For Oracle, agentic AI enabling HR to rethink processes

With agentic AI, the opportunity is to reimagine how you can augment the creativity, the brainstorming, the strategy that you bring to the organization now that you have taken some administrative things off the table, says Yvette Cameron, SVP of Global HCM Product Strategy at Oracle.

For Oracle, its human capital management (HCM) products are revolutionizing how companies hire, manage and grow their people. The HCM product portfolio continues to see positive growth, with the Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP recording a revenue of US$1 billion, as reported in the company’s fiscal 2025 Q4 and full-year 2025 results.

The Asia Pacific region in particular continues to see strong growth in HCM. In an interview with CRN Asia, Yvette Cameron, SVP of Global HCM Product Strategy at Oracle shares more about the plans and opportunities in the region. Cameron leads the global vision for HCM products.

Can you tell us how is the industry looking like for Oracle HCM in this region?

Oracle Cloud HCM in the APAC region is a very strong solution for customers because we've got organizations who are managing workforces in multiple countries with multiple compliance requirements. They have very diverse workers and our solution is global, has AI embedded to help organizations manage that automated compliance requirement to interpret and understand policies and regulations, etc. to monitor the workforce, translated into 30 languages. Our AI itself is additionally translated and can be further translated beyond the delivered 30.

We truly have a very strong customer base in this region, in large part because of our strong proven global capabilities. And so, it's a very interesting market and now with the advances of AI in the industry in general and our leadership in this space, we're all very busy.

How are businesses in Asia adopting the technology?

We've been delivering AI on Oracle for more than a decade. The traditional predictive and classic AI and we introduced GenAI back in 2023. And initially, there was a hesitation or an inability even to really embrace AI because in so many solutions, it was delivered in English only. And that is not the case now for Oracle, as it's now fully translatable.

And organizations also initially had a lot of concerns about the governance of AI. Is it going to expose data to other customers? Will it be used to train the large language model? And it took time for customers to understand Oracle's unique approach to how we deliver AI embedded in our solutions. We don’t use a customer’s data to train large language models. Our AI is embedded and close to your enterprise data.

So, it can not only guide and advise you, but it can also take action. It can complete transactions on your behalf. That isn’t possible when AI isn’t embedded. In most cases, customers have to move their data to an external AI system.

Again, back to the question, how is the adoption of AI in this market? It is similar to other parts of the world. The interest is strong, and the experimentation is extraordinarily high, and customers are intelligently using AI to address some of their most critical pain points or opportunities.

The number one use case that we're seeing in AI right now is in using it for performance and goals. So, creating goals across the organization using generative AI, answering questions contextually for employees on what makes a good goal creation. How do I define it? How would I make sure it's measurable? But that goal creation is critical for aligning the work to the strategy of the organization.

And downstream in the performance review process, because AI can look across all the feedback received in whatever period, the last 12 months or six or whatever, typically, it's not forgetting the actions of the individual early. And all too often in performance reviews, managers will look back in the last three months and write their annual review.

AI doesn't forget. And so, we're finding customers really appreciating how AI is streamlining the process of the annual performance review, ensuring the feedback is captured, and helping improve the relationship between employees and managers. So strong adoption, strong experimentation, and a lot of eagerness for what's to come.

With agentic AI capabilities now available, do you foresee it changing processes in HR?

What we saw in the early days of AI was simply automating existing processes. And there's a value in that, and we've done that at Oracle in many cases. But now we're able to rethink processes, because in addition to generating content, or summarizing content, or authoring new content to start, we can now think about the end-to-end process, and where can steps be removed? Where can they be reconsidered?

Let me give you one example. Imagine the case where, as a manager, maybe I'm working at a healthcare facility, and I need a new nursing manager. Well, typically, I would go out to my recruiter and say, hire me a new nursing manager, and it would take however long it would take, and cost whatever it cost, and I wouldn't know necessarily when I'm going to get that person.

