The challenge: a system with history
As one of the most well-known companies in the Dutch financial sector, Aegon is known for reliability and stability. After more than two decades of using PeopleSoft FSCM 9.2 (Image 5, PeopleTools 8.55) for financial processes (AP/GL/CM) and procurement (ePro, sPro), the system went out of support. Aegon faced three options:
- Upgrade PeopleSoft to Image 30 and PeopleTools 8.57
- Migrate to Oracle SaaS
- Invest in a PeopleSoft upgrade and migration to AWS.
Aegon made the decision to migrate to Oracle Cloud, fitting their cloud strategy. The declining knowledge level of PeopleSoft within the organization also played a role in this decision. The momentum was seized to critically examine which tooling best suited specific business processes. This led to the decision to move sPro to SAP Fieldglass, ePro and part of AP to SAP Ariba, while AP, GL, and CM would go to Oracle Cloud Financials.
This split meant not only new integrations but also a thorough review of existing connections. Blis Digital was asked to transition the financial processes from PeopleSoft to Oracle Cloud Financials, understand the PeopleSoft setup, and translate it to the new environment. The priority: not losing any functionality or efficiency. Additionally, our team was asked to create a plan for data conversion and to support functional and acceptance testing.
A methodical approach for a complex migration
With a system in use for more than 20 years, you can imagine that over the years an enormous amount of master data (business units and chart fields), hierarchies, and queries had been created. Therefore, we started by making a detailed cut-over plan, taking into account all requirements regarding retention periods and data protection. Based on this plan, we performed a thorough data cleansing.
When transforming the setup to Oracle Cloud, the biggest challenges were with:
- Hierarchies (PeopleSoft trees)
- Cross-validation rules (PeopleSoft combination rules)
- Allocations
- Ledger setup and closing processes.
Through different iterations, we improved the setup in Oracle Cloud to ensure a smooth transition from PeopleSoft to the new way of working. Within PeopleSoft, nVision reports were heavily used. We had to find a way to replace these reports within the available cloud tooling, choosing between Financial Reporting Studio and SmartView.
After the various rounds of testing, conversions, and reporting implementations, we involved more business users in acceptance testing. Since many users were also involved in IFRS17 reporting alongside their normal work, we created a customized plan for each department. We also performed integration testing to ensure the success of the transition.
Result: a flawless transition
The collaboration between the business and the project team was a great success. We performed the switchover during an extended weekend, and everything worked flawlessly. During the aftercare period, we provided additional support together with Oracle Consulting.
Together with Aegon's support team, we moved the cleansed PeopleSoft environment in archive mode to the AWS cloud. This way, we ensure that the data remains available according to the retention period of 7 to 10 years.
It was a challenging project where we learned a lot about the differences between PeopleSoft and Oracle Cloud, and where we ensured that Aegon's business-critical financial processes continued to function without interruption during a complex system migration.
