The survey is still a comprehensive research effort providing organizations with data to plan, justify, benchmark, and execute HR technologies. The survey questionnaire collects responses from HR and IT management and business leaders with knowledge of the HR technologies in use and planned. CedarCrestone invites representatives from organizations with over 300 employees to participate. Responses will be kept confidential and only used in aggregate results. BUT – IT IS SHORTER! And Prior Respondents from 2011 can access their responses from last year! Very cool. I estimate it will take you just 20-30 minutes to complete.

So, the 15th Anniversary CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey continues to track the adoption, deployment approaches, and value achieved of 30+ HR technologies. It will add three new or recharged technologies of projected importance to HR: big data, collaborative knowledge sharing (aka electronic content management), and work management software.

My hypothesis for 2012 is that this year marks an inflexion point for three areas:

1. The switch from more organizations doing upgrades of the core system of record to more doing replacements.
2. A stronger-than-ever focus on integrated talent management as an equally key technology that further drives workforce contributions – talent management is positively correlated with great business outcomes!
3. An increasing impact from all things social, mobile, and analytical. Yeah…everyone says this, but we can show it.

I have to giggle about the following: As a former New York Times reporter, Bill Kutik, technology columnist for Human Resource Executive for 23 years, has long been a fan because the survey answers his most burning industry questions. He says,

Doing a survey is easy. Doing a survey that the HR community trusts and lines up to learn the results takes an indefatigable Queen Bee like Lexy Martin, who for 15 years has sweated, wheedled, and cajoled to make the annual CedarCrestone survey the most authoritative in the country.

All respondents will receive an advance copy of the results in early October 2012. The first 100 respondents to complete all questions will receive a $5 Starbucks card. The 15th, 150th, and 1,015th respondents will receive a $100 Visa gift card in celebration of our 15th year. All who complete the survey will be entered into a drawing for an in-depth benchmark service.

You will get an invitation and maybe multiple invitations. Try not to hate us. As Bill says, I wheedle a lot of organizations to distribute our survey invitation. But if for some reason you don’t receive an invitation, send me an email at alexia.martin@cedarcrestone.com or check our website for a direct link to the 15^th – best ever!!

Today’s health care Supply Chain Management (SCM) challenge require process improvement, rapid development and implementation timelines that will meet evolving governmental mandates and address today’s high-velocity as hospitals are under increasing pressure to keep supply costs down…despite the near constant business change. The Procurement & Material Manager departments must not only be responsive, they must be flexible – it’s about having the ability to allow your hospital to respond rapidly to changing business landscapes (merger & acquisitions) and
physician demands.

As our healthcare industry remains at a crossroads, many are looking to their supply chains to help drive change.  This mean turning supply chains into a “strategic asset,” so the health system can have success controlling costs and increasing business efficiencies. They can do this by evolving into “best practice”, leveraging LEAN methodologies and demanding enabling technologies that allow them to do more with less.

Now, considers the abundance of untapped information you already have available in the hospital, your methodologies for demand forecasting (and consider those developed in other industries, but which can be adapted to healthcare), and the recent growth and maturation of some information technologies that enable an unprecedented level of integration of data from desperate systems.

Where to start: Consider the Strategic Marketplace Initiative and the adoption of the Ten (10) elements that are recommended (and to be measured) to verify the achievement of a Perfect Order:

1. Electronic Purchase Order
2. Delivered on Time
3. Delivered to the Correct Location
4. Undamaged
5. Correct Price
6. Delivered Complete
7. Electronic Invoice
8. Electronic Payment
9. Payment on Time
10. Payment in Full

If your current SCM solution does not allow for all ten, then now is the time to begin a review for a solution. Because of the benefits that a “strategic” SCM solution can bring, and the long period during which those benefits may manifest themselves, a review of the original SCM implementation is always a good and strategic investment for a hospital.   With increased productivity, reduced operating expenses, improved information flow and enhanced performance management at stake, it about time to get strategic and challenge the system and processes.

Additionally, integration of clinical data into the supply chain equation can revolutionize the management process, enabling us to transform the existing, yet often segregated mix of information into actionable intelligence for our health care decision makers. Unique and customized application of some proven principles of supply chain management from the retail industry, and some recent technological advances, can gain health care supply chain efficiencies that we have been anticipating for years. These efficiencies, in turn, will open the door to numerous corollary benefits such as improved patient safety, more favorable clinical out-comes, revenue enhancement, and an even more healthful work environment for clinicians.

