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How to Ensure a Successful Implementation and Project Plan for WFM

Douglas HansHRIS Senior Project Manager, JCPenny

Mark JonesSenior Project Manager, JCPenny

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Presenting

Doug Hans PMP, SPHR JCPenney, HR Senior Manager HRIS

Mark Jones PMP JCPenney, HR Senior Manager HRIS

Scott Brown, President Sability

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WFM and JCPenney

Infor Workbrain WFM Started the conversion of 1,100 Retail

Stores in 2006 and completed by the end of 2007.

Converted two Custom Decorating Fabrications Factories and seven Retail Stores in Puerto Rico in 2009.

Converted 500 Custom Decorating Studios and Installation Sites in 2010.

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WFM and JCPenney

Have deployed the following Modules Budgeting Forecasting Optimized and Fixed Shift Scheduling Schedule Compliance Time and Attendance Attendance Management Tracking Reporting

Completed the design work for conversion of the Supply Chain locations to WFM.

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WFM and JCPenney

Some of the big impact items with conversion: Budgeting, Forecasting, Optimized Scheduling WFM Portal, to request time off, view PTO

balance, request a change in availability, view schedules and check hours worked.

Access to WFM Portal from any PC with internet access

Retro functionality allowing for timesheet adjustments up to 5 weeks in the past.

Notifications at the time clock for the employee “See Portal” for updated information.

Attendance Tracking

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Level Setting Today’s Presentation Content

The implementation and project learning are not vendor specific.

This is some of what we did when rolling out Workforce Management.

This is what would we do differently if we had the chance to rollout Workforce Management again.

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Agenda Topics

* Key Learning Setting Expectations *Business Owners and Business Process Manager Organized approach/ Dedicated PM Use Best Practices from Vendor and Consultants Load and Stress testing Forecasting, Budgeting and Optimized Scheduling *Change Management Local Practices/ Standardization/ Polices/ Focus

Groups Reporting: On Demand/Overnight/ One version of

the truth *Business Continuality and Disaster Recovery

Planning

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Setting Expectations

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Setting Expectations Expectations are:

Your Clients’ and Executives’ vision of the future is critical to the project’s success, these expectations are usually verbally understated.

More emotional and have more breath than actual “detailed requirements:“

Most people have elevated expectations of the vision is of the end state of the delivered project.

The Clients’ and Executives’ impressions of the delivered project’s end state is a critical. understanding to having a successful implementation.

How Clients’ and Executives’ define success is “How close the project has come to their expectations”.

What drives all of Clients’ and Executives’ actions and decisions related to the project.

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Setting Expectations ETS

Establish Expectations Track Expectations Shape Expectations

Expectations are a moving target Communicate and Communicate again Not all things are known at the start of the

project so expectations are dynamic in nature.

With any lengthy project implementation, Clients and Executives can change, resulting in a change to the expectations.

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Business Process Owner and the Business Process

Manager

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Business Process Owner and the Business Process Manager WFM projects touch many areas that could have

multiple business owners and managers. Identify Business Process owners and managers

Can start even before the vendor selection begins

Can help define questions for RFI and RFP Is not WFM vendor specific Is necessary for the detail requirements phase Think about any area that uses the data

produced by the WFM as having impacted owner or manager

Need to have buy in, some “skin” in the game, to be a valued partner

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Business Process Owner and the Business Process Manager

Business Process Owner Can be a VP or Director level Owns the design of the process WFM will impact them and they have

expectations Has the ability to change the WFM

design Can be from different impacted areas of

the business, (Retail, Supply Chain and Home Office) for the same managed processes.

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Business Process Owner and the Business Process Manager

Business Process Manager Owns the operation and administration of the

processes. Ability to change the business processes and to

make minor design changes. WFM may require process changes or tighter

definitions of policies and practices. The business owner and business process

manager might be the same person, which can make the discovery easier.

