Quest had the opportunity to meet with Wade Larson, Director of Human Resources with Wagstaff around their Oracle HCM Cloud integration journey.

Key Takeaways

About Wagstaff

Wagstaff, Inc. is a family owned, American engineering/manufacturing leader in the global aluminum industry. Innovation, service, integrity, and quality are the foundational cornerstones underpinning 70 years of successful industry leadership. Their primary products support aluminum direct chill casting for producers of aluminum worldwide.

Wade has been with Wagstaff for two years and his role is the project leader, primary sponsor, and driver. His background and experience helps him to understand the efficiencies that can be gained from an effective HCM system. Wagstaff is a great company, yet there were many opportunities to consolidate and modernize several administrative and HR functions. Transitioning to Fusion HCM helped us to consolidate several of these functions under one umbrella to create a “one-stop shop” for all things HR.

As a company, Wagstaff has been a long-time users of JD Edwards and used Novatime for their time and attendance integration. Our previous HRIS was primarily limited to payroll and benefits operated through Mangrove, and Assure product.

What were the drivers for your HCM Cloud Integration?

The primary drivers and anticipated benefits from the HCM integration include:

• Greater efficiency and effectiveness in delivery of training and development throughout the organization.
• More consolidation and integration of systems specific to HR, training and payroll
• integration of the succession planning capabilities
• reduction in administrative time specific to performance management and payroll administration

How did the Cloud HCM upgrade compare to previous upgrades?

While this was my first upgrade or implementation with Wagstaff, it was definitely not my first rodeo for systems upgrades and implementation. Compared to other systems implementations, this was by far the smoothest in my ability to get buy-in, implementation, and then launch among employees.

How long was the integration?

A full year. We initially rolled out core HR to lay the foundation. We then went into talent management and payroll. We rolled out gradually…but implementation had everything up and running in 1 year.

How difficult was/is the change?

That depends on who you are. For us in HR, it was of course a lot of work – but we anticipate high rewards and an exceptionally high ROI based upon the time save on HR administrative functions. For senior management, this was a welcome change to increase efficiencies and effectiveness within our administrative systems. For managers, this is “just another program implementation” that requires retooling on their part. Some are excited about it, some are neutral about it, and only a handful are resistant to it.  For employees, this is just different – not good or bad, just different. This means that for them, there were several who resisted the change because it was change. Several employees had resisted the implementation of technology up to this point. In fact, it was through this implementation that we brought email to all users. Prior to this, about 1/3 of our employees did not have Wagstaff specific emails. This has helped us to bring people up to speed – some of them felt forced to comply while others were excited for the change in greater capabilities.

Is there anything you would do differently now that you’ve gone through it?

Probably not. We took an aggressive approach to implement everything all at once. We knew that there would be challenges to implement all the systems at the same time – that he both the HCM package and all of its modules, the Taleo package, and payroll. That was a challenge. However, we knew what was coming. We have been openly communicative to our managers and employees about the upcoming changes and they have all been good sports about adopting the new technology. Overall, while I would not necessarily consider this to be “perfect”, I do consider it to be a very effective and successful implementation.

Would you make the same decision if you had to do it again?

In a heartbeat.

What would you tell a customer that’s about to make the same change in systems?

Be sure to clearly define what you want. In my case, while I thought I had done my homework, I was primarily looking for a new LMS. As I started into the process of looking for the LMS, it became apparent that there were many companies that could do other things as well. As we started down the path, we working nights that we had to take a step back, ask what else we could have done in addition to the LMS, and then we started defining more of our criteria.

In most cases, organizations would take the appropriate time to outline specifically what their expectations were, what will they were looking for, technical specifications, minimum criteria, and best case criteria. I had done this with the LMS I had not done it with the other systems because you were not necessarily thinking of it in those terms.

As we begin the process of evaluation, we reviewed demos from over 36 companies. Reviewed additional information from many more than that. By taking a brief pause after the initial LMS evaluation, we were able to step back and conduct a full evaluation of our systems and processes to identify clearly what we were looking. Once we identified this criteria, it made it easier to evaluate new products. With a handful of “can’t live without” criteria, it was easy to eliminate some contenders. In other cases, as we learned more about different systems, it became apparent that there were some things that we then wanted as part of the system. I am not sure that we would have known what we were looking for in its entirety before starting. However, some additional time to consider ALL areas for improvement could have helped us to save time initially in our review process.

To get back to the primary question: identify your specific criteria that you are looking for from your system. Identify what you want to look like, identify what “good” looks like me systems and users perspective, identify your deal breakers – those things that you just can’t live without, and then make any other evaluative criteria after that. This will help through the selection process.

For the implementation and change itself, be sure to have a change management plan intact. Be sure to identify what things are going to be changed, what areas or functions will be affected, and WHO affected. As you identify the “who”, it is essential that you begin the conversations early to get their buy-in and support. This will also help you to pre-train them so that when the system is implemented, they will be ready to go.

Any pleasant surprises from the change?

To be honest, there were several functions and systems that are included in the HCM package that I was not aware of when I purchased it. These were several added bonuses for me. For example, the talent review function will be an amazing tool over time. I had not looked at that or really knew it was in the package until we started to implement. It was a great surprise.

Have there been any changes to your HR IT staffing structure because of this move?

Not really. We have a shared IT group with individuals who work with the HR function in different capacities. They have all been instrumental in the implementation and launch of the new systems. They will just continue to do what they do best.

How is the tech team feeling about the change? How are the functional users feeling about the change?

Good so far. Compared to other implementations, they have told me that this has been among the smoothest that they have experienced. They are happy with the functionality of the systems and the response rate from customer service when we have SRs.

What kind of training did you have/provide to your functional users?

We had a few options:

• • In-person training: We provided this to managers and employee groups on the “how to” access the system
  • E-mail: We sent detailed explanations on how to access different functions and how to go about managing the processes. We also emailed specific process changes as they were implemented
  • Printed: We have a printed users guide that we created for talent management pieces.
  • Video: We have short videos that we send to managers and employees that provide an overview of process changes and how to use the systems.
  • Training from Jibe: Our implementation team provided training as we implemented. The primary administrative users were trained as we went along.