If the hospital is experiencing one or more of the following SCM business conditions, it is time to seriously consider re-evaluating the SCM solution or replacing the current one:

• Fast and uncontrolled growth: Is your hospital growing at a very fast pace? Your hospital has recently opened multiple operational clinics/offices in multiple locations. There is significant increase in volumes of production, processes, and work force.
• Lack of sufficient and accurate information on your department’s performance: You are facing problems in capturing exact figures or are receiving mismatched data on your hospital’s performance indicators.
• Consistent mismatch between inventories: There is a lack of coordination between SIC processing and inventory management in your hospital.
• Duplication of effort: The Clinical, CDM and Procurement departments store and maintain supplier details separately. There are instances of duplication in the hospital.
• The right information is not accessible at the right time: You are not able to access accurate data on stock in inventory, PARs, orders in transit and other required information on time.
• Little or no ability to forecast and plan: The hospital’s strategic and planning division is not equipped to forecast and often relies on conventional methods for future projections.
• Your current system is becoming obsolete: The existing enterprise system in your hospital is no longer efficiently supporting your day-to-day processes and is negatively impacting the growth.

Now consider the following best practices for supply chain process improvement.

Next Steps

1. Focus on the ways your SCM solution can optimize your business processes. First you must understand how your hospital operates, and then you can identify the true SCM functionality that can support your various departments’ business processes. It’s important to be open to some change. However, a SCM implementation can alter some business processes, and your hospital will need to adapt its processes to match.
2. Understand your back office workflows. SCM is vast and impacts your core business workflows in financials, supply chain and inventory, and more. You need to know how your employees perform their jobs every day as well as which business applications should be integrated in the SCM solution to best support them.
3. Involve clinical staff and business owners supported by IT and the departments impacted by SCM in the process improvement/business objective (KPIs). The employees, who will be using the new and improved SCM solution day-to-day, such as unit clerks and departments with high expense spend.  They all should have some responsibilities in the new SCM solution. They know best what functions they need a system to deliver to help them make better decisions more quickly.
4. Don’t expect the new solution to go live overnight. Most SCM deployments take several months or even a year to be fully implemented. SCM solution modules should be installed in phases, a set of models at a time, and they must be thoroughly tested. Employees need training, which can further slow down the process. But your implementation is more likely to be successful if you take the time to test and train.
5. Dedicate members of your IT staff to your SCM implementation. Even if you’re working with a vendor to install a SCM solution, you should have some employees focused only on the implementation. This project team should include employees from IT plus from the functional areas that will use the new solution, who will return to their usual jobs when the implementation is complete.
6. Limit customization of the SCM solution. Many core SCM functions are rooted in “best practice”, and enough solutions exist to find one that will generally align with your health system’s business processes and business objectives. Some customization is usually necessary, but the less you need to customize the solution, the easier it will be to maintain and upgrade, particularly if your current IT staff changes roles or leaves.
7. Budget for training. Most software is so user-friendly that most people can boot up and go — that’s not today’s SCM. Leave room in your budget for extensive training for everyone who will use the new system. This includes how-to classes and detailed instructions for each
   function in the system.

1. How do we go about implementing Position Management?
2. What is Position Management?

Position vs. Job

Positions are generally associated with budgets.  A manager will budget for one or more positions needed to carry out the duties of the department.  Positions are “classified” by a Human Resource specialist.  They select the right Job Code, Salary Grade and other attributes that drive how the employee is compensated or receives benefits.

A Position, in PeopleSoft terms is sort of like an empty chair. You assign a title and a set of responsibilities to that chair and any person who occupies the chair inherits those attributes.  The advantage of using a Position is that you can define the jobs in your department without having people in them.  It also means that if one person leaves you can fill that position with a replacement without having to redefine all of those attributes.

