In 2016, following a successful pilot on a smaller scale, the state of Illinois started a statewide implementation of a single enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Since the initial pilot, involving three agencies, the state has successfully onboarded 73 agencies on the new system using SAP ERP.
Illinois’ ERP Program Director Tara Kessler has been involved with the project since its early days, having initially been interested in understanding what the pilot would accomplish. Her role overseeing the financial reporting section of the Illinois Department of Corrections shifted to a full-time role on the ERP team in October 2016, just before the first pilot went live for finance.
The most recent function to go live was Employee Central, which as of May 29 went online for 33 agencies. Employee Central includes labor relations, onboarding and recruiting functionalities.
Although it was originally planned to go live for 87 agencies at once, the decision was made to start with a smaller group before bringing the rest online in Q3 of 2023.
After that, the plan is to deliver a learning management system, as well as payroll and timekeeping, which will be a joint project implemented in collaboration with the Illinois Office of the Comptroller, Kessler said.
These will be the final two pieces of the HR functionality, she said, explaining that this portion of the digital transformation is expected to have significant impacts on state employee processes.
“We have a lot of processes that are still on paper, and those papers are moving between agencies and the central management services — but then even between facilities within an agency to a central office,” she explained. “So, having accessibility to a system where you can initiate transactions and you can see where they're at is going to be a pretty significant shift for a lot of folks.”
The integration between HR and payroll will also eliminate some of the siloing inherent with the existing processes.
The transformation has also helped the state from the business intelligence perspective. New dashboard functionality simplifies access to the substantial amount of state agency data on budget and procurement. The changes have allowed the state to build reconciliations between disparate systems and automate cumbersome processes and free up staff time.
“So, we definitely have started to realize the impact of the BI on our users,” Kessler said.
Throughout this project, the state has made an effort beginning in the planning stages for the implementation to keep customizations minimal for a smoother transition from SAP ERP Central Component (ECC), an on-premises ERP system, to SAP S/4HANA Cloud upon ECC’s sunset date. This was a part of the change management strategy.
“Seeing as we just really implemented that statewide system for a bunch of agencies. We didn't want them to feel like they were going through a full-blown implementation again, and that we were going to be shifting a lot.”
For other states that are in earlier stages of a similar journey, Kessler underlined the importance of having a dedicated and knowledgeable team. In Illinois' case, this involved both project managers and state functional experts.
Another big piece of the puzzle, she said, is having team members dedicated to serving as the liaison between those implementing a new system and the end users, as this can help to better communicate user needs.
“I know that it will impact all of our state of Illinois employees, which is very critical for us,” she said of this month’s rollout. “Our team has been very excited to get finance complete, and we can focus now on the S4 upgrade and moving forward to the HR piece.”
