With the help of SpearMC and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, First Financial Northwest Bank (FFNWB) migrated their Accounting, Asset Management, and Accounts Payable functions to PeopleSoft FSCM in four months – all with minimal internal resources and no in-house infrastructure.

A session during Quest Forum Digital Event: PeopleSoft Week dove into how FFNWB and SpearMC:

1. Built the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) tenancy and PeopleSoft environments
2. Trained on PeopleSoft Core Financials and built the solution
3. Designed, implemented, and supported an all cloud FSCM solution

How to Determine If You’re Cloud-Ready

Before taking the dive into the cloud, it’s important to decide if your organization is cloud-ready and what solution fits you best. Ask yourself:

• Are we cloud first? And possibly cloud only?
• Are we just dipping our toes first where it makes sense?
• Are we on-prem first? Do you trust the cloud?
• Is there organizational alignment on what the “cloud” means?
• Is there a common understanding of differences between Software as a Service (SaaS) vs. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in our organization?
• What is the state of our disaster recovery plans? Is it mapped and tested?
• Can my organization easily spin up temporary databases for testing or evaluation?
• How do we evaluate the latest tools features and functionality?

FFNWB’s Problem

The challenge at hand was that FFNWB’s non-Oracle SaaS financial accounting software was not scaling with their needs. It was slow, lacked security and functionality, and left their team powerless to enhance the system or add new features. It provided limited options to support the growing needs of the company.

Being a small organization, FFNWB went straight into working under a SaaS model. In other words, they didn’t want to have a big, robust on-premise data center. They were using a SaaS solution that provided them with banking and financial accounting software. What FFNWB found was that while it met the needs of having no on-prem servers or IT staff to support it, it didn’t meet their needs when it came to performance or security. This was a major problem.

However, SpearMC guided FFNWB through the process of migrating to PeopleSoft on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). This new solution includes scalable computing power and storage, disaster recovery, and network-to-network connectivity.

When FFNWB approached SpearMC, they were shown a hybrid-approach that could address their needs of not dealing with a large IT staff or infrastructure while being able to have a robust software package that gave them the functionality, security, personalization, and performance that they wanted.

FFNWB’s Solution

To help solve some of the challenges that FFNWB was facing with its SaaS solution, SpearMC recommended its PeopleSoft on OCI: CloudShift Program to help FFNWB fast track its move to the cloud. This solution included scalable computing power and storage, disaster recovery, and network-to-network security. It also provided FFNWB with needs analysis, planning, sizing, pricing, a Lift and Shift (or Move and Improve) approach, hosting, Cloud Manager configuration, and full lifecycle management.

FFNWB’s net-new PeopleSoft implementation was a four-month project that included:

• OCI tenancy creation
• Demonstrations and training for users
• Requirements gathering and mapping to 100 percent delivered functionality
• Including configurable enhancements
• DR strategy
• Network connectivity
• Uneventful go-live (meaning no issues or disruptions)

As a result of the CloudShift Program, FFNWB achieved the following results:

• Time-saving consolidated reporting with automatic tracking of intercompany payables and receivables
• A streamlined approval process
• Stringent internal controls
• Enhanced reporting capabilities with multi-dimensional analysis
• Improved system performance and scalability
• Continuous patching and enhancements via PeopleSoft Cloud Manager

Some of the managed services that SpearMC assists FFNWB with include:

• User interaction with homepages, tiles, nav collections, and WorkCenters (all Fluid)
• SLA-driven system administration with proactive patching and maintenance
• SLA-driven functional support with proactive best practice security, functionality, and configurable enhancements
• IT Help Desk partnership model (remember, FFFNWB did not want to deal with a large IT staff!)

Some of the big differentiators that FFNWB noticed when running PeopleSoft on OCI (versus other cloud providers) included PeopleSoft Cloud Manager, end-to-end warranty on availability, performance, and manageability, PaaS toolsets, and the ability to leverage the database service.

Utilizing PeopleSoft Cloud Manager was especially helpful because it helps with PeopleSoft environment lifecycle automation while helping FFNWB avoid big downloads of Images. PeopleTools patches/upgrades download automatically because a subscription automatically pushes updates to them. The PUM (PeopleSoft Update Manager) dashboard allows users to track bugs and issues. To learn what’s new in PeopleSoft Cloud Manager Image 11, check out this video.

Conclusion

First Financial Northwest Bank wanted more of a turnkey service that did require an IT staff to support it. FFNWB wanted to just be PeopleSoft users, which is why they turned to SpearMC to help them leverage OCI to avoid worrying about the infrastructure. By running PeopleSoft on OCI, FFNWB can take advantage of the performance, security, and ease of use that OCI offers.

Check out the Quest Forum Digital Event: PeopleSoft Week presentation to learn more about how FFNWB runs PeopleSoft in the Cloud.