A Little (PeopleSoft) Help Goes a Long Way
I was manning the booth at this year’s Oracle OpenWorld. The IT Director from a prospective customer approached and saw our sign that said “The PeopleSoft Experts.”
He said, “So you guys are PeopleSoft experts?”
“Yes sir, we are,” I replied.
“Have you helped any customers upgrade to 9.2?”
Yes sir, we have. How can we help you?”
He proceeded to call over four other members of his team – others from IT and the HR Director. In this organization’s case, they have typically done their past upgrades completely on their own, without any kind of outside consulting support. But 9.2, with the PeopleSoft Update Manager, many enhancements, and mobile capabilities had them thinking that maybe they don’t have all the knowledge that they need in-house to do this one right. I was impressed by their self-awareness; in many projects, knowing what you don’t know is such a key element.
Fast forward: we’ve talked some more over the last few weeks and it looks like we’re going to do some upgrade planning, provide a technical architect to make sure their environment is set up for success with 9.2, and a PeopleTools developer to assist with bringing some of their customizations forward into the new release. It won’t be a strategic, landscape-altering project for us or them, but this additional project assistance that we’ll do for them could make a big difference in their success in upgrading to the new release.
Sometimes, it’s the little things. Not everything has to be a dramatic upheaval to make a big impact on the organization.
The bigger point is they weren’t looking for a “partner” in the traditional, holistic sense of the term, something consulting firms love to talk about in marketing literature. They just needed some help in a few areas they weren’t sure about.
MIPRO has an abundance of PeopleSoft expertise and we’ll be able to help them. I suspect many other customers are in the same boat: they don’t need to shake the earth with a bare-metal project from the ground up, but they could use some incremental assistance to make sure a big upgrade goes smoothly. They just need to contact us with their areas of concern. We’re happy to help.
