Thanks to feedback from the organization, our client had long known that PeopleSoft was difficult to use on mobile devices. This was due to the lack of mobile access to the package itself and due to company security policies. Because Blis and the organization have been working together for more than 10 years on the management and development of this PeopleSoft environment, we proposed addressing this with Microsoft Power Platform.
After demonstrating the possibilities, the client asked us to build an 'Employee Expense Assistant,' a chatbot that helps employees quickly and accurately submit their expenses, supported by the latest in image recognition and AI. We previously wrote about the technology behind this expense assistant.
Digital strategy: more hybrid work, less customization
Innovating on PeopleSoft with Microsoft Power Platform is an approach that fits well with this client's digital strategy, which naturally resembles the digital strategy of many companies with mission-critical processes in legacy software:
- Moving to the cloud. Migrating as much software and infrastructure as possible to cloud-based solutions is an important driver behind every IT decision.
- Phasing out legacy systems. Technology that is no longer supported poses a risk, so phasing it out is a high priority. PeopleSoft doesn't yet fall into this category, but the client's IT organization realizes it's far along in its lifecycle and takes this into consideration.
- Simplifying the IT landscape. A more streamlined and less complex system makes the organization less susceptible to errors, more agile, and easier to maintain.
- Reducing customization. Full-code custom solutions require substantial maintenance, so the client wants to build less custom work and phase out existing customization where possible (PeopleSoft expert Cees Schrijen wrote a series for our blog about reducing customizations in PeopleSoft).
- Better facilitation of remote and hybrid work. This client is working hard to make data and applications accessible to employees 24/7, wherever they are and on whatever device they're using.
Approach and solution
The development of this product began with an interactive demo where we extensively showcased the capabilities of the Power Platform. Subsequently, as we always do with these types of projects, we held in-depth 'fit/gap discussions' to precisely determine which functionalities and data users needed in their new app.
For the first use case, we decided to tackle expense claim submissions. This is typically the kind of business process that virtually everyone dislikes: uploading receipts, copy-pasting or retyping information... And at most companies, the user experience is downright terrible. In short, the perfect place to start. Because the project progressed smoothly, we were also able to add a function that calculates travel expense reimbursements based on a route planner.
The app had to meet various requirements that were essential for employees' daily work:
- User-friendly. A minimal number of clicks, intuitive navigation, and logical interaction needed to keep the learning curve for end users as short as possible.
- Globally accessible and usable. Also (or especially) on mobile devices.
- OCR functionality. Automatically scanning and (learning to) recognize receipts is an important part of the convenience and time-saving aspects of the new app.
- Ability to upload attachments. Employees can easily attach supporting documents to their claims.
- Overview for the user. In the app, users receive a claim number for each expense and an overview screen shows all previous claims.
- Supportive of PeopleSoft processes. A very important requirement was that the critical business process would remain in PeopleSoft. The expense claim is properly registered in PeopleSoft Expenses. The Power Platform app thus only functions as a user-friendly 'shell' around PeopleSoft, and in theory, it remains possible to submit claims directly in PeopleSoft.
A thorough analysis of the requirements and the capabilities of Microsoft Power Platform led us to conclude that the best implementation would be a chatbot within Microsoft Teams. This is the environment that every employee uses daily. A chat interface would also have the shortest learning curve.
We designed the OCR function to scan and recognize a wide range of documents without requiring extra effort from the user. This makes data entry efficient and significantly reduces the chance of errors. By adding Microsoft Copilot (AI) to the OCR function, the expense assistant continuously improves at recognizing different types of receipts and automatically categorizing them into the correct expense type in PeopleSoft.
In addition to the functional requirements, security and privacy are naturally vital for a financial institution like this one. Therefore, we paid significant attention to protecting the data and processing it compliantly. We addressed the legal aspects through a data processing agreement for personal data, among other measures.
Results and future developments
The organization tested the app in the summer of 2024 and shortly thereafter rolled it out to users. The initial feedback was extremely positive: compared to claiming expenses in PeopleSoft, the process has become infinitely simpler and faster.
But for us, the project has an even more important result. It gave us the opportunity to show that there is a great deal of innovation possible around PeopleSoft that maintains optimal user experience without adding customizations or, at the other extreme, doing nothing in terms of innovation. And that standstill means falling behind.
Multiple clients have since found their way to Blis Digital for the implementation of business processes with this combination of technologies. For instance, we are currently working on a 'matching tool' for financial transactions and an onboarding process for new employees, both using Low Code.
By combining the stability of PeopleSoft with the rapid innovation of the Power Platform, we can quickly create value. The investments remain low, and we don't have to compromise the status and solid reputation of PeopleSoft as a system of record.
