Arkalgud Venkatesh, IT Manager at Alameda County, recently sat down with me to discuss Alameda’s Selective Adoption strategy. Arkalgud is responsible for the county’s PeopleSoft footprint, including their use of Selective Adoption, and our conversation helped shed light on a few key pieces of strategy that can help others utilize what Selective Adoption has to offer.
Key takeaways
- It’s a learning process
- Change in upgrade mindset is imperative
- Functionality quickly, but frequent testing
About Alameda County
Alameda County, a county in the state of California, uses PeopleSoft Human Capital Management (HCM) and Financials Supply Chain Management (FSCM). Alameda’s technology team supports applications that cover over 9,000 employees. Alameda County has been a PeopleSoft customer since 2000 and they are currently on Financials and HCM 9.2 as well as PeopleTools 8.55.
Arkalgud Venkatesh, IT Manager at Alameda County, recently sat down with me to discuss Alameda’s Selective Adoption strategy. Arkalgud is responsible for the county’s PeopleSoft footprint, including their use of Selective Adoption, and our conversation helped shed light on a few key pieces of strategy that can help others utilize what Selective Adoption has to offer.
What does your company’s selective adoption strategy look like?
Venkatesh:
We utilize PUM annually to stay current. As an exception to the annual updates, we take the following on an as-needed basis:
- Features – new feature roll outs
- Compliance, security fixes – tax updates and other regulatory fixes which are mandatory
- Issues – fixes to the issues and bugs reported by business users, issues identified by other Oracle customers which are relevant to us, application and tools issues fixed by Oracle
What is your experience to date with PeopleSoft Update Manager and selective adoption?
Venkatesh:
We have been utilizing PUM and testing our strategy for over two years. We defined our strategy during our 9.0 to 9.2 upgrade, as this upgrade spanned 18 months during which several images were released. There are mixed feelings amongst IT and business. The business side is happy they can get some new features without waiting for big upgrades, but in return they have to test on a much more frequent basis. For our more functional folks we are using drip-drip philosophy, in other words, take it in very small chunks.
How, if at all, are your technical and functional teams working together within your use of selective adoption?
Venkatesh:
We have a great relationship with business. They understand what is needed and support us, we understand their needs and we are always happy to comply with their reporting, compliance and other business needs.
What would you tell a customer who’s about to begin the process of selective adoption?
Venkatesh:
It is a slow learning process. Have patience, collaborate with business and come up with a schedule and process. Anyone can be a PUM champion!
How are you rolling out new features and functionalities to your end users?
Venkatesh:
We deploy in test and brainstorm with business to see if a feature is something they would like. Business learns about new features from great conferences like RECONNECT or from Quest webinars and they then request the features to be deployed. Once they try it out, we deploy them as part of the following PUM upgrade.
Are you using Fluid? If so, where and how?
Venkatesh:
We are in the process of deploying fluid in Financials and plan to go live in March 2017. We are planning on deploying Fluid for HCM around June/July 2017.
How involved was your company in utilizing the Quest community, or any other user group, during the upgrade process?
Venkatesh:
As mentioned above, my team works with business to utilize all the resources Quest offers. We also collaborate with other Oracle customers, especially the ones we meet at conferences.
Do you or your company participate in focus groups for the PeopleSoft products? If so, what benefit does this have?
Venkatesh:
Our focus group involvement has been concentrated to the HCM area. We provide feedback to Oracle about what functionalities are needed and useful. We have been unable to participate much in Financials groups.
Where do you want to take your company’s solution in the next two to three years?
Venkatesh:
We strive to be in lock step with Oracle and their vision for PeopleSoft. We are contemplating Cloud and how it would align with our CIO’s vision. We are very excited about how Fluid can enrich the value of applications to our end customers!