Global PeopleSoft HRMS upgrade
The Client
The client is North America's largest family footwear retailer. The company offers products at affordable prices in a unique self-service shopping and online store format.
Business Need
To stay ahead of the competition, the client had to access critical information and integrate it with existing processes. The company wanted an upgrade to add web functionality, and streamline the processes in the existing system, including Accounts Payable, General Ledger, Purchase Ordering, Project Costing and Asset Management. While the new system would be more efficient in terms of performance and user-friendliness, the company wanted to realize cost benefits of automation.
The company sought to leverage the wealth of experience and skill sets of its team by upgrading from its current version of PeopleSoft HRMS version 7.5 and Financials 7.02 to version 8.x across its global operations.
Challenges
The solution addressed people from diverse geographies, at different levels of skill and competence. It had to be accessible to its global audience, offer flexible schedules and at the same time be user-friendly, scalable and not too technology-intensive.
In addition, the solution had to address the following challenges:
- The Infosys project team had to understand the impact the upgrade would have on routine production, and factor those into the larger plan
- Infosys had to integrate the client's mainframe legacy systems into the new PeopleSoft Web world
- The financial systems needed a double upgrade to be at par with the rest of the IT infrastructure
- The Infosys team had to plan for and deliver support processes to ensure that the client's support systems made a smooth shift to the upgraded systems
- Elimination of internal competition and increasing associate participation are challenges in human resources management. While handling HRMS, one task was to get associates to be more focused and better informed than ever, regarding their incentive earnings potential
- A global presence meant sprucing up employee relationships and management
Our Solution
With a team strength of 14, Infosys managed to cut project cost as well as time-to-market via offshoring. To facilitate a complete and timely knowledge transfer to the client, Infosys worked to ensure that key members from the client's teams were included at all levels of planning and deployment.
Infosys knew from experience that customers who implemented PeopleSoft packages for any of their systems needed to consistently shift to higher versions as and when new upgrades were introduced. Scalability was, therefore, a high priority for any customization during implementation. Moreover, PeopleSoft technical support for the older versions of the software would be discontinued as newer versions were introduced.
With a stringent timeline of 15 months in which to implement the entire upgrade, Infosys deployed two of its proprietary methodologies to roll out the upgrade: its Global Delivery Model (GDM) and In-Tune Methodology. With In-Tune, deployment was divided into three phases to ensure that the final production upgrade could be completed within a short production downtime.
While the first upgrade phase focused on getting the script sequencing right and identifying all the project patch requirements, the second phase incorporated most of the key developed code. The third phase ensured that all the modified/developed code was in place. The database that was delivered at the end of the three upgrade phases was subjected to System Integration Test, Unit Test and User Acceptance Test at various stages of deployment.
Among other things, this methodology helped Infosys successfully address the challenge of incorporating routine production changes seamlessly while ensuring minimum downtime.
"I am extremely pleased with my current offshore vendor because of the comfort level of working with them, the rigorous change management processes that they brought in and the sense of discipline they instilled in our own IT staff and business users", said the client CIO.
Infosys also built a working model to help the client easily take control of the new system for post-upgrade support. Domain expertise was combined with business process consulting and program management to put these processes in place without impacting project delivery time.
With so much scattered and indiscrete information available throughout the organization, it was important to shift the emphasis from simply gathering data to leveraging valuable information. At the same time, the upgrade of two vital organizational systems (HRMS and financial) had to be implemented seamlessly. To achieve this, Infosys executed the upgrade of the HRMS version 7.5 as well. Several legacy systems and manual processes maintained on cumbersome Excel sheets were eliminated by virtue of enhanced functionality in the new product.
The benefits and enhanced facilities of the upgraded systems and processes needed to be assimilated into company processes. Members of the client team were involved in all stages of the project, ensuring a smooth transfer of knowledge.
Benefits
- On the technology front, over 150 customizations were discarded when the upgrade was implemented, which led to a leaner and much more efficient system
- The client maintained a number of legacy systems and manual tasks. These laborious, expensive, and inefficient processes were automated in the upgraded system. It ensured enhanced business process competence and a more streamlined workflow
- The upgrade led to improved employee-employer interactions. The HRMS upgrade in particular helped in extending its business processes with regard to e-applications to all its employees, including features such as e-pay and e-benefits
- With regard to the financials upgrade, the implementation of the process allowed them to achieve the goals of timely availability of information and better integration of information
- The upgrade also helped to exploit its human resource potential, internal knowledge and skill sets
- The HRMS upgrade gave decision makers quick access to role-relevant information, and also an efficient platform to disseminate such information to its employees to improve overall productivity