The City of Boston Relies on InFlight to Mobilize and Modernize PeopleSoft

InFlight makes it happen in the middle of an upgrade

The City of Boston, with 16,994 municipal employees, was upgrading from PeopleSoft 9.1 to 9.2. Although the upgrade was a massive undertaking in itself, the CIO was committed to modernizing the PeopleSoft user interface and mobilizing access to key functions at the same time. This in response to growing demand for selfservice applications, paperless processing and equal access to real-time PeopleSoft information—even from employees who did not use computers at work or home.

Despite the difficulty of making multiple changes during a major upgrade, the City was keen to modernize PeopleSoft HR self-service.

Waiting to modernize PeopleSoft is not an option

The City discovered the desired changes could not be achieved with their current PeopleTools. They considered upgrading to PeopleTools 8.55 to gain the functionality of PeopleSoft’s new Fluid UI, but the City could not initiate that upgrade until 2017, when they would still have to bring the development team up to speed on Fluid.

The City chose to move forward and immediately deploy the UX enhancements and mobile apps they needed to make the system accessible to all city employees, whatever their preferred mode of access.

InFlight’s flexible team and technology help Boston achieve more

Once the HR apps were deployed, the City was so impressed with the quality of the UX/UI, the speed of deployment (2 weeks), and the affordability of the solution, they expanded the project to take advantage of everything InFlight could offer, including:

• Deployment of additional mobile applications including Benefits Summary, Benefits Enrollment, Qualifying Life Events and more Self-Service HR functions.
• Extending apps to kiosks in public buildings for all workers to access as needed. This involved blending kiosk hardware and application software using a hybrid of native and web apps, as well as PeopleSoft functionality. Employees could even use the kiosk’s iPad camera to capture and attach supporting documents. The timing of this phase was critical: it had to be completed before the start of benefits enrolment—a six-week window.

A modern, mobile solution for a world class city

What Boston gained from working with InFlight:

• Everything they wanted for less than a partial solution from others.
• A full solution, on time, as InFlight responded quickly to changing project scope.
• Freedom to focus internal resources on the PeopleSoft upgrade, while InFlight carried the ball on the modernization and mobilization of the UX and UI—driving the project, integrating internal teams and functions; and coordinating vendors.

The entire project was deployed in less than six months. By partnering with InFlight, the City of Boston achieved much more than it originally envisioned with the time and money available—and now has complete control over the appearance, behavior and usability of their PeopleSoft software across all interfaces.