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Business Process Owner and the Business Process Manager

Closely aligning all businesses in WFM you can: Make the configuration less complicated Lower the TCO (Total Costs of Ownership) Make for an easier upgrade process Allow for faster deployment Reduce deployment cost Simplify hierarchy design Lessen the need for additional security groups

If there are multiple owners of a process in multiple businesses, attempt to standardize processes to what is in the best interest of Enterprise.

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Organization and the Project Manager

Beyond the Microsoft Project, timelines, budgets, organizing project dependencies and status reports there are other key things a PM should do. Communicate, level set expectations and

influence Business owners and managers. An external Project Manager that is not closely

linked to the political environment of the company might be able to more easily ask the tough questions of the business owners.

The Project Manager must be separated from the operational duties to be 100% and focus tactical and strategic vision

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Use Best Practices from Vendors and Consultants

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Use Best Practices from Vendors and Consultants

Think Lean Processing Lean Processing works toward reducing

waste, movements, functions and activities.

Lean is most often associated with a manufacturing process producing a product.

WFM software does produce a product.

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Use Best Practices from Vendors and Consultants

Product Forecasts Optimized Schedules Reports

Process Editing Schedules Time Off Requests Fixing timesheet exceptions Closing Payroll

Implementation of WFM offers an opportunity for change

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Use Best Practices from Vendors and Consultants

Vendors and Consultants They have the multi company

experience to share best practices for processes and policies.

The conversions with the Business Process Owners can have more creditability when they help present the business case.

You need to dedicate internal resources to assure your companies specific requirements are met

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Use Best Practices from Vendors and Consultants

Co-locate teams of company employees and consultants The consultants have the knowledge, and one

good way to transfer the knowledge is co-location of consultants and company team members while completing the work.

If you know what your organization will look like after the implementation, you can structure the teams to assure knowledge transfer.

When the consultants leave, the knowledge stays with the organization responsibility for operational support in the long term.

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Load and Stress Testing

Scott Brown Sability

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Load and Stress Testing Benchmarking and load testing is

paramount to guarantee a successful implementation.

Establish load testing goals Push the system to the breaking

point. Three possible outcomes of Load

Testing: System functions well with adequate

(~20%?) growth capacity. System functions well with inadequate or no

growth capacity. System can’t support required concurrent

users.

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System Availability WFM

High profile system Necessary for business continuity

Continuum Ranges from system degradation to full outage

Solutions High End - fully redundant geographically dispersed

primary and failover systems. Low End - excel, or perhaps even paper forms such as

handwritten timecards. Both solutions need to be documented, tested, and

exercised.

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Forecasting, Budgeting and Optimized Scheduling

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Forecasting, Budgeting and Optimized Scheduling

Scheduling requirements/ramifications: Compliance (legal) varies across states

and countries. Organizational – must meet goals Sociological – often ignored to

company’s peril. Biggest part of the Change Management

task Communicate and communicate some more.

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Human Factors

Source: http://www.reliabilityweb.com/art06/human_factor.htm

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Forecasting, Budgeting and Optimized Scheduling

Huge ROI Reduce Labor cost, can be both as percent to

sales and actual dollars. Productivity increases Increased or guaranteed service levels to

customers. Based on mixed integer optimization

theory Fairly recent development (90’s) Although organizations are getting good ROI, it

is still a discipline evolving quickly.

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Forecasting, Budgeting and Optimized Scheduling

Moving from decentralized to centralized Change Management Confidence factor in generated schedules.

Pilot No yes men, go to the tough critics to win their

support. Generate and publicize a positive buzz.

Manager Discretion Constrained by budget. System must prove itself to each manager.

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Retail Forecasting Key Schedule Driver Revenue based Typically broken down differently by each

retailer category Special Periods (holidays) Optimized Scheduling is based on a

combination of forecasting and budget.

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Retail Budgeting Used to tune and confirm models Finance loves it – but must involve finance in the

equation since they are a back end driver. Finance drives the process from the top down,

starting with annual projection. Forecasting drives from the bottom up, looking at

what is the ideal model. Budgeting allows for the marrying of the two

goals, with the biggest driver being convenience and integration with scheduling. The end product is the output of schedules that

meet the financial goals.

