A Fortune 100 energy company with a large presence across the energy business starting from power generation and competitive energy sales to transmission and delivery was responding fast to changes in the industry. Creating an organization-wide innovation culture amongst its over 33400 strong workforce was identified as key to meeting and exceeding the expectations of its over 1.8 million customers. This brought an increased focus on modernizing its practices for managing its human capital across its office locations in the US.
After successfully migrating to Oracle fusion HCM from its legacy PeopleSoft HRMS, the company took the first step by creating a solid platform for its HCM transformation. It was now ready to switch its reporting from PeopleSoft to Oracle Fusion HCM to take advantage of its latest features like –
Reports and analytics rendered with creative visualizations on intuitive dashboards and personalized home pages
Predictive transactional analytics for improved decision making across the Hire to Retire process
Timely information delivery in diverse formats across a variety of devices enabling faster completion of transactions.
Leveraging the power of digital assistants, machine learning, and adaptive intelligence
Having identified the need for external skill and expertise for setting up the reporting in Oracle HCM, the customer onboarded DataTerrain for the following reasons –
Knowledgebase and expertise built by successfully executing multiple complex projects involving Oracle HCM reports setup following the transition from PeopleSoft to Oracle HCM.
Accelerated implementation methodology enhanced with DataTerrain’s pre-built Oracle HCM reports repository covering the following major areas-
Payroll reports
Benefits reports
Tax reports
Audit reports
Compensation reports
Security reports
HR reports
Absence-accrual reports
Talent Management reports
Successful track record of on-time and on-budget delivery
DataTerrain HCM Analytics transition methodology
DataTerrain’s proprietary framework is based on the key tenet of zero-defects. The following are the major steps and activities performed based on this methodology –
Analysis and documentation-. An Oracle HCM mapping document was separately created for every report detailing the business requirements and mapping them to individual components for feeding data. Oracle SMEs introduced stakeholders to the features of Oracle HCM during consultative discussions so that they could reimagine their reporting without being constrained by their experience with PeopleSoft. Missing elements were identified and DataTerrain SMEs(Subject Matter Experts) proposed alternate approaches and helped customer stakeholders make informed decisions. As an illustration, additional fast formulas and valuesets were created for additional entities required to address user needs in Oracle HCM. In a few cases, PeopleSoft reports were all also referred to finalize the mapping documents. Detailed development and validation plans were created based on the approved documents and signed-off with key customer stakeholders.
Development and validation – The mapping documents were used as the basis to develop the reports in Oracle HCM. One of the following reporting methodologies was chosen based on the size of data presented, availability of columns, and user preference-
BI Publisher reports – based on templates and custom layouts as applicable
HCM extracts in standard formats or excel outputs
OTBI – Analyses with rich visualizations embedded in dashboards along with the required fields and prompts for users to filter and obtain relevant information. Self-service was also provided to let users create ad-hoc reports, alerts, and dashboards.
Pre-built reports from DataTerrain’s repository were referred to accelerate reports creation in Oracle HCM as applicable. DataTerrain also front-ended the interface with Oracle to raise SRs on behalf of the customer and obtained solutions and patches for deployment. DataTerrain SMEs involved users throughout the lifecycle to ensure that issues are identified and resolved early. Users validated reports tested by DataTerrain testers and the approved reports were promoted to production. DataTerrain created detailed documentation and provided it to the respective customer stakeholders for smooth promotion of validated reports from test to production instances.
User Acceptance, knowledge transfer, and rollout – After transition to production, reports were validated again by users who then provided final acceptance for rolling out to the target user base. DataTerrain provided knowledge transfer to the customer team using the documentation created during the preceding phases.
The DataTerrain difference
While acknowledging the efforts made by DataTerrain for the successful on-time and on-budget completion of this project the customer spotlighted the following critical success factors for the project–
DataTerrain’s Oracle Connect – led to a speedier response from Oracle and core product issues were resolved much faster.
DataTerrain’s deep technical expertise – took care of a major skill gap and hurdle faced by the customer as they were new to Oracle HCM. DataTerrain’s integrated team of domain experts and Oracle HCM SMEs helped to smoothly translate their business needs into user-friendly reports in quick time.
DataTerrain’s Global delivery model with robust governance – resulted in faster throughput with increased transparency. Team members and SMEs across DataTerrain’s global delivery centers kept project activities moving 24 X 7 and help was always at hand to resolve issues. Users were involved from the outset and regular progress updates through daily/weekly and monthly forums provided enhanced visibility to stakeholders and accelerated decision making.
With all reports converted to Oracle HCM, the customer is now able to use its latest features and provide timely updates to improve decision making and responsiveness. DataTerrain completed this project on-time and has helped the customer accelerate its transformation and get faster payback on its HCM investments.