CASE STUDY

Delivering payroll reliability for one of the world’s largest energy companies

In conversation with Gary Fox, HR & Payroll Systems Manager for Scottish Power

Scottish Power

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Scottish Power serves 5 million UK customers and is a proud part of one of the world’s largest energy companies. As a utility company it knows the importance of no-fail reliability, and it expects the same from the financial systems that handle millions of pounds in payroll and pension payments to its current and retired staff in the UK. It’s found that reliability thanks to its managed services partnership with Version 1.

It was in 2007 that Scottish Power first opted to migrate its human resources and payroll systems to Oracle E-Business Suite®. The driver behind this deci-sion stemmed from the vision to improve customer satisfaction with the HR service, through developing more efficient and effective HR processes enabled by the implementation of a modern, integrated HR system. A key aspect of this vision was the move towards a self-service model and culture, where employees and managers directly update and access their own infor-mation, and where the key transactional processes are automated.

To support this, Scottish Power wanted a fully inte-grated system which could deliver all aspects of an overall Human Resource Management System (HRMS) solution; the Oracle E-Business Suite® was selected as a key enabler to deliver this vision. Following the estab-lishment of this critical requirement, Scottish Power was tasked with identifying a trusted Managed Service Partner who could deliver flexible support, backed up by deep Oracle HR knowledge and experience.

After considering managed service bids from a range of providers, Scottish Power chose Version 1, owing to the company’s solid track record in Oracle E-Business Suite®

The skills to pay the bills

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and its breadth of Oracle knowledge. Scottish Power’s internal team already have the capabilities to provide essential Oracle E-Business Suite® support; what it needed was a third level support team who could deal with the more complex technical elements, including specialist consultancy when needed, in areas like backup strategy or improvements in technical architecture.

Changes to the system since then, including its recent upgrade to R12, have underscored the importance for Scottish Power of working with a partner like Version 1, whose methodology comprehensively addressed the technical, commercial, risk-management and imple-mentation aspects of major system changes like the move to R12.

Gary Fox, HR & Payroll Systems Manager for Scottish Power, explains the value Scottish Power has gained from its long-term relationship with Version 1.

Q: Gary, Scottish Power had a choice of options when it was first looking for a managed services partner for Oracle E-Business Suite. What are the deciding factors when you’re making a decision like that?

A: What was important to us was finding a partner who had the knowledge we needed, and the track record in E-Business Suite®, which is actually quite a niche service. But what also struck us was that the Version 1 proposal offered so much more flexibility to our inter-nal support team than some of the competition. We were looking for a partner who could be flexible with

“Providing 24/7 support on our core Oracle E-Business Suite systems, we have found the commercial and operational flexibility offered through our partnership with Version 1 to be the perfect fit for our business needs. We needed someone who would align their service offering with our specific objectives and that’s what we get. We deal with lots of third party suppliers – global IT services brands - and we certainly don’t get that same level of customer focus from them.”

Gary Fox HR & Payroll Systems Manager for Scottish Power

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us, who wouldn’t put barriers in the way and would help tailor solutions to our needs.

Q: Is that flexibility unusual to encounter in sup-port contracts?

A: Flexibility isn’t always something you find in a sup-port partner, but it’s so important to Scottish Power. We wanted a partner who would be willing to go along with what we wanted to do with the system, rather than someone intent on making us fit to certain rules around a strict contract. It very much suited us that Version 1 was offering flexibility and freedom built-in.

Q: Some companies who partner with a managed services provider for Oracle E-Business Suite® lack in-house skills, but that’s not the case at Scottish Power. You already have an internal team with a solid Oracle skill set. So how do you use Version 1’s services?

