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ABT Program
Department of Executive Services
Mail Stop: ADM-ES-0553
500 Fourth Ave, Suite 553
Seattle, WA 98104
phone: 206-296-4045
fax: 206-205-0640
ABT: Accountable Business Transformation Program

Program Manager Memo — Fall 2011

ABT Program’s Post-implementation Support Strategies

Based on my years of experience involved with enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects, I know that all ERP projects will have some defects, problems, and issues and produce a certain amount of confusion when they are implemented.  This is what I anticipate when the Accountable Business Transformation Program (ABT Program) systems and business process changes are deployed in early 2012.  It is important to set realistic expectations.

I want to share some of the work we are doing in preparing for the post-implementation support phase that will occur between early January,2012 and March 31, 2012.  This is to address the defects, problems, issues and confusion we can expect.

When we implement the new PeopleSoft Payroll/Time & Labor (PTL) system and the Oracle Enterprise Business Suite (EBS) financial system in early 2012, the ABT Program Team and the newly formed Business Resource Center (BRC) will be blended and organized to provide a high level of quality support to all King County agencies and the nearly 125 external King County Trust and Agency Districts (districts that King County is acting as Treasurer in managing their funding).   The ABT Program and the BRC will also provide the technical support for the new Hyperion budget system when it is implemented as well, which is planned for February of 2012.  The following are some of the steps the ABT Program and the County will take to reduce the impact of the many changes resulting from the implementation of the new business processes and systems:

  • Working with the business owners, we will prioritize business processes to allow us to quickly identify the highest priority defects and issues.
  • We will institute daily (twice daily if required) issue and defect review meetings to prioritize and assign the functional and technical work. 
  • We will proactively monitor certain business processes and activities to ensure completion and minimize risk.  Some examples include:
    • Review data provided by agency time feeder systems for reasonableness.
    • Monitor special district use of interfaces and data to ensure they understand what to do.
    • Monitor agency use of interfaces to ensure that the critical data sets are being transmitted.
  • We will provide onsite support to some critical activities such as Cash Management and employee self-service time entry.
  • We will provide production laboratories where users can bring questions and transactions for processing.
  • We will use our intranet to report on common problems and solutions we have identified.

It is my objective to make the transition to the new business processes and systems as smooth and anxiety-free as possible.  That is why we are spending time and resources on planning how we provide support during the stabilization period.  The above list of strategies is only a start.  We will complete this planning work in October 2011 and at that time; I will be able to provide a more comprehensive picture of our stabilization period support strategy.

There will be massive changes in some areas and not so big ones in others.  2012 will be a year of transitions and adjustments.  However, both the ABT Program and BRC are taking steps to minimize and handle any defects, problems, issues and confusion when they appear during the stabilization period.

Mike Herrin
ABT Program Manager

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