State Assembly Elects to Upgrade PeopleSoft
Within the State Assembly, The Office of Legislative Management ensures the daily functioning of the Legislature for the benefit of the legislators, their staff, and the general public. The office provides administrative and financial services, administers compensation and human resources services, and oversees the management and maintenance of all buildings and grounds under the supervision and control of the Legislature.
In 1999, The Office of Legislative Management implemented PeopleSoft Financials for Education & Government 7.02 as a replacement of its legacy system. However, due to time constraints, the Legislature was not able to deploy PeopleSoft’s functionality as fully as they had envisioned with some processes continuing to be performed manually. In 2003, the Legislature not only wanted to upgrade their General Ledger, Purchasing and Payables application, but also to take full advantage of the capabilities of PeopleSoft to optimize State Assembly operations.
The Challenge
As the Office of Legislative Management reviewed their internal processes, it became obvious that just implementing a new version of PeopleSoft would not maximize their investment—they needed to reengineer their work practices, automate approvals and eliminate duplicate and manual entry of data into spreadsheets. For example, although grants and special projects that crossed multiple years could be tracked at a high level using PeopleSoft 7.02 budgetary control, the detailed and meaningful versions of the budget and expenses were re-keyed and tracked on spreadsheets.
At the same time the State was implementing a new PeopleSoft financial system. As a result, the Legislature wanted to redesign its chart of accounts to be more in line with the State’s new chart, while continuing to support its own reporting requirements. The project needed to be completed by the beginning of the fiscal year and it needed to be accomplished within significant budgetary constraints.
The PeopleSoft – Beacon Solution
The Assembly’s IT department, in conjunction with PeopleSoft’s Upgrade Lab, was handling the technical aspects of the upgrade. However, the Legislature needed a partner to help guide them through the software functional changes to achieve their objectives. With a small team of experienced consultants from Beacon Application Services, the project started in February 2003 and went live on time and within budget in July 2003.
Beacon began with a review of the current configuration, customizations and documentation. Sessions were then held with the users to identify requirements, review current business practices and demonstrate how best practices built into the PeopleSoft solution would improve operational efficiency. The software solutions were designed and implemented keeping customizations to a bare minimum. Business processes were documented and the system was configured based on the new “to be” vision. The existing configuration was modified and Beacon implemented new and previously unused functionality.
Beacon also closely collaborated with the technical teams to ensure that the functional and technical aspects of the upgrade were well coordinated and the technical team was well prepared for on-going support.
Benefits
In addition to an upgraded system, the Assembly now has a redesigned chart of accounts that not only meets the needs of the Legislature but the State’s was well. The Assembly was able to take advantage of the flexibility in 8.4 commitment control to track the detail budgets and expenditures for grants and projects within PeopleSoft, eliminating the need to manually account for them on spreadsheets. Purchasing functions that were processed manually in the past are now done in PeopleSoft: requisitioning, contracts, items, return to vendors and request for quotes. In addition, workflow was implemented for the approval of requisitions, purchase orders, vouchers and journal entries, streamlining the process and providing greater internal control.
How Beacon Added Value
By working closely with the client and leveraging our technical and functional knowledge of PeopleSoft, best practices and system upgrades, Beacon delivered an upgraded system that meets the needs of the Assembly and maximizes its investment in PeopleSoft. As important, Beacon staff transferred knowledge during business process reviews, fit/gap analyses, testing and training sessions designed to instill user confidence and allow them to better serve the Legislature and its constituents.
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