Transitioning to a New Workforce Performance Solution
At a Glance:
- Upgrade from ANCILE Info Pak™ to ANCILE uPerform™
- Solution Components:
- Migration of over 300 Info Pak Documents
- Creation of a replica of the existing Info Pak/OCPS Help website
- Project Timeline: Outsourced support — Ongoing
Switching to a New Class: Orange County Public Schools Partners With RWD to Upgrade Their Own Learning Environment
With 23,400 employees and 176,000 students, the Orange County Public School (OCPS) system faces the logistics and challenges that are dealt with by large business enterprises. As much as the OCPS might differ from a private business, one problem they faced was certainly similar: how to effectively train employees to use today’s complex resource planning software.
For years, OCPS had been partnered with RWD Technologies, a leading provider of training products and services, to create courseware and manage learning materials for employee training. In 2007, OCPS decided to upgrade from Info Pak to the more robust uPerform, which would allow them to create, store and manage their learning simulations and procedural documentation.
Saving the Permanent Record
OCPS had spent years developing learning material that was invaluable to their employees. All of these documents would have to be migrated to the new system to ensure workforce performance. Additionally, OCPS planned to utilize uPerform for both their SAP system and their Pearson’s Student Management System (SMS).
SMS records the day-to-day progress of each student moving through the educational system from kindergarten to 12th grade. Activities that are recorded include student management tasks such as registering students into the system, enrolling them at schools, taking student attendance, creating student schedules, reporting disciplinary behavior and posting grades. All of this information is priceless to OCPS and they had to be sure it would transition seamlessly into the new uPerform performance support system.
“As you can imagine, we have massive amounts of data that is not only important for us, but extremely important to the students as well,” said Valerie Hall, Assistant Director of Customer Care IT at OCPS. “Their records are essential to their progress through each class, the different grades and even into college. Losing any of this data or not having flawless access to it was not an option.”
Winning the Popularity Contest
Just as importantly, OCPS would have to illustrate how valuable uPerform was to its employees to ensure widespread understanding and acceptance of the solution. They knew that even if the transition went well, they would not see a return on their investment if employees did not utilize the functions properly.
“We needed RWD to not only incorporate all of the information and learning documents that we already had in place into the new uPerform platform, but to truly show the employees why this transition was a good thing and how they would benefit from it,” said Hall. “Our central Information Technology group understood it, but what good is the transition if you don’t have employee buy-in?”
Making the Grade
RWD worked hand in hand with the ICTS leadership at OCPS to strategically plan the transition and train and coach employees. Over the course of two months, RWD performed an Info Pak to uPerform migration of over 300 Info Pak documents into a newly implemented uPerform server environment. Both SAP and SMS documents were seamlessly migrated into uPerform. As part of this migration a replica of the existing Info Pak/OCPS Help website hierarchy was built in order to ease the transition for employees.
As a result of RWD’s efforts, the transition was seamless and OCPS employees have whole-heartedly embraced the new system. “All the original concerns we had with the transition from Info Pak to uPerform were addressed by the RWD team members who worked side-by-side with us,” said Hall. “In fact, we were so impressed that our ICTS Group plans to market the benefits and potential uses of uPerform to various departments throughout the District.” ANCILE uPerform made the grade.