Harkins Builders Modernizes a 15-Year-Old PeopleSoft Environment on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Founded in 1965 and headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, Harkins Builders is an employee-owned construction management firm delivering multifamily, commercial, and government projects across the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast. The company runs its financials, procurement, and HR on Oracle PeopleSoft.
Industry
Commercial
Service
Consulting
Solution
PeopleSoft on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Harkins had been running PeopleSoft 8.9 HCM and FSCM for 15 years, with a third-party provider supporting the HCM applications. Around that aging core sat six separate HCM point solutions for recruiting, benefits, certifications, document workflow, and pay statements. The whole portfolio was expensive to own and getting harder to hold together.
The Challenge
The version gap was only part of the problem. Harkins was behind on upgrades and patches with limited internal resources to catch up. The on-premise systems and standalone SaaS applications could not integrate with each other, the user experience was poor, and the environment carried known security vulnerabilities. Employees had no mobile access and no secure way to log in to the ERP remotely.
Harkins was also clear about what it did not want. The company had no interest in owning on-premise infrastructure or handling system administration. It wanted to be a user of a robust, scalable, enterprise-grade platform, not the team responsible for running one.
The Solution
Working with Oracle, Mythics positioned a program approach rather than a single project: transform PeopleSoft end-to-end and deliver a SaaS-like experience on infrastructure Harkins would never have to manage.
The work started with a detailed assessment, a third-party application inventory, and an ERP roadmap. From there, Mythics reimplemented PeopleSoft HCM 9.2 on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure with an Oracle database, lifted and shifted FSCM 8.9 to OCI, converted the FSCM database from SQL Server to Oracle, and then upgraded FSCM from 8.9 to 9.2. The program added modules Harkins had never had, including Expenses, Cash Management, and invoice imaging with OCR on the FSCM side, and Recruiting, Benefits Administration, eBenefits, eCompensation, and ePerformance on the HCM side.
Mythics handled OCI tenancy creation, network connectivity, architecture, disaster-recovery design, third-party middleware installation and testing, and demonstrations and training. The go-live was uneventful, which was the point.
The engagement continues today as ongoing managed services: SLA-driven system administration with proactive patching and maintenance, functional and development support, an IT help desk partnership model, and an annual get-current process covering PeopleTools upgrades and PUM image updates.
Services provided:
- Detailed Assessment and ERP Roadmap
- PeopleSoft Licensing
- OCI Architecture and Migration
- PeopleSoft 9.2 Reimplementation and Upgrade
- New Module Implementation
- Training
- Managed Services
The Results
- Every third-party HCM app retired. All six standalone applications were replaced with native PeopleSoft modules, eliminating the integration issues they introduced.
- A modern, mobile experience. Employees and managers now have mobile self-service, and 100% of user interaction happens through homepages, tiles, navigation collections, and WorkCenters.
- Secure remote access. Single sign-on authentication is handled by Microsoft Azure.
- Performance problems gone. Moving off aging infrastructure eliminated performance issues and improved scalability.
- Tighter integration. New connections between FSCM and HCM replaced the old patchwork of middleware.
- Continuous currency. PeopleSoft Cloud Manager enables ongoing patching and enhancements, so Harkins never falls 15 years behind again.
Three years into managed services, Harkins runs a current, integrated PeopleSoft environment without owning a single server or managing a single patch cycle.
