Corning Incorporated: PeopleSoft HCM Implementation

Founded in 1851 as a glass manufacturer, Corning Incorporated is a diversified technology company that develops, engineers and commercializes products for the telecommunications, flat-panel display, environmental, semiconductor and life sciences industries. The Corning, N.Y.-based company employs 25,000 people in 26 countries, generating annual revenues of US$4.5 billion.

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Corning began a human resources transformation aimed at decreasing administrative burden and establishing performance results and measurements, including developing a scaleable service delivery infrastructure and global mindset and strengthening linkages and working relationships among the businesses. A critical step in this transformation was implementing PeopleSoft's HCM version 8.3 Human Resources application throughout its worldwide operations.

Corning implemented the PeopleSoft technology in six locations and determined it could more quickly achieve global use of PeopleSoft HCM by seeking the help of a trusted third party. The company selected Accenture because it knew we could deliver reliable implementation of the technology to locations in 13 countries on five continents far more quickly than the company could on its own. Accenture offered the advantage of program management experience, global skilled resources, proven development methodology and an Oracle/PeopleSoft alliance partnership.

“During 2004 we entered into a master services agreement with Accenture to provide added scalability to our IT capabilities during a period of high demand for IT services,” said Corning CIO and Senior Vice President Dick Fishburn. “Having the agreement in place gave us the ability to leverage a skilled global IT resource pool to swiftly ramp up multi-lingual project teams and deploy the global HRMS system sooner than we could have done internally.”

Working in collaboration with Corning, Accenture simultaneously completed the 13 PeopleSoft implementations in only 12 months by mobilizing a program management office and deploying three separate teams, relying on the Accenture Delivery Centers in Manila, Philippines and Atlanta. By using the Accenture PeopleSoft Methodology—proven methods that speed the delivery and reduce the risk of PeopleSoft implementations—Accenture coordinated all aspects, from communicating with management to providing design review and sign-off of technical configuration and testing criteria to coordinating the end-user training. Accenture and Corning added 136 new users to the system as part of the global implementation and developed six interfaces to internal and third-party payroll systems.

In the end, the on-time and on-budget project was one of the fastest technology implementations Corning has completed and one of the broadest in terms of the number of global sites.

“Global initiatives require significant coordination, specific technical expertise, effective communications and heightened cultural awareness in order to be successful,” said Mark Clark, Corning’s director, corporate staffs, IT. “Accenture brought these traits to the Corning global HRMS engagement and seamlessly integrated with the internal Corning teams to deploy the 13 remaining countries on the global HRMS in 12 months.”

With Accenture's help, Corning has made significant strides in integrating its locations into a single global HR information architecture. Corning now has the ability to see all employee records in one place and operates with global standards that have increased the alignment of its worldwide workforce with the company’s culture and business objectives. The new system has also helped reduce the cost of information support for each location and smoothed the flow of information throughout the organization. Corning can more quickly deliver HR services such as compensation and rewards programs to employees and is positioned to offer additional portal and self-service capabilities that decrease the HR administration burden. By rationalizing, simplifying and standardizing IT, Corning has demonstrated a trait that Accenture research has identified as being common among high-performance businesses. Choosing Accenture to help it quickly and effectively implement global PeopleSoft HR has moved Corning forward on the path to becoming a high-performance business.

“Global HRMS deployment is foundational to our HR transformation process and is critical for achievement of top quartile costs, scalable service delivery infrastructure, global mindset and business linkage,” said Corning Senior Vice President of HR Kurt Fischer. “We would not have been able to achieve deployment of 13 countries in 12 months solely with internal resources. Accenture brought professionalism, strong PeopleSoft deployment knowledge and techniques and a skilled workforce with local language and project management skills. We achieved the goal of having 100 percent of our employees on a single global instance on-time and on-budget by partnering with Accenture.”