More advantages:

• You can classify and define responsibilities and qualifications and reuse those attributes to recruit for new employees, drive performance reviews and do reporting
• You can assign a title to the position that differs from the Job Code Description – which will reduce the need for so many Job Codes
• You can assign a Reports-To position as supervisor to each position which helps build your organization charts and more importantly, drive workflow
• You can budget for positions even when vacant (but there is no budgeting in position management)

A Job, in PeopleSoft terms is an employee assignment. That Job may be assigned to a Position but it also has information unique to the employee such as compensation rate.  Upon hire or transfer to a Position, an employee’s Job record inherits certain attributes of the Position.  Others, such as ‘Reports to Position’, exist only on the Position.

Positions should not follow employees.  The position belongs to the department (unless a re-org moves that function to  department).  The exception being if there is a natural progression for the employee and the position is re-classified.  Example: Position title is “Administrative Specialist I” and you want to want to progress that person to an “Administrative Specialist II”. Unless you have another position with that title that is vacant and you plan to replace the first one, you can just re-classify the existing position.

Position Management vs. Commitment Accounting

Commitment Accounting is a way to tie a budget to a position or a job.  Most often, we use positions because the budget can exist even when the position is vacant.  The Department Budget table is actually several tables and the word BUDGET is misleading.  This is not a budget.  It is a definition of where to distribution labor costs.

The “Budget” is configured by defining either an amount or percentage of earnings that are funded by a Combination Code.  A combo code is similar to what financial people call a Speed Type in that it represents a set of chart field values that are valid when used together.

Advantages of using a Position Budget:

• Funding can be tied to the position rather than the employee – and is therefore reusable should the employee leave and a replacement is hired.
• The JOB record in HR does not have accounting information and a job that has complicated multiple funding sources can stay a single job rather than be split into multiple jobs
• Payroll, as with HR is simplified.  A single pay line can be distributed many ways because there is no account data on the pay line
• Positions can be funded from any source, even combination codes that reference another department, reducing the need for multiple jobs
• All distribution processing is done Post-Payroll so adjustments and labor transfers are not part of the payroll process
• Retroactive changes to funding need not go through payroll – there is a retro distribution module that will re-distribute a paycheck according to new funding sources

Encumbrance

Encumbrance is a word that rarely comes up in the private sector.  Most businesses create a budget and managers have to stick to them.  In higher education and government, we like to encumber budgeted dollars so we don’t spend them twice.

Encumbrance is tricky at best.  When you hire someone you encumber their salary, perhaps the cost of their benefits (employer share) and employer paid taxes.  In the Higher Education world, compensation is paid in various ways that include heavy use of additional pay, which the program does not consider.  Fringe benefits also get complicated as many Higher Ed institutions like to encumber (and expense) actual costs of benefits rather than a fringe charge (percentage of earnings).

Encumbrance Basics

• Encumbrance is the locking of funds from your budget when you hire an employee.
• A Pre-Encumbrance is the locking of budget dollars for vacant positions.
• System uses employee Salary amount divided over specified funding sources to generate encumbrance
• Budget Cap field on the budget records is used only to restrict total amount distributed for salary and fringe
• Encumbrance amount on Position used for Pre-encumbrance only and there is an option to encumber by points in the salary grade range instead of using a fixed amount

Distributing Payroll Results

The diagram below is a high-level (and yes, simplified, if you can believe that) overview of how Positions, Jobs and Budgets work with Payroll and Commitment Accounting to pay employees and distribute earnings (benefits and taxes work the same way but left out to keep the diagram simple).

Payroll and HR data is simplified while complexity of labor distribution is part of post-payroll processing.  Fields in red on Job and Position tables are managed at the position level and inherited by the Job assignment of the incumbent employee.

The HR Accounting Line table can be fed into the Journal Generator if you use PeopleSoft GL.

Conclusion

The decision to use position management requires asking the right questions up front:

• Will positions be used to help HR and Department managers manage their workforce and to help with recruiting?
• Will positions be used for security and workflow?
• Will positions be used for budgeting and labor distribution?  (Requires Commitment Accounting – not a real budgeting tool but can
  work with budget tools like Hyperion)
• Does your organization want to encumber position salaries and benefits?

There are more intricacies to position management like multiple headcount positions, employees holding multiple positions, position pools for budgeting, overriding commitment accounting, feeds to the Projects module and position profiles and those are some of the things you will have to cover when you decide that Position Management is right for you.

