Unleashing the potential of generative AI directly within Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite

John Menhinick, Senior Director, Product Management | November 2023

Oracle is embedding generative AI capabilities across its SaaS portfolio. This powerful new technology is just the latest form of AI to be found in Fusion Cloud Applications Suite. Like our previous AI-driven functionality, there’s no special knowledge required.

Making generative AI truly suitable for business

Oracle focuses its generative AI features on the challenges found in everyday tasks and workflows, ensuring you derive maximum value.

While many technology companies are talking about generative AI, few appear to consider the end-to-end processes needed to incorporate it successfully into daily business operations. Based on a deep understanding of what it takes to build software that powers businesses, Oracle is incorporating business context into every prompt sent to the large language models (LLMs) hosted on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This business focus is consistent with how we have delivered classic AI features embedded into Fusion Applications for several years. As they perform their daily tasks, customers can call upon generative AI capabilities, where and when they need them.

Further, with many businesses nervous about using generative AI, Oracle provides reassurance by incorporating security and human review processes into the design of each generative AI feature.

These guardrails are designed to let you benefit from the large language models that are hosted on OCI in a way that’s relevant to the task at hand, while minimizing risk of erroneous or hallucinatory outputs. For example, prompts (inputs sent to the underlying LLM to stimulate an output) are engineered by Oracle for each specific task to reduce the work for the customer and to ensure resultant outputs are consistent and carry the required context to make them useful.

Above all, humans are always in the driver’s seat when it comes to using all generative AI capabilities embedded within Fusion Applications. Generative AI features are only activated when a user requests them (via the AI Assist button). Content surfaced inside the Fusion Application can then be scrutinized by the user and either used as-is, edited, or ignored. An illustration of how the process works is provided here:

 

Embedded Generative AI example (Generative AI for HCM)

Oracle has identified three categories for generative AI scenarios in Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM).

  • Assisted Authoring
  • Suggestions
  • Summarization

Assisted Authoring
Assisted Authoring enables employees, managers, and HR leaders to quickly and easily author content, significantly improving productivity. Using a short prompt, such as a draft title for a job requisition or performance goal, the new generative AI features will quickly generate content for users to review, revise, and approve, allowing them to focus on more value-added activities. Examples of Assisted Authoring use cases include:

  • Writing job descriptions and requisitions
  • Automating goal creation, including detailed descriptions and measures for success
  • Generating HR Help Desk knowledgebase articles to help employees complete HR tasks

Suggestions
As HR teams work through their processes, there are times when generative AI can assist in an advisory role, even before a question is asked. Users can take these suggestions and use, modify, or reject them, potentially saving time in the process and increasing the accuracy of what is created. For example, AI can make recommendations for survey questions being designed by managers for employees. Another example may be a response to a query from an employee, or even insights based on an analysis of data. In the survey questions example, the language used by the generative AI solution will reflect the organization’s culture. It will also let new employees or contractors phrase questions in a way familiar to them.

Summarization
Generative AI can significantly help summarize information found in performance reviews and other documents. It can extract key points from an employee or manager review and create action points that can be quickly reviewed and used to create goals. It can also combine all the information from reviews across a period, indicating trends or other factors for consideration.

Fusion Cloud Applications—the perfect environment to turn generative AI into business value

When embedded within Fusion Cloud Applications, generative AI provides insight and content precisely where and when it’s needed, making it easy to adopt new functionality throughout your business. Because Fusion Cloud Applications Suite is the most comprehensive offering available, you can derive value from generative AI across all major business functions and without any special knowledge. Finally, as enterprise customers have come to expect from Oracle, safety and security are built into the design of each feature so that you can capitalize on the benefits of generative AI in a low-risk way.