Xerox PeopleNet - Creating IT/HR Synergies

DEVELOPING Xerox PeopleNet

Research work for the HRMS began in early 1993, and the overall concept of Xerox PeopleNet was formalized by June 1993. Xerox began with an internal HR survey to identify the desired objectives of the proposed system.

In the early 1990s, client/server technology was still very new and there were no applications being developed on such a large scale. The development team along with the company's ‘Global Process and Information Management Group'(GP&IM) began establishing the basic application/system standards for a technical framework.

Prototyping^[8] was used to test different development approaches and design the overall graphical user interface (GUI^[9] ). The infrastructure support was outsourced from a leading IT services company, Electronic Data Systems. All the software developed was put through strict compatibility testing to ensure that it complied well with other Xerox applications and standard configurations.

By the end of 1994, a pilot was developed, which was approved by the company and funds were released for the production version. In January 1995, a read-only version was launched with simple applications. Xerox opted for a phased launch because it was shifting from mainframes to a PC based setup and the developers needed to understand the new infrastructure well before going in for a full-fledged implementation.

The version included applications pertaining to personal employee data, the HR policy manual, employee salary data and fund balances. Screens and queries were designed to help keep the network traffic low. The second phase of the launch included letting the employees change their name, home address and phone number.

^[5] Tridec is a New York based full systems management company that specializes in client-server and imaging applications.

^[6] In a mainframe environment, a very large and expensive computer capable of supporting hundreds, or even thousands of users simultaneously is used to run the organization's computer infrastructure.

^[7] A network architecture in which each computer or process on the network is either a client or a server. Servers are powerful computers or processes dedicated to managing disk drives (file servers), printers (print servers) or network traffic (network servers). Clients are PCs or workstations on which users run applications. Clients rely on servers for resources, such as files, devices and even processing power.

^[8] The prototyping model is a systems development method in which a prototype (an early approximation of a final system or product) is built, tested, and then reworked as necessary until an acceptable prototype is finally achieved from which the complete system or product can now be developed. This model works best when not all project requirements are known in detail ahead of time. It is an iterative, trial-and-error process that takes place between the developers and the users.

^[9] GUI refers to a graphical (rather than purely textual) user interface to a computer. GUI elements consist of windows, pull-down menus, buttons, scroll bars, iconic images, wizards and the mouse.