PeopleSoft to beef up business software

PeopleSoft will announce plans for several new products next week, expanding its line of business applications designed to help companies automate operations and streamline interactions with customers, employees and suppliers.

The company plans to release three new applications it's adding to its set of human resource applications over the next 12 months, according to Doug Merritt, vice president of PeopleSoft's human resources management systems division. PeopleSoft, which competes with SAP, Oracle, and Siebel Systems in the market for business applications, plans to discuss the new products at a conference in Las Vegas next Monday.

One of the new applications is designed to help companies create compensation and incentives programs for sales staff, the first of several incentive planning applications PeopleSoft is developing, Merritt said.

Another new application will help companies review and provide feedback on the performance of employees, Merritt said. The product should help managers provide employees with performance goals that are aligned to broader company objectives.

The third new application, available by the end of the year, is designed to help companies create training plans for employees and track employee enrollment and completion of training courses. PeopleSoft will also forge partnerships with e-learning companies, Merritt said, to incorporate online training tools into its system.

The company is renaming its human resources application division Human Capital Management to reflect a focus on applications that help companies increase employee productivity and performance, Merritt said.

PeopleSoft also plans to enhance its customer relationship management (CRM) applications with specialized versions for government agencies, as well as insurance, high-tech and energy companies, becoming available by the end of the year.

The company released the 8.4 version of its product line at the end of March, on target with its plan to enhance its CRM applications with support for handheld computing devices and to update its business portal software with a feature that enables the application to sense how a customer is using the portal and automatically present related information.