Beacon
Application Services:
SMS/PeopleSoft Upgrade Success Story
East Jefferson
General Hospital Upgrades SMS/PeopleSoft Applications to Prepare for the
Future
East Jefferson General Hospital is a publicly owned, 482-bed not-for-profit
community hospital, providing care to residents on the East Bank of
Jefferson Parish and the surrounding community. The hospital's Medical Staff
comprises nearly 900 primary care and specialist physicians and over 800
volunteers.
PeopleSoft Products
Upgraded:
SMS/PeopleSoft
Financials and Distribution from release 7.02 to release 7.53 – General
Ledger, Payables, Purchasing, Asset Management, Inventory Management
SMS/PeopleSoft
HRMS from release 7.02 to release 7.51 – Human Resources, Payroll, Base
Benefits
The Challenge
Migrating 8 highly customized SMS/PeopleSoft applications to meet East
JeffersonGeneral Hospital’s unique needs.
East Jefferson General Hospital was looking for the upgrade to eliminate as many of these customizations as possible, thereby having a system that could be more easily upgraded and maintained. East Jefferson also needed to ensure that the technical staff and end-users were fully trained to take advantage of the new features and functions provided in release 7.5 after the upgrade was completed – and without disruption of their daily business functions or adding additional staff.
The Solution
Teaming with the right partner for success.
To meet these challenges, East Jefferson partnered with Beacon Application Services and upgraded the eight applications, split between two instances, in five calendar months. East Jefferson technical personnel worked side-by-side with Beacon technical consultants experienced in the upgrade procedures, to execute the conversion scripts and accomplish the other technical tasks. First, the PeopleTools environment was upgraded to release 7.58 and the integrity of the system was verified. Then compare reports were produced to confirm East Jefferson customizations and provide an opportunity to choose how to address each of the customizations during the upgrade. Each of the PeopleSoft applications was then upgraded using a combination of SQR processes, DataMover scripts, and SQL scripts to transform existing tables to their new structure and populate new tables. The business personnel worked with Beacon functional experts to evaluate the compare reports and determine the business drivers behind the customizations. This allowed Beacon senior consultants to eliminate many customizations by leveraging the inherent flexibility of the new systems to better meet East Jefferson’s needs. Over the course of the testing process, the East Jefferson team was exposed to release 7.5 system navigation concepts as well as many of the new features and functions. This informal knowledge transfer, combined with formal delta training by Beacon, ensured that all East Jefferson personnel were comfortable with the upgraded environment by the end of the project.
A critical success factor for the upgrade was that East Jefferson be on the most current release so as to avoid immediate tax or monthly patch application once in production. With only days to go before the final cutover, Beacon and East Jefferson determined that we needed to go the extra mile and incorporate the latest unplanned release into our upgrade schedule. Working closely together, the joint team adjusted the migration and testing schedule to accommodate the latest release and went into production on time, to scope, within budget and without problems.
BenefitsThe successful upgrade laid the foundation for further process improvements that East Jefferson wanted to pursue, particularly in the areas of materials management and human resources. It also brought the Hospital to the current release level, ensuring continued support for the next eighteen months. East Jefferson personnel can now focus their attention on business process improvements possible with the current release and plan for the web-enabled capabilities of release 8.
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