they happen, preventing bad data from being imported. This is especially useful for departments managing large volumes of procurement or financial data and incredibly important when using any sort of artificial intelligence. Bad data can stop any business, both big and small, in their tracks.

For smaller teams or cities like mine, this means faster turnaround times for common tasks. Instead of emailing IT for every mass update, trained business users can now manage exports and imports with less risk, more accuracy, and greater autonomy. It’s a much smarter shift toward decentralizing data tasks without sacrificing control.

Analytics for Real-World Decisions

This was one of the more exciting takeaways: Oracle is investing heavily into embedding analytics where people actually make decisions. Not just dashboards for the sake of having a dashboard, but actionable data where it’s needed*.*

Key features highlighted:

Pivot Grids and Kibana Dashboards: Enhanced filtering and visual flexibility. Pivot Grids now support drill-downs, thresholds, and user-specific views, while Kibana offers richer visualizations for people used to working with graphs over grids.
Real-Time Data Access: Analytics are now being embedded directly into PeopleSoft components — so instead of having to run a report, the relevant data appears in the system as you work.
Delivered Analytics Packs: Oracle has expanded its delivered analytics for areas like Accounts Payable, Purchasing, and Recruiting. These packs save time and give immediate visibility into key KPIs like PO cycle time, contract renewals, and supplier responsiveness.

For departments like Procurement, this means we can track performance and uncover issues without digging through spreadsheets. Trends, bottlenecks, and opportunities become visible in context. For smaller orgs, this is critical — it makes performance reporting achievable even with limited analyst support.

In the end, Reconnect was more than just a conference. It was a window into the future of PeopleSoft, Oracle, and the kind of user-centered, smart, flexible systems I want to help build. These tools aren’t just upgrades, they enable small businesses and departments to get further than ever before. They free up time, reduce friction, and put power back into the hands of users like me and my team. And as someone who works daily in the middle of procurement, data, and tech, I walked away feeling more aligned than ever with the direction Oracle is heading. I may not be a developer, but I know good systems when I see them. This made me want to keep helping make the systems I use for myself and others better.

PeopleSoft Reconnect Conference