PeopleSoft users may be worried that they’re not maximizing current state business processes because they aren’t fully realizing the benefits of the latest and greatest PeopleSoft features. This may be due to the presence of older customizations, or not having a clear idea of how many customizations they even have or why they are there.
It’s possible that some of those customizations can now be replaced with delivered functionality, but making changes can seem overwhelming, leaving users unsure of what to tackle when. This can then cause friction between IT and business users, leading teams to simply avoid changes due to the effort required to test. Following Peoplesoft Update Manager (PUM) strategy best practices is a crucial first step.
With solid preparation for Continuous Delivery, users can expect to see decreases in the level of customization, increases quality and coverage of test scripts, and decreases in test script execution time, which ultimately compounds and leads to a reduced adoption time. By following best practices and guiding principles, you’re setting your organization up for success.
Elire recommends developing guiding principles in order to prepare for the continuous delivery model of PUM Images.
Suggested Guiding Principles for the Continuous Delivery Model for PUM Images
- Proactively evaluate PUM Image contents in a formally defined process with the help of proprietary tools and a highly facilitated and organized methodology
- This process should focus on improving existing business processes that leverage under-utilized or new delivered application functionality in a timely fashion
- Clearly define Roles & Responsibilities including who participates in the evaluation of new PUM features and formalizes recommendations for leadership
- Stress Consistency of processes over business unit uniqueness
- This includes less exception processing – challenge the culture of exceptions
- Provide more effective customer service through standardization of business processes
- Stress the adaptation of processes to follow PeopleSoft’s inherent best practices rather than tailoring PeopleSoft to support existing processes
- Increase overall effectiveness/efficiency by thoughtful use of available delivered system functionality
- Only true value-add enhancements (customizations/bolt-ons) should be approved
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- Challenge questions should always be asked, such as “Why will the delivered functionality not work?”
- Be transparent even when the message is difficult
- Clearly communicate everything the future state is providing and not providing
- Incorporate Change Management impacts and strategies throughout
- Including a detailed communication strategy from the beginning of your optimization or upgrade effort, with users interacting with business process mapping and the system on a regular basis
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- Understanding the amount of change an organization can absorb is critical to success
- Plan to increase automated testing coverage through evolution of the PeopleSoft Test Framework (PTF) tool to shorten testing cycles
- At RECONNECT Envision 2021, Oracle released the roadmap for the continued modernization and ease of use for PeopleSoft Applications. This includes additional automation opportunities, and eventually an “Intelligent, Autonomous PeopleSoft”
Within the next six months, most users will continue to operate on the Selective Adoption model and will be looking to partners like Elire to help remove customizations, support resource constraints organizations are currently facing, and move PeopleSoft customers forward to be able to leverage these future capabilities through best practices to reduce operating costs and enhance user experience.
For more information on optimizing PeopleSoft, particularly when it comes to identifying and removing customizations, view our recent webinar “Maximizing PeopleSoft: Tools for Accelerating Your PeopleSoft Transformation” . In the meantime, check out Elire’s PeopleSoft Services here.