Service Oriented Computing Platform for Shared Services Model

It is the need of the hour for business entities to revisit their growth plans and to perform consistent checks on their performance and operational utilization. One of the driving factor for the transformation of Application Service Providers (http://blogs.hexaware.com/pitstop/application-service-provider-vs-software-as-a-service-asp-vs-saas.html )to Software as a service is the change in the Information Technology Trends.

 Human Computer Interaction and Interoperable applications seems to be the cloud where the future software investments would be. Let’s look into the evolving service oriented computing platform which answers a lot of the present day business needs.

The Product based companies were quick to incorporate the service orientation in their product designs by mostly following the agile software development methodology whereas the Service based companies were quick to incorporate the shared resource pool to evolve the Shared Services Support.

Initially, the shared services model was spotted within organizations as specialized groups of system and vendor specific administrators and later evolved as ESSA (http://www.hexaware.com/shared-services.htm). The proposed service oriented computing platform for such shared services model would further enhance the customer satisfaction as the service design principles are followed.

Goin by the tag “If resources are not retainable, Let’s retain their knowledge within the organization” – the service oriented computing platform goes one step further from the traditional vertical solutions(CRM,TAM,.) by providing an SOA based solution utilizing the present day horizontal solutions(Livelink ECM ). This Open technology solution is vendor independant and can accomodate the existing applications of Oracle(Peoplesoft, Siebel), Microsoft(sharepoint),SAP,Kronos Workforce Timekeeper,.. by establishing a meta data driven knowledge solution for the shared services resource pool to work on.

Few Key advantages of this service oriented solution for the shared services model are

a.Reusabilty – the reduntant support (technical/Functional) effort is minimized.

b. Service Governance

c. Discoverability

d. Less Time consumption in performing a support activity

e. Knowledge Service Composition – enabling the maintenance of organization wide service data irrespective of their source department or technology.

Like the Peoplesoft Person Model which was based out of SOA, the service oriented solution design for the shared services model would make a huge difference among the corporate cube warriors. Let’s wait for more such innovative solutions to surface soon.

Peoplesoft Time and Labor Vs Kronos Workforce Timekeeper Part II

Peoplesoft Time and Labor Vs Kronos Workforce TimeKeeper
Kronos Workforce Timekeeper
The process of making historical edits using Timekeeper 5.0 is much the same as it was in Timekeeper 3.4.
Add Historical Amount (formerly “New Historical Amount” in TK v3.4)
Required fields (note these in the screenshot below):

• Historical Date (formerly “Apply to Date” in TK v3.4)
• Pay Code
• Amount (hh:mm)
• Include in Totals for Effective Date (formerly “Add to selected timeframe” in TK v3.4) Selecting this option ensures the information is sent to payroll for processing and payment.
• Impact Accruals

Peoplesoft Time and Labor: Adjustments to Payable Time
We may need to make an adjustment to payable time that has already been paid by Payroll. This type of adjustment is called a Record Only Adjustment and is made using the Adjust Paid Time page. When you make an adjustment of this type, it is for record keeping purposes only. The time you add / adjust is not processed by Time and Labor nor is the time sent to payroll.

Using the Adjust Paid Time page, one can add / delete time, or change existing payable time that has already been processed by the payroll system and has a payable status of Distributed. All the time reporting fields appear on the Adjust Paid Time page for editing. You can change any field except the Payable Status, and TRC Type fields. After you make adjustments using this page, the system does not process the time further. It does not run it through Time Administration or send the time to payroll. Time and Labor does publish the payable time to your Project Costing application.

For further details please refer the People soft People books.

Please Visit to learn about: Kronos Workforce

Archive Checkered Flag: Why Optim wins the Data Archival Race ?

Last week, I had been to a get-together wherein my friends had arranged for a meeting. People from different technology backgrounds were amongst the young energetic crowd. I remember discussing about some of the technical aspects in the present corporate world. One of the discussion was about archiving data : There was a wide misconception that performing database backups were referred to as data archival,… Infact that’s only one of the true factors. Moving on to the reasons behind archival is not only the need for a backup but for improving the performance.

As a first step people tend to move towards database optimization (Rule based or Cost Based), even then if there is no improvement in the database performance – Data Archival is the only solution.Having decided to go for database archival, there are a lot of products / Tools available in the market.

One of such Tools is the Princeton Softec’s Optim – Data Archival Tool. The Tool attracts the users with one of its four best processes – the Restore Process. Not all data archival tool concentrates in restoring the original data after the data archive. Optim has a feature of restoring the original data that was archived even before couple of years.And also even when the datamodel changes, archived data can be restored. Even if the archived data is corrupted the original data is restorable.Having known about Optim’s unique feature.Let me provide its brief overview.

Optim constitutes of four basic processes,

1. Archive Process
2. Delete Process
3. Restore Process
4. Browse Utility

Archival of data can be performed on any of the modules of Peoplesoft. Some of the reasons which urge the Peoplesoft users to move to data archival are

• Frustration of business users trying to complete the on-line Peoplsoft functions.
• Employees unable to access pay cheque information.
• Peoplesoft Payroll users unable to enter required employee data information in order to meet timeliness                                                                                          

Read More about Data Archival

Peoplesoft Time and Labor Vs Kronos Workforce TimeKeeper

Couple of weeks back, the google news portal was crawling in almost many a news source pages about Kronos and its upperhand than that of the renowned Peoplesoft’s Time and Labour Module. I was surprised to see the once market leader in Human Resources is being overthrown by the Kronos Workforce Central Suite. Yes, the reason being ,.. Kronos had worked hardly in identifying the end user’s concerns and various other problems that they were facing with Peoplesoft. For example : The Time and Labour module contains a feature in which the employee work hours are being tracked and fed back into the Payroll module for the Pay Calculations and Pay Cheque creations. Its found that ” after the fact / historical changes “ was not possible to follow with Peoplesoft whereas Kronos Workforce Time Keeper module supports the same. Many a peoplesoft clients are retaining their payroll in peoplesoft and are moving towards the product kronos for one of this reason.
Read More about  Peoplesoft And kronos