Minneapolis-based commercial real estate company The Opus Group® was struggling after implementing Oracle Human Capital Management (HCM) with another implementation partner. Out of four Oracle partners who engaged with Opus during the sales cycle, Opus selected the one with a significantly lower price, but a suspiciously rapid timeline. “They promised everything within five months and told us that most of the support would be onshore,” says Linda Gonzales, chief information officer, Opus Holding, L.L.C. “100% of the support ended up being offshore, necessitating 6:30am meetings. There was a significant language barrier, so lots of things were lost in translation. We only saw the HCM solution in a testing environment for two weeks before go-live, and it did not work as expected or as promised,” continues Gonzales.
Oracle Recruiting Cloud was not properly implemented and began sending out obscure emails to job candidates – “not a great first impression,” says Gonzales. Post go-live support was a helpdesk process with no guidance, training, or advisement.
Any of this sound familiar? With a half-working system and sketchy support, Opus was left with:
- Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence (OTBI) was reported as insufficient/unusable, and Opus had been told that all reports needed to be BI Publisher reports.
- Seeded dashboards were not adequate and custom dashboards were needed. This resulted in Opus having to pay a recurring fee to purchase the previous partner’s dashboards/reports.
- Insufficient configuration/training on how to use the application appropriately with responsive user interface.
- Previous partner told Opus the matrix managers functionality would not work for them as their requirements were too complex.
- Opus was told documents of records were out of box and no customizations were allowed in this area.
- Needed multiple work schedules for absence but were told the system would only function with one work schedule. Also, absence requests needed to be limited so people could not retroactively change absence records.
- Workforce Compensation plans were not functioning as expected or not setup at all for upcoming compensation cycles.
- Recruiters performed all functionality for requisition creation instead of hiring managers. Opus was not confident in the system and did not want to allow the hiring managers access. Instead, they sent emails to the recruiters to create the requisitions on their behalf.
- Notification templates for Oracle Recruiting Cloud were not set up so they could track when and what was sent out.
The rescue plan: high touch post go-live support at a reasonable cost
Opus’ Finance team had an existing relationship with Alithya and called for advice. “We reached out to Alithya to see if there was anything they could do to help us in our extreme time of need,” says Gonzales. “They said ‘awesome,’ jumped on a call with us and said, ‘we can start next week.’ Alithya has been so amazing to step in and assist with everything we’ve asked of them, and we’ve asked a lot. Some areas of the system have been completely rewritten, and the reconfiguration has gone phenomenally well. Every member of the team is professional and extremely knowledgeable. The system is now implemented fully and correctly - with no band aids,” continues Gonzales.
After just two months, Opus has a fully functional Oracle HCM system integrated with JDE Payroll.
During the rescue plan, Alithya:
- Provided Oracle Transactional Business Intelligence, (OTBI), training to teach the team to create their own reports.
- The Opus team was originally told the seeded dashboards and reports would not function for them, but Alithya determined the root cause of the issue to be missing or incorrect data in the system. Once the data clean-up plan was completed, the seeded dashboards/reports provided the functionality needed by the Opus team.
- “There’s a specific dashboard that our board likes to see, and Alithya was able to generate this within a week and a half. This was phenomenal,” says Gonzales.
- Collected requirements regarding Responsive UI. Configured and trained Opus on how to use the correct functionality in the system.
- Collected requirements for Employee Self Service, Member Self Service, and Admin views. Configured the requirements, tested the changes, and migrated to production within four weeks.
- Performed customizations within documents of record.
- “We were told by our previous partner that we couldn’t generate W2 forms out of JDE and integrate to Oracle HCM. Within 22 minutes, Alithya had this working. It made our payroll manager’s day!” says Gonzales.
- Trained Opus users on how to use the matrix managers functionality in the system.
- Currently gathering requirements and working through setting up additional work schedules as the system does allow for this type of configuration. Configured the absence limits that are now functioning in production.
- Requirement sessions were started in Mid-January. Configuration, testing/remediation, and migration to production were all completed in time to meet the Mid-March deadline. Created two new plans (an annual bonus plan and a discretionary disbursement plan). Also, made major configuration changes for the existing merit plan and annual bonus plan.
- Requirement sessions to review business practice and requisition creation process. Configured the requisition creation process to mirror Opus’ requirements.
- Gathered requirements and tested changes to the notification templates for Oracle Recruiting Cloud (ORC). These have been placed in production and Opus is now able to track communication.
After: Opus Group is ‘ecstatic’ with the ease of use
After redesigning and reconfiguring HCM, Opus is using Oracle as designed and per expectations with the help of Alithya’s Managed Services team. They have signed a statement of work for a Phase Two rollout of their Oracle HCM products including Talent Management. “We are very excited and thankful for employee self-service,” says Gonzales. “Employees can look up their info whenever they want without going to HR for the answers. The managers love it too. We recently went through a merit-based compensation change and promotion period which was previously very manual - via phone or email. In the past, managers received a spreadsheet for their department, filled out, sent back into HR, and the President would have to physically sign it - it was not a fun process. Now it’s automated and streamlined. It’s now so easy – we are ecstatic,” continues Gonzales.
Companies like Opus should not have to sacrifice what they want out of a system because their partner can’t or won’t provide it for them. Alithya listens to its clients and delivers.
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