Commonwealth Of Massachusetts
Commonwealth of Massachusetts is recognized for deploying Fluid Guided Self Service
Summary
Commonwealth of Massachusetts is recognized for deploying Fluid Guided Self Service, in less than 2 months, and implementing Taleo interface through Smart HR, successfully to 6,000 agency employees that previously had no manager self service capabilities outside of Time and Labor, with additional requirements to meet the State’s overall needs for 110,000 employees.
Customer comments
What was done
Implemented PeopleSoft guided self service for HR transactions in 2 months timeframe where no MSS was used before. Also modified the flow so that core department users can initiate and manage the transactions on Managers behalf.
Why it’s great
Before implementing GSS, Commonwealth absorbed one the of its agencies PeopleSoft system which had a huge customization in place to provide the job action functionality. As part of the absorption effort it was determined that the custom functionality is critical for business. At this point Commonwealth IT team proposed implementation of GSS functionality instead to meet the need. Team was provided 2 months time to deliver end to end functionality for 6000 agency employees with additional requirements to meet overall state need of 110000 employees, in future. It was a huge challenge due to following reasons:
- State had no MSS self service except for T&L.
- State wanted to have these transactions initiated by a department admin but approved by managers.
- State wanted different workflows based on action/reason but did not clear rules.
- State wanted to implement attachment functionality, LOA and RFL action before they were released.
IT team, led by Saurav Khandelwal, delivered all these requirements on time with two small customizations. This was a huge step in making overall absorption effort successful.
What was done
Implemented Smart HR functionality to interface Taleo data into PeopleSoft 9.2. State has around 110,000 employees but Taleo (MassCareers) was only deployed for a subset of these employees. There were 4 major considerations to interface this data into PeopleSoft:
- Minimum customization - IT team wants to keep up with the images and hence want to reduce customization
- Flexibility in business logic - MassCareers has a long roadmap to include many more agencies in state. All these agencies have different requirements regarding what they would like to interface over. For example some agencies just want personal and job data, some want seniority information and other wants profile information. Solution should be built so it is flexible enough to accommodate these changes with minimum future development.
- Flexibility with Edits - As MassCareers grow, new edits need to be introduced to validate the data feed. This need to be accomplished using configuration.
- Ability for administrators to process the records and later for data to Automatically flow in - Initially HR admins should be able to review the interfaced data and then update the core tables with an approval. They should not be require to rekey the data. Once they are comfortable, data should flow automatically and they should only be notified if there is an error.
Why it’s great
IT team implemented all of these requirements by using smart HR functionality and building the business logic and edits in the smart HR template. The interface process was made smart enough to review the template and accordingly read the incoming file. It also mimic the save or submit functionality of the form to trigger the edits that were built online. This was all accomplished in 4 month time frame with 2 resources. The functionality has already been grown from few thousand employees to 10s of thousand employees without any additional code requirement. Business users feel so confident with this functionality that they are now promoting it to other agencies within State.
