Financial Close and Consolidation with Oracle Cloud EPM
Oracle Cloud EPM FCCS streamlines financial consolidation, enhancing accuracy and compliance.
November 12, 2024
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PeopleSoft 9.2 Upgrade
American Electric Power (AEP) is one of the largest electric energy companies in the U.S. serving the Ohio Valley and a large part of the Southeast states. Through multiple subsidiaries, they cover over 200,000 square miles and serve more than 5.5 million customers.
Elire has a long history with AEP dating back over 20 years. Elire employees were part of their initial PeopleSoft implementation and partnered once again in 2013 for the PeopleSoft 9.2 Expenses module implementation. Elire was invited to bid on an RFP for a major upgrade of AEP’s PeopleSoft core Financials application from 9.1 to 9.2 as well as merge the existing PeopleSoft Expenses (PUM 0) application.
Given the size of AEP and its large PeopleSoft footprint which included integrations to over 150 ancillary systems, the initial scope of the upgrade project was large and involved 20 Elire resources. After the initial discovery and requirements gathering, it was determined that the scope was even larger than expected, and the size and duration of the project, along with the number of Elire resources increased dramatically, bringing the number of Elire resources to 30.
AEP is a very highly customized PeopleSoft user, and the number and complexity of these customizations required more in-depth analysis to determine the best course of action related to retaining or retiring many of the customizations. Additionally, Elire was asked to take over several key areas of the project originally slated for other partners or internal AEP resources, such as testing and additional development work.
Right as the initial stage of the PeopleSoft upgrade project got underway, there were a number of upper management changes, as well as project personnel changes at AEP. The challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic were challenging as well. Adding to all of this, AEP was embarking on a major shift to renewable energy sources, in turn spinning off several of its subsidiaries.
With this added burden of having to dedicate AEP resources to projects related to the overall change in its business model, AEP was finding itself with less resources and ability to address the critical upgrade to its PeopleSoft systems, which were and are the principal ERP systems for the majority of its businesses.
Therefore, AEP turned to Elire to help rethink the overall strategy of this upgrade/update to be a more encompassing system innovation and optimization. Elire was able to help AEP implement and optimize new PeopleSoft 9.2 features, while optimizing many existing business practices across the enterprise and supporting AEP across multiple initiatives.
Elire was able to prove to AEP that we have the expertise, experience, and personnel to successfully lead AEP through their PeopleSoft FSCM 9.2 upgrade. They will be going live with PeopleTools 8.58.09 and PUM Image 39, as well as moving to Fluid navigation and pages when applicable, Navigation Collections to simplify the Fluid homepages and tile navigation, and the merging of separate PeopleSoft Expenses applications so that there will be a single unified PeopleSoft 9.2 FIN instance.
Initial rollout of wave 1 PTF scripts will be included with the upgrade, and there are plans to continue the growth of PTF test script coverage post go live as well. After successfully completing and delivering the Phase 1 Scope and Requirements gathering, Elire is moving forward with the subsequent stages of the upgrade project. Go live is set for summer 2022.
American Electric Power (AEP) is one of the largest electric energy companies in the U.S. serving the Ohio Valley and a large part of the Southeast states. Through multiple subsidiaries, they cover over 200,000 square miles and serve more than 5.5 million customers.
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