To ensure GDPR compliance, organizations are actively implementing changes and customizations to PeopleSoft and other ERP software.
With General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that ensures complete privacy of the individual’s data and personal information, organizations are now busy indulging in modifications and customizations for ensuring that PeopleSoft and other ERP software are GDPR compliance.
Notably, GDPR has come to effect on May 25, 2018. Given that this regulation has been in the pipeline for quite some time, even PeopleSoft kept a few unique capabilities that govern the data privacy in the queue although it had earlier released few patches thru HCM images.
Now that GDPR is around the corner, PeopleSoft is likely to release all the significant modifications for data protection soon.
Before we get into the details of how PeopleSoft modules will comply with data privacy in line with GDPR, it is essential to understand what PII is. Personally Identifiable Information or PII is data/ information maintained by public or private agencies to identify or trace an individual. New GDPR regulations will stress that this PII should be masked unless otherwise.
What does GDPR aim at?
Privacy Policy: Companies must respect the individual’s data and that they must not be released unless otherwise (only for legitimate purpose). All the data, whether online or on paper, must be dealt with confidentiality in case it has information about the employees. It protects PII and asks agencies to mask it.
Consent of Employees: During the joining process, it is mandatory for every company to provide easily understandable forms to employees that seek their approval on how and why the collection of such data is required and will be used only on their strict consent.
Employee Right to Access: The regulation ensures that every individual must be provided equal rights to have access to their information and how their data is being used.
Right to Request for Deletion: Once the new regulation comes to force, employees will be able to request the companies to delete their information entirely from their systems.
Portability: Employees will have the right to demand the companies to provide their data in electronic form as the same can be carried to the new employers.
How PeopleSoft’s Updates Will Comply with GDPR?
Starting with the recent release in the form of HCM 9.2 images, PeopleSoft already made some critical changes to its security features. Further, it is all decked up to release even more patches to ensure that all its modules are in line with the new regulation. Here are some of the expected features anticipated to bolt-on all PeopleSoft products.
Profound Spreadsheet: The current spreadsheet that is found in PeopleSoft modules does not provide any special feature to help identify the sensitive information/personally identifiable information (PII). Also, the current version is focused on EU countries alone as GDPR governs the European Union; therefore, it does not contain some of the features such as Payroll, Benefits Administration, and many more.
Online Data Masking: The new version of PeopleSoft will allow the administrators to mask candidate’s personally identifiable information (PPI). This would include masking or scramble information such as date of birth. It is, again the choice of an employee, to ask whether year can be masked or scrambled.
Optional Delete: PeopleSoft modules had this option to delete the unwanted information. However, the new patch will enhance this feature enabling the administrators to delete the complete or partial information, as suggested by an employee.
Archive Manager: Data Archive Manager Functionality is also in place already in all PeopleSoft products. This feature will be further enhanced that will remove the heaps of existing old data from the server.
Data Portability: Even this option that was made available in PeopleSoft will be enhanced to further comply with the GDPR regulation.
If you are under EU and wanting to customize your PeopleSoft applications with the recent release of HCM 9.2, you should contact businesses like Kastech right away to verify that your PeopleSoft modules are not only excellent, but also legal.
When it comes to running an organization, the bigger question that looms large is—whether to make the complete lift and shift of your products and workloads to a cloud service or just pitch for a SaaS (Software as a Service) application.
While each one of them has its own merits, the crucial decision can only be made after assessing one’s business, its model, and goals. Based on these pivotal things alone, one can arrive at a solid decision whether to shift to SaaS or cloud. Also, there are companies that shift to SaaS and then make use of PaaS (Platform as a Service) to make the customizations in the cloud.
When we speak of optimizing the business, not to forget the basic thing, with which business is set up. That is nothing but Return on Investment (ROI). There is no point in setting up something or making some crucial modification without looking at ROI, as in whether the company could expect some benefit when it forks out some reasonable amount of money.
It is precisely at this juncture that companies approach vendors to analyze their business and execute the model that best suits the organization.
The major challenge that pops-up the moment companies think of implementing cloud or ERP is fear of losing jobs. The employee does always come up with these questions as to what will happen to their jobs in case automation work is taken up on a serious note. In her article, Ilona Gabinsky on Oracle blogs, said that she had attended a discussion at Collaborate wherein she had the opportunity to talk to three of the clients about their experiences on shifting to Cloud-based services.
She went on to say that the company Calix switched their E-Business Suite to Saas while Sherwin Williams company shifted to Oracle Cloud, and Astute lifted PeopleSoft applications from AWS to Oracle Cloud.
While the three companies are still in different stages of implementing the cloud services, notably, they achieved desirable results within a few weeks. Also, the companies found that there was no employment loss. In fact, the employees were shifted from automation jobs to more serious and productive ones, which in turn resulted in higher ROI of around 40%. The companies reportedly saved over $2M per year for switching from EBS to ERP cloud.
