Health Insurer Eases the Aches, Pains of Software Upgrade

When Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan went looking for help to upgrade its critical payroll/HR software, management turned to a trusted partner to manage the project.

While BCBSM’s packaged software systems undergo minor maintenance changes—or "patches and fixes"—on a regular basis, this particular change was more significant, requiring the transition from a client/server platform to a web platform.
"Essentially, this project was a re-implementation," says Roy Nesler, Director of Employee Services at BCBSM. "Running programs against the old software to move it to the new, web functionality may sound simple, but it’s not. These software modules are huge. We needed to do a lot of testing to make this project successful.

"We knew we were going to eat up a lot of time and money on this project, and if we didn’t do it right the first time, we’d eat up even more time and money. And we were not staffed to do the upgrade ourselves," says Nesler. To complete this upgrade on time and efficiently, the decision was made to bring in outside project management support with ERP expertise.

Our mission is to provide 100 percent accurate, on-time payroll. This was a huge project, and involved putting a lot of trust in Compuware’s professional services organization. —Roy Nesler Director, Employee Services, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan

At the time, BCBSM had a strong, four-year relationship with Compuware’s service professionals, who began providing post-implementation support soon after the organization’s initial ERP system implementation, and who continue to provide general maintenance support whenever necessary. "We’ve had a tremendous relationship with Compuware. I call them first," says Nesler. This time around, because of the size of the project and company policy, Nesler was required to issue an RFP to various vendors. BCBSM received responses from three vendors: Compuware, the provider of the ERP system and another services provider. Compuware won the bid for two reasons, according to Nesler: "Price, and the fact that we’ve had nothing but good experiences with Compuware. They are on-site, delivering for us every day."

Other advantages Compuware brought to the project included the support team’s experience working with multiple platforms, and its ability to leverage this knowledge, which made the transition from a client/server to a web platform seamless for BCBSM. In addition, since the original scope of the project did not include training to use the web platform, Compuware worked with the customer’s budget and found a way to incorporate training into the service agreement.

ERP, Project Management Expertise

Compuware took special measures to assign service professionals to this project—employees who had experience working on previous ERP jobs, involving the same ERP software provider. BCBSM relied on Compuware professional services to manage the entire project, from start to finish, which involved comprehensive, detailed testing to cover some tricky, unexpected changes.
As Nesler explains, "You can upgrade all the codes to the new version, but because (the ERP system provider) makes other changes that we are not informed of, it’s not really accurate to say you’ve ‘upgraded’."
For example, when it was discovered that the provider changed the software’s security module, "we had to find out how security worked, and that was a challenge. Then we had to change our security to fit the new module," says Nesler. Later, it was discovered that another change was made to a module that tracks demographics, an important piece of software to BCBSM’s HR/recruiting department. With unforeseen changes like these, "you have to re-implement things you had mastered before. This software is all about management," says Nesler.

And, since Nesler considers payroll to be "the most important communication that the company has with its employees," managing the complex payroll system changes was a serious concern. "Our mission is to provide 100 percent accurate, on-time payroll," says Nesler. That’s why "this was a huge project, and involved putting a lot of trust in Compuware’s professional services organization."

BCBSM was very pleased with the outcome of the project. "We were on time and within our budget ... a tremendous achievement," says Nesler. Compuware’s professional services team credits PARAGON, a methodology designed to help standardize tasks inherent in any project management engagement, for helping to drive this project and manage risk successfully. PARAGON gave the team the focus needed to address any changes that transpired.

End-user Support

In addition to meeting time and cost parameters on this project, Nesler was also challenged with gaining user acceptance of the new software changes. "We introduced users to the revised application and we trained them. When the users informed us about an issue with the application responding too slowly, Compuware came in and worked with us to quickly tune our application to achieve better response times," says Nesler, not surprised. "I’ve never had any trouble getting complicated problems solved quickly by Compuware."

Another benefit Compuware professional services brought to the project was managing risk. If the software changes were not implemented on time, and successfully, BCBSM could have lost support from its ERP software vendor. Nesler feels strongly about preventing any loss in support or glitches in the payroll system, especially in light of recent stories in the news about companies that fail their employees. "We could have risked 9,000 employees not getting paid," says Nesler. "What would make up for that?" Instead, his highly visible project deployed on time and successfully.

Next year, when BCBSM moves to a new version of the ERP software, Nesler is confident that Compuware will once again win the job.