The Project Quality Review (PQR) process depends on participation from members of the project team. Project team members are those individuals who are assigned a role and responsibility on the project. They are technical, functional, and management representatives from the sponsoring business entity as well as subject matter expert consultants. These individuals are combined into one team to complete the work required for achieving project scope.

Sometimes project team members don’t understand the value of the Project Quality Review, and approach it as a “necessary evil” that must occur in order to fulfill a leadership mandate. These individuals often attend PQR discovery meetings “because they have to” and display body language that seems to say, “I don’t want to be here, so let’s just hurry up and get this over with so I can get back to what’s important.”

Passive or reluctant participation in a review is like paying for a tune-up on your car but not letting the mechanic start the engine to perform diagnostics. You’re paying for the service so you can attain improved performance, so why not provide as much information as possible so you can garner the desired outcome? This reluctance to participate can impede the participant’s ability to benefit from the process and learn how to perform faster, better, or cheaper while achieving positive project results.

Project participants who willingly attend and actively participate in Project Quality Review activities ultimately benefit the most from the process. Here are some suggestions that project participants can use to ensure they get the most out of their participation in the Project Quality Review:

1. Be Prepared. It sounds easy enough, but you’d be surprised how infrequently folks are prepared for the review. Before the review, take a few moments to jot down your expectations for the review, and be prepared to convey the expectations to the quality consultant. At the very least, you should expect the review to recognize your significant contributions to the project. You might also want to know how your specific project deliverables compare to those of successful projects that are similar in scope. Most importantly, you should expect to receive meaningful and useful suggestions for improving any identified weakness.
2. Speak Up. A closed mouth cannot be fed! So make sure you open yours and use it to convey your perspective on the project’s health. When the quality consultant asks you a question, answer it as thoroughly as possible, and use examples to illustrate your point. If there is a specific issue or risk that is keeping you up at night or one that just cannot seem to get resolved, talk about it so the quality consultant gains a thorough understanding of the problem and can do additional research to help get it addressed.
3. Share Good News. I think good news gets a bad rap. We seem to expect things to be “good” all the time, and because it’s expected, we don’t think good news needs to be talked about, especially during a quality review. However, the quality consultant needs to hear both bad and good news – weaknesses need to be addressed and strengths (i.e., that which is conveyed through good news) need to be recognized so they can be built upon.
4. Recognize People. If you think someone in the project community is doing a fantastic job, let the quality consultant know. If you observe an individual or an entire team doing something that culminates in positive results, explain your observations during the review.
5. Convey Second Thoughts. At the end of my day, I sometimes think about things I wish I’d said during a meeting that day. I’ve found this isn’t unique and that people have additional or second thoughts that are meaningful enough to be shared after they’ve participated in a PQR session, or after they’ve submitted their PQR survey. Don’t be afraid to share those niggling thoughts or additional observations with the quality consultant. Call or email them – they will be grateful!

Project Quality Reviews aren’t going anywhere. They will continue to exist in the technical project and program community for years to come. The more we embrace the process – and follow the above suggestions – the more we will all get out of it.

Finally, I hope I’ve motivated a few folks to recognize the PQR process as a Helpful Friend. As a proven process for enhancing the probability for success, the benefit definitely outweighs the cost.

To celebrate 15 years of conducting the CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey, the longest running survey on the state of adoption of HR technologies and the value achieved, CedarCrestone is offering the following to those who fully complete the survey (We love VERY complete entries!):

• The first 100 respondents will receive a $5 Starbucks gift card
• The 15^th respondent will receive a $100 Visa gift card
• The 150^th respondent will receive a $100 Visa gift card
• The 1015^th respondent will receive a $100 Visa gift card
• ALL respondents will be entered into a drawing to receive a FREE Benchmark service conducted by Lexy Martin, survey author. Oh shoot. More work for me, but I do love doing benchmarks to enhance organization’s decisions about their HR systems strategy and portfolio.

Join the mailing list and be informed when the survey is live on May 23rd at http://www.cedarcrestone.com/serv_annual_survey.php.

The 15^th anniversary CedarCrestone HR Systems Survey, in addition to its thorough tracking of adoption and value achieved of 30+ HR technologies, will also review adoption and deployment trends over the past 15 years and provide a forecast for the next three years.  I enjoy doing the 5, 10, and now 15 year surveys as they afford an opportunity to see how far we’ve come. And sometimes it’s surprising that we’ve not come further!

