Situation
Our client, a large agency with the Federal Government, had many of their components implement SuccessFactors learning management system (LMS) on-premise. But, with the Federal Government directives for agencies to move to “cloud computing,” they decided to migrate to the SAP National Security Services (NS2) Software as a service (SaaS) secure cloud solution.
Note: The NS2 secure cloud solution is FedRamp certified and has one annual release, not quarterly.
Data integrity is key when migrating large quantities of employee information.
Challenge
The biggest challenge for this agency was that their on-premise system served over 50,000 users, both employees and contractors, and all of that information had to be migrated to the cloud while keeping data integrity. In preparation for the SaaS migration, the client upgraded from Plateau 6.2.11 to SuccessFactors1508 on-premise in 2016.
Solution
GP Strategies worked closely with the NS2 team to migrate the data from the on-premise system to the newly acquired cloud environment.
Results
- Enlist and continually brief an executive project “champion”.
- Develop a reasonable implementation plan and schedule.
- Start processes to get Authority to Operate and Integrated Systems Agreements early in the project.
- Plan client activities to clean up data and content early.
- Communicate customer approval gates early and often.
- Ensure the customer has the plan, time, and commitment for their participation (meetings, reviews, decisions, testing, verification, etc.).
- Lock in requirements as early as possible.
- Obtain commitments from all agencies/business units.
- Ensure the availability and commitment of client staff
- Security
- Involve agency security teams early to understand client security requirements and infrastructures.
- Identify URLs that will be “inbound” for the customer”; have them whitelisted.
- Involve agency security teams early to understand client security requirements and infrastructures.
- Be aware of the great value in planning and having multiple trial runs for data–there are many lessons learned to support a smooth go live.
- Consider that when moving to SaaS, the HCM/platform and role-based permissions are NEW and uniquelydifferent from a LMS on-premise.
- Recognize that there is no substitute for hands-on time with the system during training and testing.
- Test & Verify, TEST & VERIFY, TEST & VERIFY
