HCM User Fair Offers Sneak Peek at New Quantum Human Capital Management System
Call it a glimpse into the not-so-distant future. The Quantum Human Capital Management (QHCM) project team held a user fair on Monday, November 11 in the Elm Ballrooms at the SMC Campus Center which offered attendees the opportunity to see firsthand the new system interfaces, learn about the system’s many new features and upgrades over the decade-old PeopleSoft program, and to have their comments, questions, and concerns addressed by subject matter experts.
The event itself—like the QHCM system—was grouped and segmented by functionality. The individual stations included reporting and analytics, timecard and leave management, onboarding and offboarding, position management, and supervisory management. There were also stations where attendees could learn about the new AI and support functions, explore future training options and CITS support, and of course everyone’s favorite, win swag.
Rolling out the new system is a uniquely challenging endeavor because of the sheer scope of the project: it will impact every member of the UMB community including all seven schools, all thirteen administrative offices, and anyone who draws a paycheck from UMB.
Judging by the feedback of the attendees, people are interested in the functionality of the new system, excited about the benefits that functionality will bring, and curious how it will impact their daily duties. At the QHCM event, they found no shortage of people ready and able to answer their questions.
Damita Banks, a Payroll Processing Associate from the School of Dentistry said, “I wanted to learn about the new system so that I can help our employees at the School of Dentistry. I wanted to see the whole process; from the time they enter into the system to the time they retire or leave the school.”
The process for creating the QHCM system began in the summer of 2022. After deciding to move on from the PeopleSoft platform, UMB partnered with Oracle, a U.S.-based information technology company that offers a wide range of business-oriented products and services, to create the new system. It’s estimated that over 50,000 work hours have gone into creating the system.
Jennifer Bannon and new-hire Gregory Trenchard came from the School of Medicine, Oncology Program’s finance department to see how the new system would impact their jobs. “Greg is a new employee with me, so he's been learning all the roles for the systems that we currently have. I just wanted to familiarize him with the new system. We were hoping to get the basic information about how it’s going to be implemented. What we're learning is that that part is a work in progress, so we will see that as it comes. What we did learn today is how the system is going to work for us as an employee, and then what we can do for our own units through these demos. It’s really exciting.”
“And we got some free swag, which is always nice,” added Trenchard with a smile.
Part of the process to ensure the QHCM system met everyone’s needs was to engage the UMB community at every step along the way. Kelly Ward of Human Resource Services was in Employee Learning and Development managing the Percipio system when the QHCM team came calling. She is helping the Training team to use Percipio to establish many of the training resources that system users will experience.
Kelly Ward has been enthusiastic about the development and rollout. “It's been excellent. We have been doing so much work and we're super excited. Today, I'm doing the employee self-service table and love sharing info and getting them excited. The attendees are super excited for the information that's now easily accessible to them.”
Allison Retzlaff is a member of the Huron Consulting Group, part of the QHCM development team. For the event, she was manning the Manager, Self-Service station. She said most of the managers have been curious about how they’ll access information. “People are asking if they are going to be able to see everyone in one place. They want to know if they’ll be able to see people at a level below and a level above them. They want to know if they can delegate responsibilities, and if they’ll be able to approve time and absences for them, and is the performance evaluation system going away? It’s a lot of good questions. Everyone I’ve spoken with has seemed genuinely excited.”
Allison Retzlaff credited the communications team with putting them in a position to succeed. “I know we have a great communications team. Praise to them. There's some anxiety, right? That's natural. There's some thought around how am I going to make this work? But again, I haven't heard a negative comment yet.”
Michael Brown, Assistant Vice President, Data Analytics and Project Advisor echoed the team’s enthusiasm. “It's going very well, extremely busy. I was excited that we've gotten, I heard last count was over 300 folks come through and learn about the QHCM project. People are asking questions about differences between the current and new system, they're asking about their timesheets, and they're also asking about effort reporting since that's a big deal on campus.”
While progress is impossible without change, managing change remains a key aspect to getting buy-in across a group as large and diverse as the UMB community. The Change Management & Training Team has been responsible for helping the UMB community understand and embrace changes introduced as part of the QHCM Project. They have participated throughout the entire project by supporting the project team and building a coalition of stakeholders to reinforce messaging at all levels as well as provide learning opportunities for end-users.