Attempting to Be the Oracle of Oracle Spend Management (Part 5)

In the initial posts in this series, I wrote primarily about the latest and greatest Spend Management capability in Oracle R12. In this post and the next, I’ll dig into some of the highlights from PeopleSoft’s latest Enterprise SRM release, 9.0. Rather than get into the feature/function enhancements off the bat, I thought it might be helpful to first discuss how the overall PeopleSoft 9.0 package shapes up relative to its Oracle peers. Overall, our analysis suggests that PeopleSoft's capabilities fit somewhere in between that of JD Edwards and Oracle (though closer to Oracle in capability, most certainly). From a spend analysis/visibility perspective, we still give R12 the nod, but it's a bit like comparing a dog that won't hunt to a dog that's already been buried. Still, at least one of the dogs is in training.

When it comes to sourcing, PeopleSoft is not at the same level of Oracle (see below for more details). In eProcurement and basic payment (not EIPP) capability, however, Peoplesoft's capabilities are much closer to Oracles. However, PeopleSoft comes up short in such areas as performance management and category management relative to its applications big brother down the hall. But when it comes to contract management and services procurement, PeopleSoft stacks up well to 12R.

From a sourcing perspective, PeopleSoft comes up short in project management, project dashboards, category management and some more advanced negotiation capabilities (e.g., optimization). Their supplier management capabilities (within the sourcing suite) are also not as complete. The RFX/RFI information request and scoring mechanism within PeopleSoft is not bad, but I still give the nod to 12R in this area based on our analysis. Services procurement is where PeopleSoft really shines (no surprise there). But I'll leave this analysis for the next post in the series.

PeopleSoft's P2P capabilities, for many users, put it near the same ballpark as Oracle 12R. Our analysis of their supplier on-boarding, catalog management and portal capability only put PeopleSoft one notch lower on our Harvey-ball scoring chart. But from a core requisitioning, order management/visibility and payment perspective, PeopleSoft holds its own. Also, when it comes to contract management, PeopleSoft has similar capability to its eBusiness suite brethren.

Price wise, PeopleSoft has historically been neck and neck with Oracle. Their pricing for sourcing, supplier portal, and contract management on a per seat basis is identical. But for services procurement and core procurement, PeopleSoft list pricing is slightly less. There's some irony in this given that these are the two areas (services procurement especially) where PeopleSoft can give Oracle a run for its money.

Stay tuned for the next installment in this Oracle series when I examine some of the highlights and enhancements of PeopleSoft Enterprise SRM.

- Jason Busch