Marine Corps keeps it simple

For the Marine Corps Community Services office, the "pain point" that drove officials to seek an enterprise resource planning solution was an aging human resources system covering about 12,000 civilian employees.

The system's temporary Year 2000 fixes were about to expire, said Dennis Ray, project manager for human resources management system and pension implementation for the office. Rather than fix it, the organization opted to replace it with PeopleSoft Inc.'s 8.0 HR application to save on maintenance costs and improve business practices, Ray said.

Begun in December, the implementation was completed by May at a cost of roughly $3.35 million, he said. The product required three modifications covering issues such as federal welfare and disabilities policies, Ray said.

There were also "some minor issues" involved in integrating the HR product with existing legacy systems, he said, admitting "it probably would make it easier if we had only one enterprise system."