The phones have been quiet following the recent upgrade to the PeopleSoft Finance system, which is welcome music to the ears of everyone involved in the project.

While the campus community celebrated Homecoming all around them, Queen’s staff and IBM partners worked around the clock all weekend to carry out the university’s latest effort to update and improve the core administrative systems.

“We have reached a new level of maturity around projects,” says Caroline Davis, Vice-Principal (Finance and Administration). “We’ve now had two very successful PeopleSoft-related projects: the PeopleTools upgrade in April and the recent Finance upgrade.”

A project of this type can be challenging, notes Ms. Davis, particularly when the measure of success is that no one experiences any major issues with the new version release. Significant effort went into testing at every level of the application with an estimated 16,250 hours invested in the upgrade.

“Change can be difficult. We were all very aware of the impact to our users and respectful of their time,” says Heather Woermke, Controller. “PeopleSoft is our core administrative system. People rely on it to do their jobs.”

With the PeopleSoft Finance upgrade complete, the university continues to build on the success of previous implementations and upgrades and identify opportunities to do even better. This information provides a strong foundation as Queen’s prepares for the next upgrades of the PeopleSoft system for both Human Resources and Student (SOLUS).

Members of the Queen’s community are encouraged to visit the PeopleSoft upgrade community to access information about the coming HR/CS project. If you have any questions, please email psupgrade9.2@queensu.ca.