PeopleSoft HCM Solution Consultant
Matthias Essrich

PeopleSoft HCM

PeopleSoft Fluid
Since 1998 I'm focusing on PeopleSoft HCM and supported many organisation during their PeopleSoft HCM implementation. The current version 9.2 offers a usability we know from LinkedIn or Facebook.

PeopleSoft dashboards are giving the employees and managers the information they need. And required actions can immediately started from the mobile, tablet or normal computer.

If your organisation is planning to improve the HR business with a PeopleSoft HCM suite I can support you through the whole process.

The HR business is in motion. Organisations have to find ways to get new talents on board and keep the best. To develop and implement the best tools for supporting the HR strategy and business of the organsiation we will start with a detailed fit/gap analysis.

The first results will be immediately used for the first choice of usuable tools. Or to develop the first prototype.

Agile or Waterfall?

During my 15 years of PeopleSoft implementations the waterfall principle was used. The results of several workshops and meetings with the relevant auditorium ended in a huge numbers of requirements named Functional Design Documents.

These documents were the basis for a sometimes long approval process. After the final approval the development could start. And the customer got the first result of the developments after "some time".

This was a vaible process in the past. The time has changed and the customer is expecting something like a prototype. The time the customer is waiting weeks before the first visible result is on the screen is over.

Design Thinking is the new efficient way of working:

Design Thinking

The development of a prototype might be take a bit of time. It depends of the number of iteration loops before verybody is aggreeing on the prototype. But the possibility that the customer gets what he really wants is much higher. And that is what counts,

The agile way of working is reaching the border if the customer and the developers are not familiar with Design Thinking. In this case the waterfall principle will be back in place.

Data Migration

In many cases PeopleSoft HCM is replacing an old system. The data which are relevant for the daily business needs to be migrated to PeopleSoft. Several questions are popping up:

    How many years of the past are needed?
    How do we save the old data?
    What about the data quality?
    How looks the field mapping between the old application and PeopleSoft?
    ...and many other items
The data migration is most of the time a bigger challenge as expected. The effort of the data cleansing is often understimated.

A proper realistic planning will help to avoid any negative circumstances.

User Acceptance Tests

The user should be happy with his HCM solution. Therefore it is important to get the end user involved. If it is not possible during the prototype phase (organisation stays with the waterfall principle in all phase of a project) an user acceptance test in required.

Getting engaged employees on board for the test phase is the key. With an entusiastic team the delivered solution will accepted and internalized by the users.

GoLive Support

The "life" with the new solution always shows some little issues. The migrated data are not correct or a workflow doesn't work as expected.

A fast reaction/correction after the GoLive is important to make the user "happy". It should not happen that there are rumours like "the new software doens't work".

Next Steps

A HCM solution is never finalised. Managers are asking for new functionalities, data have to be transferred to another application or some reports have to be available on a mobile.

The principle of Design Thinking is perfect to improve the HCM solution constantly

What can I do for your organisation?

With 15 years of experience in PeopleSoft implementations for large organisations like the Deutsche Bank, Unilever, T-Systems, ABN Amro, Visteon and Sopra Steria Group I'm a perfect candidate for your PeopleSoft project.

My prime responsibilities have been business analysis, designing solution, mapping business requirements to systems, leading the development of proposed solutions, organising of user acceptance tests, developing end user training materials, executing trainings.

I have been part of all phases of project implementation full life cycle, upgrade projects, regional and global rollouts, data conversion and support projects in various PeopleSoft HCM modules. Please contact me for any further information.