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Mark Jones

JCPenney HRIS

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Change Management

Bigger than you think Most every associate was impacted with

the implementation WFM at JCPenney. Appetite for change from stakeholders and

business process owners needs to be gauged.

The best business process changes won’t work if business owners and managers are not championing the change!

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Change Management Front Line Employees

Time Off Requests, Availability, Scheduling, Access to information.

Supervisors Interaction with employees, How they do this

part of their job. Front Line Managers

Planning, Execution and Scheduling HR Clerks

Processes exceptions, Payroll Close, Tasks, Reporting

Unit Managers Planning and cost

District, Regional and Corporate Managers Available reports and business process

changes

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Change Management

There needs to be money in the budget to support change management. Most likely this will be listed under training.

Consider what the collateral needs are. Employee hand outs Posters CDs Web Casts Guide and manuals

On going training needs after rollout to support new position employees need to be planned.

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Local Practices/ Standardization/ Polices/

Focus Groups

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Local Practices/ Standardization

/ Polices/ Focus Groups Crisis of the day

Undiscovered local practices that are contradictory to WFM processes.

Standardized The more standardization there is the more process

efficiencies can be achieved. Documentation and training are simplified. Support is easier. There always will be exceptions based on State law.

This is the Policy but: It is difficult and expensive to program around

exceptions. Challenge the need for local policies and associate a cost with making the change.

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Local Practices/ Standardization/ Polices/ Focus

Groups Focus groups

Share the vision Ideally have leaders in each area of end

users to become early advocates Create a positive buzz Dispel rumors Fewer surprises Is this a place for use of the social media

in the company?

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Reporting/ On Demand/Overnight/

One version of the truth

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Reporting/On Demand/Overnight/

One version of the truthReporting Is not Business Intelligence (BI)

Most likely not used for broad based corporate wide decisions.

Is used at the unit and employee level.

Is used for daily operational needs to run the business.

Has to be user friendly and easy to understand.

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What Can Reporting Do? Increase Engagement

Provide a compelling reason to go to the WFM portal as long as it is reliable and timely and relevant.

Reduces late payroll corrections because the employees can see what is coming.

Reduced questions to HR Employees can become more self

sufficient Hours worked, PTO balance, Time Off Requests.

Reporting supports increased transparency and helps move work to end users.

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On Demand

On Demand If on demand is working from the

production database what is the impact when many units start running a lot of reports?

Try to limit on demand reports to what is truly needed.

Avoid nice to have, remember Lean. Will be drawing from the bucket of

available system resources when running.

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Overnight / Batch

Users want it now, but the business process owners can be a partner in level setting expectations.

Makes use of system resources during non peak hours.

Users spend less time waiting for reports to generate

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One version of the truth

All companies have multiple versions of similar data Hours

Are they all hours worked Are they all hours worked that are

productive and non productive but excluding training

Are they all paid hours including worked and not worked

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Reports High degree of unrealistic expectations Tied to the hierarchy decisions made at

the beginning. What is the impact if all divisions are not

going live on the system at the same time.

Find out what reports are being run before cut over to help determine your needs.

Justify the reasons and costs for any custom reports.

BI can be a related project that might need funding from the project budget to get at data that is needed at the corporate level.

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Business Continuality

and Disaster Recovery Planning Reviewing Risk Tolerances and Needs Once WFM is deployed and the

expectations have been met, they can quickly be damaged if something doesn’t go as expected without a recovery plan. Ask, “what if” questions:

HR files are late Schedule generation is missed Data Center down

Process Changes Remote unit payroll closing for natural

disasters

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Summary

Set the Expectations with Stakeholder, Clients, Business Process Owners and Managers Executives, Vendor, Consultants and Team Members

Don’t underestimate the time, impact and cost to get Change Management right.

Have robust and realistic backup and failover plans in places to assure business continuality and recovery.

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Contact Information

Doug Hans dhans@jcpenney.com Mark Jones mjones3@jcpenney.com Scott Brown

scott.brown@sability.com www.sability.com