We believe this coming year is an inflexion point for three areas:

1. The switch from upgrades of the core system of record to replacements
2. A stronger than ever focus on integrated talent management as an equally key technology that also drives workforce contributions
3. An increasing impact from all things social and mobile

From our results, we will create an updated HCM technologies blueprint to sit alongside the blueprint provided for the past five years. Oh goodness — more work! In addition, the survey will begin tracking three new or recharged technologies of projected importance to HR: big data,  collaborative knowledge sharing (aka electronic content management), and work management software. We will also answer the question of just how pervasive is social, mobile and analytics enterprise HR technologies?

Do you think we’ve got it right? What else would YOU like to know?

Healthcare has become an extremely competitive and highly regulated industry.  Yet, the systems in the back-office (Human Resource, Payroll, Time & Attendance and Supply Chain Management) have not been tended, updated, and improved upon.  The cost of not reviewing these Legacy systems (Lawson, Meditech, GEAC, and home grown solutions) is beginning to weigh on Healthcare because these systems do not support the process improvement and automation that all other industries have adopted.  Too often than not, hospital’s (and in many cases, the Health System’s) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system was implemented ten (10) plus years ago and mapped the healthcare business process (recruiting, hiring/on-boarding or AP invoice matching) of the time.  In effect, the current system has locked hospitals into hiring, recruiting and purchasing processes that were devised at about the time of the first Apple computer.

Yet, the strategic imperative for growing enterprises in healthcare is to achieve operational excellence.  As hospitals grow in complexity and scale, pressures mount to sustain high levels of performance and excellence in how they manage Human Resource (HCM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) business processes. To help meet these challenges, hospitals must turn to their ERP solutions.  A modern ERP solution must be expected to achieve four broad business goals:

• Facilitate rapid and effective decision making
• Enable business process efficiencies across the enterprise
• Extend/accelerate competitive advantage
• Adapt to evolving business needs on a cost-effective basis

Most hospitals, however, tend to focus on the “transactional” components of their “HRIS”, that is “how an employee’s demographic data is maintained” or “how a new Nurse’s data is transferred from ‘recruiting’ to ‘HR’”.  As I have previous documented in this blog, “Healthcare Payroll Leakage” or “Nurse Labor Cost Containment” in of itself will provide the cost savings and “ROI” for the replacement of the back-office, and we are now aware that both Labor and SCM are the most “controllable”, so why has the hospital not revisited its’ ERP Strategy?

Well, many hospitals (and in many case, the Health System) have got themselves stuck in “vendor lock.”  Once the legacy system vendors made its’ way into your hospital, it makes sense to stick with the products they offer in their umbrella.  But, it is important to go through a “sourcing process” and invite in other potential solution providers to keep it competitive. This is especially true when you are looking at a required “upgrade”.   Too often, people get locked into one vendor strategy, and they forget to review why they purchased the system in the first place (recall the “Business Case”, it was most likely something about “doing more with less effort” and some “Dashboards to view KPIs”).   Understand that there isn’t a whole lot of pressure on that incumbent vendor to keep things tight and focused.  Explore your options, and don’t forget to
“beware of the bundle.”  Vendors love to bundle…they bundle things together, and sometimes, a bundle could make sense, but unfortunately, most of the time, a bundle contains more than you need (often called “shelfware”).

Before you commit to “upgrading” your current legacy back-office (ERP) review what your hospital needs and needs to accomplish with its ERP strategy. These “requirements” will help you determine which applications and what kind of functionality your current ERP strategy is costing you and you now have the base for a business case to re-write your ERP strategy, as well as going a long way toward easing the implementation process to achieve real cost containment and reduction. But, first consider “your rationalization” requirement: do you have more than one ERP vendor in the house?  If, so look to consolidate, for if nothing else, you can save on only having to maintain one set of source code.