A: Yes, our team is solid on Oracle and deals compre-hensively with functional tasks, but Version 1’s techni-cal team are fully accredited across a broad range of technology areas and have an Oracle Master and an Oracle Ace on staff. The technical guys that we deal with are highly skilled. They know exactly what they’re doing, they can find issues very quickly, address them

and find the solutions. The E-Business Suite® is a com-plex system - we tried to make the implementation as simple as possible, but even so, parts of it are very com-plex. We would look to Version 1 for projects requiring the “next level” of expertise, upskilling our team, system enhancements and bespoke developments.

The contract includes a number of consultancy based days which allow us to move ahead without returning to procurement. In very large companies, wheels can sometimes move quite slowly, but the flexibility of the Version 1 contract means we can take a much more rapid approach to systems development enhancements. It makes my team much more agile when it comes to satisfying business requirements.

Q: How have your IT requirements in HR and pay-roll evolved as your company has changed? Has that evolution posed challenges for you?

A: Being part of a larger global organisation our poli-cies and standards are decided at a global level. For example a recent decision was taken to move to a new technology platform for HR, but remain with Oracle for payroll related functions. That means my team has to become expert in a new technology domain as well as maintain their Oracle knowledge. That is unheard-of for

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most IT teams, as most companies standardise on one or the other ERP system. It puts pressure on us internally because we’re in a real time of transition. Version 1 is right in there with us, and it’s good to have them there. They will be providing additional support and technical know-how regarding integra-tion between the two systems.

Q: What has the performance reliability of Oracle E-Business Suite been like since you began working with Version 1? Have there been any problems?

A: We’ve had the system since 2007 and it’s a very stable environment. I can count the number of times on one hand that we have had unplanned system outages. In that respect, we’ve seen great flexibility and a real level of personal commitment from Version 1. There have been plenty of times when they’ve done weekend work for us to avoid us having system downtime during normal work-ing hours. In addition, the successful partnership between Scottish Power and Version 1 has delivered a ‘future proof’ system with complete self-service functionality, ensuring far better HR relationships with Scottish Power’s employees. It allows them to log overtime, change their personal details online, view payslips, and report absenteeism amongst other things. As a consequence, it has become a mission critical application for us. It’s not a system that hides away in a corner; it’s got widespread use across the organisation.

Q: Is Version 1’s work chiefly focused on Oracle E-Business Suite or does it extend to other areas?

A: Actually we had a situation a few months ago where Version 1 were quite deeply involved with our disaster recovery system, which is managed by another vendor. The DR system had failed, which caused our production system to fail, and Version 1 was able to get our production system back up and running. This is despite the fact that the problem cropped up very late on a Friday afternoon.

Ordinarily, I would have expected that a problem like that would sit there until Monday morning, because it was outside normal support hours, and

we hadn’t planned in advance to use some of our flexible days with Version 1. But Version 1 picked it up and ran with it and got things resolved over the weekend, so that Monday morning when the users started to use a system, there was no disruption for them. We deal with lots of third party suppliers – global IT services brands – and we certainly don’t get that same level of customer service from them when it comes to something that’s unplanned.

Separately, Version 1 has provided additional on-site expertise as Version 1 has supported Scottish Power in making some significant changes to the E-Business Suite® environment in relation to the group systems. This flexibility in resourcing both on-site and remotely is a key requirement for Scottish Power.

Scottish Power & Version 1 at a glance

Database managed service and application management for Oracle E-Business Suite, Middleware and Database stack for production and non-production environments.

Oracle E-Business Suite supports delivery of payroll in pension payments for more than 7000 Scottish Power employees in the UK and more than 13,000 pensioners.

Flexible support contract that evolves to support Scottish Power’s changing requirements including web listings for company vacancies and self-service HR tools (recording sickness, overtime, expenses, online view of payslips).

Highly flexible drawdown consulting days deliver top-level Version 1 Oracle expertise to a support a range of requirements at Scottish Power, including upskilling internal team, and design and rollout of innovative services.

Managed service includes proactive support for all aspects of the application (availability, performance, security, backup and recovery, business continuity, patches and upgrades).

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