What is the Enterprise System Upgrade Project? The Enterprise System Upgrade Project (Enterprise Upgrade, PeopleSoft Upgrade, the Upgrade) is a multi-year, $83.5M initiative to upgrade the University of Minnesota’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and conduct a thorough reexamination and redesign of related business processes, to be completed in December 2014. This foundational technology upgrade will enable additional enhancements and functionality to be added in 2015 and beyond.
What’s an ERP? The U’s Enterprise Resource Planning system, or ERP, is the technological backbone of our operations and business processes. It handles:
36,000 paychecks per pay period;
114,000 admissions applications per year;
50,000 billing statements per year;
2M class registration transactions per year;
$490M in federal financial aid per year; and each and every transaction in the U’s $3.8B annual budget.
The system enables our complex organization to maintain regulatory compliance and perform mission-critical business functions. It is essential to the regular duties of 7,000 U employees and our daily interactions with nearly 70,000 students, and ultimately touches every member of the U community.
What do we use today? Our current financial, HR and student systems are PeopleSoft systems. In the case of HR and student, the off-the-shelf version of PeopleSoft implemented in the 1990s was not yet sophisticated enough for our operations, so these systems have been heavily customized. Over the years, they have become increasingly expensive to maintain and update due to these customizations.
Why upgrade now? Upgrading all three PeopleSoft modules at this time will enable us to address the following short-term and long-term challenges:
Vendor support for our current HR and student systems officially ends in December 2012. We have negotiated a one-time “best effort” extension of support through December 2014 to accommodate the upgrade. Without vendor support, we will no longer receive regulatory, security, and other updates required for compliance and will be unable to perform core functions.
Our current HR and student systems have been customized to provide functionality not originally available via PeopleSoft, and current business processes support these customizations. Many of these business processes have not been re-examined in more than a decade. They do not fully leverage new technological capabilities and efficiencies and need to be redesigned to support the upgraded systems.
Technological capabilities and user expectations have changed dramatically with the rise of Web 2.0 and social media technologies and the rapid proliferation of mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. This upgrade, once completed, will better position us to take advantage of these and other emerging technologies.
So what, specifically, is being done? This project includes the upgrade of three PeopleSoft modules to the latest versions, a required database split, and the implementation of a fourth module we already own:
Human Capital Management (HCM) to version 9.2 (the HRMS or HR upgrade)
Campus Solutions (CS) to version 9.0 (the CS or student upgrade; in this case, 9.0 is the latest version)
Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM) to version 9.2 (the EFS or financial update)
HCM/CS database split (required for the HR and student upgrades)
Implementation of Enterprise Portal version 9.2, which will help to provide a unified, integrated interface for users.
How will it impact me? Since the upgrade applies to the University’s human resources, student service, and financial systems, ultimately all students, staff, and faculty across all campuses, colleges and units will all be affected at some point. Daily users of these systems will experience a greater impact, however, and such users are being engaged early in the project to help inform implementation decisions. We are working to engage a broad base of system users early in the project to help us strike the right balance between the capabilities and efficiencies of the “off-the-shelf” PeopleSoft product and the unique needs of the University community. It is important to understand that this is a multi-year project; while it will change the way we operate in the future, most changes will not take effect until 2014 or later—so most current system users should continue to do their work in the same way they do today.
So does this mean we will we finally have [insert desired functionality]? It is mission-critical that we maintain software vendor support and compliance for our PeopleSoft ERP, so our efforts through December 2014 will be focused on the technological upgrade. We certainly expect to see system and business process improvements at that point, and maybe even before then, but most of the approved new functionality will be implemented after the upgraded systems go live. For example, the University community has continually asked for web-based time entry functionality to replace paper timesheets. We intend to deliver this functionality, but only after 2014.
Are the coordinate campuses involved in this project? Absolutely. Because these are enterprise-wide systems, both the technology upgrade and the improvements to business processes will necessarily include and affect our campuses in Crookston, Duluth, Morris and Rochester. System users and key stakeholders from each of these campuses are being engaged early in the process, and more will be involved in testing as we prepare to roll out the new technology and processes.
Why wasn’t this on the U’s radar? It was. Whenever we implement new technology, we do so with the understanding that it will require upgrades and regular maintenance. Over the years, the University has periodically upgraded to new versions of the system software and has built many groundbreaking custom applications to deliver functionality that PeopleSoft originally could not provide. Today, however, the off-the-shelf capabilities of PeopleSoft exceed those of our customizations and have the added benefit of receiving strong vendor support. We have known for some time that the need for a major upgrade was imminent, and preliminary planning and budget development for this project have been underway for more than a year.
How much will it cost, and how will we pay for the upgrade? The projected cost of this initiative is $83.5M from summer 2012 through December 2014. This includes all technological needs, internal project staffing, the hiring of an implementation partner and consulting team members for implementation, and contingencies. Going forward, our goal is to perform more frequent, less disruptive updates to the system. University leaders are currently examining new enterprise-wide IT funding models that will enable us to budget and pay for this and future upgrades in a more proactive and timely way.
It sounds like a big, long-term project—who is doing the work? The University’s project staff will be working jointly with an implementation partner, Cedar Crestone, to do this work. This combination enables us to leverage our partner’s extensive experience with PeopleSoft implementation and business process redesign, as well as leveraging (and further developing) our own internal expertise. The combined team will include between 200 and 300 people, comprised more of University employees than of Cedar Crestone, although the numbers of both will be significant. Since a dedicated and focused team is required for a long-term project of this scale, U employees will move to the upgrade for the duration of the project, and many will be “backfilled” in their home departments or units so that the day-to-day work of the University continues.
What happens to project team members and “backfill” employees at the end of the project? Project team members from Cedar Crestone return to Cedar Crestone, and project team members from the U return to their home appointments. Backfill contractors are released at the end of their contract. Units or departments that hire backfill employees as University staff must have a clear plan to transition backfill employees at the end of the project, including but not limited to absorbing them into the workforce where appropriate (due to normal attrition or to fill current needs), discontinuing them, etc.
What are the near-term goals? The technology upgrade will keep our systems running and in compliance beyond 2014. The business process review will enable us to streamline those processes, many of which are more than a decade old. We will also implement technological improvements, deliver critical new functionality, and reduce the number of unsupported “homegrown” modifications to the system.
What are the long-term goals? When completed, this project should result in improved efficiency and productivity for the University, a more cost-effective and less disruptive approach to system maintenance and future upgrades, and a better user experience. It should also enable us to take advantage of new and emerging technologies incompatible with our current system.
How can I learn more? Expect targeted communications to specific stakeholder groups, as well as periodic broadcast messages to the entire U community throughout this process. In addition, the project team plans to use online tools to share information and collect input regarding the project, to conduct periodic forums across the system to answer questions and solicit feedback, and to facilitate and coordinate communication and updates through established channels both centrally (e.g., Brief, umn.edu) and in your home colleges or units.