Now with agentic AI, I can literally ask the question, I can type it, or with my voice say, I need to hire a new nursing manager, and agentic AI now can call on a team of agents that will go out and simultaneously evaluate multiple options. If you were to hire somebody in this region, here's typically how long it's taking to fill, here's what you're going to pay, etc., when they will be ready to come on board, typically. Another team of agents, or another specific agent, can simultaneously analyze who is in my workforce today, who's in my team, or who's in teams across the other parts of the organization who are ready now, or could be ready within a certain time period if they had perhaps additional skills or training.

And so again, with a single question, the AI can come back and give me options. I can buy the talent by recruiting, I can build the talent by having an internal mobility choice, and the AI can say, here's two candidates, one will be ready in three months if they take these courses and develop these skills, and the courses will cost x money for you, or this other candidate will be ready in two months, but it's going to cost 2x in the learning, etc. So, it gives me the information I need.

The process has fundamentally shifted from I need somebody else in my group, I guess I need to hire to help me make the best decision for me and for the company, balance the cost, the readiness of internal talent, the cost of training, the availability to start work, and give me all the information I need right here, right now, to make that decision. And all of that happens in a conversational interface, no navigating to screens, no keying in requisitions, no waiting for approvals for information, the system is bringing all of that back to me, and also all at the same time, making sure that it's not exposing data to me that I shouldn't see. It's not exposing salary ranges that I shouldn't see, etc. It's all compliant.

That's a game changer that is totally rethinking talent staffing in the new era of AI than what it was before. I'm incredibly excited by what's happening.

With this excitement coming in, is there a concern among HR professionals on how this is going to change their role and what's going to happen to them as well?

It's the question on everyone’s mind, whether you're in HR or an everyday employee, right? Will AI take my job? And the quote that I've seen often repeated, and I totally agree with it, is AI is not going to take your job, but people who are skilled in AI will take your job.

If you are looking away, you're ignoring the impact of AI, you're not learning how to leverage it to streamline the work you're doing today. I think the best option is to find the things you like about your job and figure out how AI can do that for you, so that you then can improve your focus on the things that add more value to your job and to your organization, expand your skills and your scope of responsibility. If you're not using AI today, you are definitely at risk from those who are using AI.

And so, I tell HR leaders and CHROs, the opportunity is beyond just streamlining work and taking hours out of a particular position for the ultimate goal of reducing headcount. The opportunity is to reimagine how you can augment the creativity, the brainstorming, the strategy that you bring to the organization now that you have taken some administrative things off the table. Imagine the value you can bring when you're able now to put all of your focus in the processes that are really going to make a difference for your business, whether you're an employee or whether you're an HR leader, it's all the same.

One of the biggest challenges that customers are facing when it comes to using AI in HR is the lack of skills. How is Oracle helping with this?

That's one of the beauties of the way that Oracle delivers AI. We don't require you to be a data scientist. We don't require you to be a prompt engineer. So for your IT organizations, the partners who want to build their own AI in our application, all of that capability is there and it's very easy. It doesn't require coding.

It's literally connecting a business object and a question and it's very drag and drop. So the skill set for employees is just focused on understanding how to ensure that you are taking a critical eye to the output. If it's creating a job description or summarizing a performance review or helping set up an interview schedule, let's have that human in the loop and that review of the output, the suggested actions before we take action.

And in Oracle, all of that prompting and embedding is there for you. So literally with a click of a switch, HR organizations with very limited technical expertise, can literally go in and turn on AI throughout the application where they choose and it's there. There's no additional cost.

We embed our AI for free, which is a very unique approach amongst many tech vendors. You won't see that commonly. And whether it's in payroll or workforce scheduling or in just even the employee's profile or how they manage their skills, AI is there, embedded, pervasive, and all HR has to do is flip a switch to turn it on.

So, the skills are not a barrier to adoption. The barrier to adoption is the willingness to start this process, to start somewhere and turn it on and start getting the feedback from the users and build the trust in the AI that's embedded in the application. Technology is not the barrier for adoption at all, especially in the way that Oracle chooses to deliver it in its applications.