Separately, consider the following:

• Do your hospital’s business leaders support the ERP upgrade/re-implementation project? Are they involved in deciding which business processes are included in the ERP package, how to phase in the rollout and how to measure success with the implementation? For an ERP to succeed, executives throughout the organization — especially those heading up the various departments that will use the ERP applications — must be a part of the rollout.
• Who are the line-of-business leaders that can be responsible for measuring the business benefits relevant to their department’s goals? Employees beyond the IT department need to own the success of the project.
• Who will be the ERP project manager? One person — an outside consultant or a current employee — should be in charge of managing the process to choose an ERP solution; coordinating demos and consultations with vendors; leading a team of representative from each area of the hospital, including finance, SCM, and human resources; and coordinating meetings between key users of the new system.
• What are the specific business problems you need to solve (it is not about technology…it should always be about how to improve patient care and the bottom line improvement)?
• What are the goals and metrics that you will use to measure the business benefits of your organization’s new solution? A good starting point for these metrics is the hospital’s KPIs — See my Healthcare Back-Office Best Practices to Hard ROI blog for specific examples).
• What features and functions do you need from a new solution that will help increase users’ productivity and provide access to the business data users most need?
• Are there best practices you need to adopt for process improvements?
• Which users across the hospital will need to be trained on the new system? As with any new system, the success of your ERP implementation will largely depend on end-users’ ability — and willingness — to adopt it (Change Management is not just a “Communication Plan” and “Training”).
• Will the ERP package be able to adapt to changes in your business as your hospital/System grows?

Hospitals of all sizes and in all regions of the county are finding it difficult and costly to continue to update and modify their legacy back-office solution after they have been installed.  The initial investment to acquire and implement the ERP system was substantial.  But even after the system is up and running, the costs continue to mount as the business evolved, requiring the ERP system to evolve as well to keep pace, process flow automation, EDI transaction set, and ever increasing system “integrations”. So the cost must be supported by “process improvements” that will help pay for replacement.

Begin the evaluation by gaining internal alignment and building upon good relationships with internal clients or users, like doctors and nurses who need services from IT (is not about “data”, it is about timely “information” so they can help run the business).   Healthcare organizations have become better at getting everyone on the same page, but understanding departmental needs will help to create a true set of requirements, so you have some visibility into what those needs are and what they may cost.  Failing to maintain internal alignment, makes it easy for vendors to approach specific departments and throw off an organization’s true needs.   Too often, your legacy vendor will approach the hospital or physician groups and get them wanting solutions that may be overlapping with something the IT department already has on its strategic plan.

Finally, question your maintenance charges.  Push back and question the operating costs and maintenance charges.  They tend to go up 3 or 4 percent every year and no one asks questions.  One of the more common ways to question charges is to ask yourself, “what actually needs maintenance.” Sometimes, a system is old and works fine, and you don’t need that platinum level support; 8 to 5 is fine because you aren’t changing it.  Other cases include simply going back and telling a vendor you aren’t comfortable with certain charges.  If you think about it, maintenance is 18 to 20 percent of the purchase price, and then it goes up 3 or 4 percent each year.  It doesn’t take long, about five years, until you’ve re-bought that entire product. That’s an important thing to bring to the attention of your vendors.

• Do you have vanilla installations of your ERP systems or do they have a lot of customizations? If your ERP systems have been customized, then the PIP will need to be modified to support the customizations.  This includes something as simple as adding additional fields to the records that need to be integrated.
• How often to you upgrade your ERP systems?  If your upgrade cycle is slow, you run the risk of using a PIP that is no longer supported.  If your upgrade cycle is fast, you run the risk of needing a PIP version that has not been created/updated yet.
• The Oracle partner that created the PIP is also a very important because each partner has different support levels, including discontinuing support.
• The Oracle PIP marketplace never really gained much traction so it will be interesting to see how long Oracle still supports and pushes PIPs.

Diffusion of Innovations research indicates that staff members are much more likely to react positively to messages about the new system when those messages are delivered by their peers. Those new to training & communications often lack one or more of the basic skills necessary to make them successful at delivering these messages, but with a few tools and some coaching, they can be very effective.

One of the tools iPeople used was a flash drive containing the presentations our ambassadors were giving, documents to be printed, and Train-the-Trainer tips. We also had iPeople promotional items they could give away. But the most important asset for the promotional & training effort was the people we chose and trained as Ambassadors!

We recently implemented these tools and more at Illinois State University, and the result was the diffusion of knowledge and excitement about iPeople all over campus, in a relatively short time.

Want to know more? 

