CSC Guides BAE Systems Through PeopleSoft Upgrade
Client: BAE Systems, North America
Challenge: Revamp business processes and complete a major PeopleSoft human resources and payroll upgrade for nine business groups.
Solution: Collaborate with BAE Systems' HR and payroll staff on the upgrade from PeopleSoft 7.51 to PeopleSoft 8.8.
Results: The new system allows BAE Systems employees to handle routine paperwork for themselves, while streamlining procedures and reducing paperwork. The completed project also gives BAE Systems better tools for its users, more efficient processes and a more complete view of its employees.
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CSC drew on experience and teamwork with its client when it helped BAE Systems NA revamp its business processes and complete a major PeopleSoft human resources and payroll upgrade.
BAE Systems NA, working with CSC PeopleSoft specialists, completed its upgrade from PeopleSoft 7.51 to PeopleSoft 8.8 in August 2004. The company is the North American business unit of United Kingdom defense electronics and information systems firm BAE Systems, with which CSC has an extensive information technology services outsourcing relationship. The new system allows BAE Systems employees to handle routine paperwork for themselves, and streamlines procedures and reduces paperwork.
The company needed to upgrade to the new system because PeopleSoft was eliminating support for version 7.51. Rather than doing a routine upgrade, though, "The client took the opportunity of doing the upgrade to do a lot of business process change and key decustomization of the PeopleSoft product," says Ed Estes, PeopleSoft program manager for CSC.
Listening to find the perfect fit
The PeopleSoft team, led by Bernie McDaniel (BAE Systems NA) and Estes, began their work with site visits in which their primary task was listening. In workshops, in conversations, in open sessions, the PeopleSoft team listened to what HR and payroll staff perceived as a lack of fit between their established practices and the PeopleSoft 7.51 version used at BAE Systems since 1996.
CSC's PeopleSoft experts focused on the technical aspect of the implementation. With the information garnered from these meetings with knowledgeable and veteran staff, the team proposed that the company take action in three phases: conversion, consolidation and upgrade.
Conversion to consolidation
BAE Systems first enlisted CSC in October 2000 to help it convert newly acquired business units to PeopleSoft. Between 2000 and 2003, the PeopleSoft project accomplished conversions of payroll and human resources for nine business groups.
Each group, however, still retained separate business processes and practices; for example, three business groups ran their own payroll and human resources on PeopleSoft. In this first step, then, the units individually adopted the company tool. This helped them retain a sense of autonomy and gave them time to contrast their legacy human resources and payroll tools with the PeopleSoft solution.
Each conversion required an average of two to three thousand staff hours; the total conversion took 20,000 hours. With all business units on PeopleSoft, BAE Systems and CSC had a solid foundation for the consolidation that would come next.
By June 2003, all of BAE Systems NA was running payroll and human resources on one of two instances of PeopleSoft. But all of the systems needed to move to a single instance so that all company data could be stored in a single location. During the consolidation phase, the two PeopleSoft instances that then existed were merged into a single corporate instance in Rockville, Md.
The move from conversion to consolidation was smoothed by the gradual adjustment afforded each business group.
By September 2003, all the BAE Systems staff looked at the same data and used tools in the same way with the same processes. This unification of disparate systems and processes across business groups opened the possibility of still greater savings in related processing costs. Better still, selected human resources and payroll tasks were now within control of the individual employee.
Further consolidation came about when the three centers (in California, Maryland and Texas) dedicated to payroll processing were replaced with a single center. The efficiency that resulted meant no more paychecks distributed by hand or delayed by holidays.
Upgrade to results
After completing the conversion and consolidation steps, the PeopleSoft project team undertook the upgrade of PeopleSoft itself. CSC had 15 developers working on the project, which included redevelopment of programs and more than 300 interfaces to disparate systems and generated reports and queries. The maturity of CSC’s PeopleSoft team was a key factor for this phase; most had been involved in previous implementations.
CSC also installed a new hardware infrastructure at its Newark Data Center (NDC) in Newark, Del. This aspect of the upgrade made the Center a leading-edge operation technologically. When the PeopleSoft project closes, those servers now holding human resources data in Rockville will become the hot backup for the primary data storage site, the NDC.
The working relationship between BAE Systems and CSC helped smooth this phase of the project; when CSC had a more difficult time than expected installing the new hardware and software infrastructure, the client worked with CSC to test and fine-tune the problematic systems.
The completed PeopleSoft project gives BAE Systems better tools for its users, more efficient processes and a more complete view of its employees.
PeopleSoft 8.8 is a completely Web-based tool, making it easier to deploy and to deploy more widely, and it allows easier access by the individual user. The new PeopleSoft permits two features particularly attractive to BAE Systems NA and to the staff who had advised the project team about special needs of HR and payroll: e-Pay and e-Profile.
e-Pay, the electronic paycheck "stub," is one of the biggest process improvements in the upgrade. By allowing employees to access their paystubs online, BAE Systems saves costs for paper handling and for postage, obviates the need for paper handling of employee data and reduces the need for storage of employee data.
e-Profile, the record of employee personal and work information, allows the employee to maintain his or her own profile and contact information. Furthermore, changes are made in real time—no more waiting for processing at a distant office by a third person.
The new PeopleSoft system now provides a standardized view of BAE Systems' business units and employees. Prior to the conversion, consolidation and upgrade, each unit kept track of its own employees but there was little visibility into employees across the company. Estes says, "The standardization of the human resources elements will help make it easier for them to understand the breadth of the BAE Systems employee body and make sure they have the right people on the right project."