Pete Murray, Head of HR Operations and Systems at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) discussed with Quest their journey to move PeopleSoft to the cloud. Pete manages the business processes that utilize PeopleSoft HCM, e.g. payroll transaction processing and administration along with various core HR processes.
Key takeaways
- Multiple options are available to provision environments that may not be available elsewhere
- Enables companies to be agile and work on multiple projects in parallel in a cost-effective manner
- Quick and easy to deploy to the cloud
About University of New South Wales (UNSW)
UNSW is an Australian public research and teaching university located in Sydney. Established in 1949, it is regarded as one of the world’s leading universities, ranked 3rd in Australia, 45th in the world, and 1st in New South Wales according to the 2017 QS World University Rankings. The organization has over 15,000 full time and part time staff, teaching and supporting various academic and research activities.
There are 10-12 personnel in total that support the various HR System functions—five are from the HRIS team and the remainder are from the IT function. UNSW is a large consumer of PeopleSoft HCM, CS and Financials, and have been since the late 1990s when they went live with 7.6. They upgraded HCM to 9.2 and PeopleTools 8.53 in February of 2016. Since then they have been focused on deploying fundamentals of PeopleSoft Position Management, Fluid and Guided Self-Service for Position Management, as well as getting current to the latest Update Image and upgrading to PeopleTools 8.55.
The organization is currently working through its 2025 strategy that includes the adoption of cloud technologies more broadly. We had a tactical requirement to start on Phase 2 work for PeopleSoft Position Management for the University. This included designing, configuring and testing Fluid Company Directory and Guided Self-Service. However, in order to do this, we needed a PeopleSoft instance that was on PeopleTools 8.55 and Fluid User Interface. As our in-house environments were on PeopleTools 8.53, we provisioned a PeopleSoft HCM instance in the Oracle Public Cloud within about two business days so that we can seamlessly continue with our Project Work without any delays. Once our in-house environments have been upgraded to PeopleTools 8.55, we will migrate our Fluid Company Directory and Guided Self-Service project work to the in-house test instance and complete a testing cycle for deployment.
The environment deployed in the cloud was used for development/configuration of UNSW requirements for Fluid Company Directory and Guided Self-Service until the in-house environments were ready.
Very short. Once the paperwork was complete, within two business days we had access to an instance.
It was a very positive experience. It enabled us to meet our timelines. There are multiple options available to provision environments (at the minimum pre-requisite levels) if they are not available on-premise. It has enabled us to be agile and have multiple project work products delivered in parallel in a cost-effective manner.
None. The longest time was getting the internal paperwork and signatures in place.
The biggest benefit is about being able to continue with PeopleSoft Position Management Phase 2 work that we wouldn’t have been able to do until we had a PeopleTools 8.55 instance with Fluid deployed in-house. This would have meant a six-month delay to our project. Provisioning a PeopleSoft instance in the cloud allowed the business to continue with PeopleSoft Position Management project work and the IT team in parallel to upgrade the on-premise instance. The cloud instance allowed us to be agile as an organization and deliver business benefits earlier to the organization.
During the Position Management project, we could look and select new features that Oracle delivered that were applicable to the Position Management Project and in particular to Guided Self-Service and Fluid Company Directory.
We worked with Presence of IT who is a specialist provider in PeopleSoft HCM Consulting and experienced with Oracle Public Cloud. Presence of IT has been engaged by UNSW for the HCM upgrade from 7.6 to 9.2 and, since then, for the Position Management Deployment Project. In addition to providing project management, designing, configuring and testing the PeopleSoft Position Management solution requirements, Presence of IT was instrumental in recommending and provisioning a PeopleSoft HCM instance in the Oracle Public Cloud for us and managing all the environment management services around it.
Supporting strategic initiatives within the University and opening the HCM application to employees to drive more simple, efficient and timely outcomes. Also, providing a reliable source of employee and HR data for statutory reporting.
Cloud will be investigated as a platform to deliver faster, cheaper and more adaptable outcomes in relation to the strategic goals. Whether this extends to the production platforms is yet to be determined. This determination will take place in line with larger IT sourcing decisions planned in the near future.