Julie Jenson (Illinois State University) and I are presenting a session titled “How to Expand Your Training Staff in a Few Hours” at Alliance 2012, to explain how ILSTU did just that for their “iPeople” system. We will explain both the steps ILSTU took to create and equip “Ambassadors” and how their experiences can help you do the same. Julie has been in the training field for over 20 years and was a key player in the ILSTU iPeople implementation.

I often work with new trainers to help them improve their presentation skills, and recently completed my Master’s degree in Strategic Communications, which included a thesis on (you guessed it!) “Communicating Your New PeopleSoft System.” Our presentation will be followed by a Q/A session. I will also be available for further discussion at the CedarCrestone booth. Be sure to stop by and say “Hi!”

One of the first steps to any split project is determining the level of impact.  Once this is known the remediation may begin. The initial assessment
should include:

• Unsynchronized Data Designation & Cleanup – This is both easy and super critical in my experience.  CedarCrestone developed and carefully tested a list of tables to be cleaned up in the HR and CS database respectively. We store this data in metadata that is used by a number of our utilities. In general, cleaning up the unsynchronized data is a good idea. What this means is that we delete (technically truncate) the data in tables that should not have data in the post-split database. This is a good thing because you get to save disk space, and you run a lower risk of accidentally using stale data. CedarCrestone’s utilities include a web page that will generate truncate scripts, rename scripts, and even alter truncate scripts for db2. Unsynchronized data includes pay checks, student enrollment, etc. This type of data, which is the majority of data in the system, is only maintained in one database or the other going forward.  If you have a process, page, query, or whatever that uses data that crosses databases post-split, you have an impact. Every school I have visited has impacts, although there are generally a fairly low number. In my experience, it is during this impact analysis that the post-split metadata provides the greatest value. CedarCrestone developed a number of utilities that discover impacts based on this data. These are discussed in the next point.

• Customization Impact Analysis – This is a hill you can die on.J  If you have a significant impact from the split, this is where you will find it.  I separate the split related impacts into two categories as follow. The first category, “update impacts”, is custom code that creates/updates/deletes synchronized data (e.g. emails address, job data, etc.), for example, a custom routine that adds student emails to the person data. (I see these email processes every week.)  The second category, “read impacts”, is custom code that reads data across databases, for example, a Query or SQR that joins enrollment information to pay check information for course costing.. I also see a lot of work study reporting that joins Financial Aid information to pay check data. The trend I have observed is that most institutions have a handful of “update impacts” and a moderate number of “read impacts.” CedarCrestone has developed utilities that will find impacts in Queries, SQR’s (and other text based files – Java, SQL, ASP, etc.), and PeopleTools objects (e.g., records, pages, app engines, app packages, etc.). Thanks to our utilities, it generally takes less than a day to find most impacts!  This is an area where we have been saving people loads of time.

• Customization Impact Remediation – Once you identify your impacts you must decide what to do. There are a number of patterns in use that are also well-supported by CedarCrestone’s utilities. The pattern selected depends on an institution’s budget, architectural approach, and timeline among other factors.  Here are the patterns that are most commonly used:“Update Impacts” –  If you have a customization that updates person data and does NOT publish the PERSON_BASIC_SYNC and/or the other appropriate messages you need to find a way to keep the data synchronized. For bi-directionally integrated data (person in the subscriber-only model) I generally recommend using the delivered messages. This means your process will need to be message enabled. You can achieve this by converting the modification to use a delivered Component Interface (which will always publish the correct messages). I have clients that are making this investment. I also have clients that choose to leave their customization alone and take a less complex and less costly approach. These clients are making use of the CedarCrestone message publishing Application Class library. This library has methods that make publishing the correct messages very easy without changing the existing code structure or behavior. You simply add a few lines of code to invoke the helper methods exposed by the library. While this approach is great for PeopleTools based features, we need to take an extra step with SQR’s and COBOL programs, technologies that are not able to directly publish messages. For SQR and COBOL, we offer Application Engine routines that detect the differences automatically with our Verification Engine or by reading message staging tables populated by the SQR or COBOL.   This has proven to be a safe and effective approach. There are others, but these are the most common. You can also make use of the PeopleSoft Enterprise Components Message Publish Utility; however, keep in mind that it is very old, hard to use, and difficult to find documentation for.“Read Impacts”  –  If you have a query, report, or process that accesses unsynchronized data from both CS and HR you need to make the data available to the process in order to keep using it. Every institution that I have worked with has a number of these. They are usually driven by a handful of tables. Keep in mind that Oracle DOES synchronize basic job data, which in my experience has dramatically reduced the number of “read impacts” for our clients. There are a number of ways to make the data available to the impacted process. I have employed the following with my clients the most often: database links (or equivalent), table replication (everything from Golden Gate to homegrown stuff), and custom messaging. I generally avoid custom messaging unless it makes sense. I tend to recommend what is most appropriate for the given client based on their technology comfort, budget, and timeline. Fancy, complex solutions can end very badly if the institution cannot govern them effectively with their own resources.

