This blog post is based on an interview with Robert Roche, the PS Admin at ACE Parking, and Ivan Baumgardner, Project Manager at ACE Parking who shared their experience of modernizing their PeopleSoft implementation with Elire; guest authored by Jordyn Fugere-Burmeister, Director of Marketing at Elire Inc.
ACE Parking, a company that manages and leases parking lots across the US went live on PeopleSoft 9.2 with the help of Elire Inc. They have been using PeopleSoft since 1998 for their Accounts Payable (AP) and General Ledger (GL) modules, which are essential for reporting the monthly revenues and expenses of each parking facility to the property owners. Due to their unique business model, Ace Parking has many proprietary systems needed to manage and lease their 500+ parking facilities that each operate as their own business and feed into AP for expenses, and GL for reporting.
ACE Parking made the decision to re-implement PeopleSoft as they upgraded the obsolete servers and operating systems that were running PeopleSoft 8.4. Retiring old infrastructure resolved performance issues and browser compatibility problems.
The Elire and ACE Parking project team successfully went live with PeopleSoft Financials on 9.2 in February 2023. With the successful go-live, ACE eliminated obsolete custom processes and reports that have accumulated for years. The team configured core elements across AP/GL to ensure day-to-day business functions were stable and supported the business operations at large. ACE eliminated unnecessary application processes as well as existing data elements providing for streamlined usage of the application going forward.
The team at ACE Parking continues to be excited about the workflow features, which allow them to automate and streamline the approval process for wire payment requests, and the SQL database. This has enabled them to integrate PeopleSoft with other BI initiatives. The team also appreciates the browser compatibility that has eliminated the issues they had with Google Chrome and the stability of PeopleSoft 9.2. Thus, reducing the time and effort spent on rebooting and fixing the system.
Some of the features that ACE Parking is enjoying post-implementation are the username and date stamp on the journal header, which improves the traceability and accountability of the journal entries. They are also enjoying the ability to attach backups to the journal, which facilitates the documentation and auditing of the transactions. Users have found that faster query execution has enhanced the efficiency and productivity of the accounting staff. The select all/deselect all option for report books has been useful for simplifying the report generation and distribution process.
The team also implemented Payment Requests to replace a paper and e-mail based wire payment request process. Previously, AP would receive a paper form or email request for wire payments from a staff accountant where no proper approvals would occur. The requests would be keyed in manually by AP staff from the e-mail or form. All of these steps are now automated with PeopleSoft Payment Requests where the staff accountant enters the request in the application, it routes for approval to account managers and then the AP manager. The request then becomes a voucher for payment via delivered voucher build.
The team is also proud of the security improvements, which involved defining granular roles and restricting privileges for different users. Consistent training has ensured that all staff accountants are familiar with the new system and its features. ACE Parking now also has additional future planning options, which have opened up new possibilities for upgrading and enhancing the client statement portal and the invoice voucher intake system.
The ACE Parking team mentioned that previous upgrades were not transformational. This time around, they took a deeper look into how the system is supposed to be used and transformed. This now means that ACE Parking can look forward to long-term future planning options that are now available by being on 9.2. As Ivan Baumgardner, Project Manager, said, “This project has been the catalyst for sub-projects and IT Transformation that are going to tie directly into our PeopleSoft System.” The long-term goals for the PeopleSoft application are to optimize efficiencies, minimize manual processes, automate as much as possible, and explore the budgeting module. This helps in potentially streamlining the cumbersome process of creating and loading budgets from spreadsheets.
The interviewees also thanked the Elire team, especially Elire Team Members, Ron Lack and Arturo Alcover, for their expertise, communication, and support throughout the project. Elire is an active member of the Oracle Partner Network and has been listed as a PeopleSoft implementation and services partner in the PeopleSoft Partner Program 2024. To read more about the program and what this recognition means to partners like Elire, click here.