I hope this helps and good luck with your split efforts!

Want to learn more?

Myron Wintonyk, PeopleSoft Student Architect at University of Calgary, and I will be co-presenting a Technical session titled Split
Technical Deep Dive of “Subscriber-Only” Split integration Model on March 19, 2012, 12:45 PM – 1:45 pm. In this session we will discuss the details of setting up the “Subscriber-Only” split integration model. Discussion will include Gateway, Queue, Service Operation, and Routing configuration considerations. Potential data cleanup requirements will be discussed so that  you can plan for cleansing person data prior to splitting your database. In addition, an example message enabled batch (SQR) and online (PeopleCode) customization will be reviewed to give you a deeper understanding of the effort and steps involved in split enabling your custom routines. Finally, the presenters will explain the best practices for verifying and testing your split environment to ensure that HCM and CS are in sync and stay in sync. Although the focus of this session is the “Subscriber Only” model, most content will be of interest to anyone who wishes to split the Databases or to integrate with PeopleSoft CS or HCM in any way.

We’ve tried something different with this report and it was a breakthrough for me. It’s short! That was hard to accomplish as there’s just so much interesting material that a data geek like me and my team can find. We resolved to just focus on key findings and recommendations that, as it turns out, are pretty common sense. And, here’s a secret: while it’s just about organizations operating in multiple countries, I think the four organization types also represent organizations operating in just one country. So anyone can read this and get value from understanding their organization type in terms of how they are structured, where decisions are made, their focus and then how HR technology and best practices can help!

 What we found was that the Global type outperforms on financial metrics. These firms are highly centralized and standard­ized, with major decisions made at corporate and rolled out to local op­erations. They are focused on centralization and efficiency. Consider their cost control measures, such as globally consistent HR processes and data all managed through a single HR system. That advice is good for single country  firms too that have multiple instances supporting different lines of business or as the result of mergers and acquisitions.

The Transnational type outperforms on pro­cess maturity, technology adoption, and level of best practice. These firms combine aspects of the other three organizational types, leveraging ef­ficiencies, maintaining flexibilities, and sharing learning and innovations worldwide. They are focused on efficiency, flexibility, and learning. Consider their approach to balancing process and data handling standardization with innovation and flexibility. As organizations mature, they find the need for some flexibility as truly not all processes can be standardized.

Key Themes and Recommendations

Control costs. High performing global organizations minimize costs by developing an HR systems strategy, moving to a single instance of the core HR management system, standardizing processes and data, and moving to shared services supported by manager self service and an automated HR help desk.

Consider Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. Early global adopters are achieving benefits of SaaS from the reduced need for HRIT/IT staff, faster time to innovation, and improved user experience driving faster adoption and faster time to achieve outcomes.

Optimize talent management with an integrated solution. Organizations with an integrated talent management solution outperform, fostering innovation and driving key outcomes, whether built on a best of breed or an ERP-based integrated talent management solution.

Use business intelligence/workforce analytics for competitive advantage. Enabling an organization to manage with metrics is becoming the last remaining way to achieve competitive advantage. Move to adopt middleware, dashboards, and to put decision making tools and data into the hands of managers.

Focus on change management to achieve alignment and drive value. Best practice global firms involve everyone impacted by technology change. They define a vision that communicates value, gain consensus globally, establish a global governance structure, form a project management office with staff highly skilled in working globally and culturally empathetic, use global representatives for training, testing, or user experience fine-tuning, and continuously communicate. Good advice for organizations operating in one or one hundred countries.

This whitepaper is available for free download at http://www.cedarcrestone.com/serv_research_pr-031412.php. Please share this!