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							            Oracle HRMS Implementation in CSB Bahrain

1 INTRODUCTION
Civil Services Bureau, Bahrain is a Ministry level organization that is
responsible for all recruitment, training, organization structuring,
classification, operations and Payroll for all the ministries of the
Government of Bahrain except the Interior and Defense Ministries.

Their Payroll was running on a WANG based legacy system. The various
Ministries sent all the forms to CSB for entry into the system. They had
several ACCESS based small systems. They had an Oracle based
Document Management system for maintaining all employee related
documents. Their processes are ISO 9001 certified.

In mid-2000 they took a decision to implement Oracle HRMS V11.03,
Training and Administration and Payroll. The project commenced in August
2000 and was completed in early March 2002. Later towards the end of 2000
it was decided to upgrade to Oracle HRMS 11i or version 11.5.3 multi-
language version.

2 LEGACY SYSTEM AT CSB
Civil Services Bureau has various directorates to handle different
functional areas. Directorate of Organization and Methods is responsible
for all matters related to organizational restructuring, manpower headcount
budget control, sanctioning of additional positions etc. Directorate of
Classification is responsible for job, position and grade structuring.
Directorate of Recruitment is responsible for all activities related to
recruitment. Directorate of Training is responsible for handling all training
requests, arranging training and even conducting training themselves.
Directorate of Operations is responsible for the movement of all the forms,
nature of actions etc. The MIS Directorate is responsible for maintaining
the hardware and software and information system to support CSB’s
operations. Calculation of Payroll is also the responsibility of the MIS
Directorate.

The ministries covered by CSB have about 33,000 employees on the
payroll. The Organization structure of the Government is quite complex as
there is a separate structure for each Ministry. There are 6 levels of
hierarchy in the Organization structure. There are 28 ministries. The job
classification and position classification is quite complex and extensive as
it had to cover a wide area of diverse operations. Being government the
grade structure is also quite complex. In many cases there are exceptions
to business rules for certain ministries like health and education. There are
different rules for employees based on their nationality and religion.



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In the Payroll there are about 50 different types of earnings and deductions.
The rules regarding applicability of allowances and deductions are quite
complex. Some are based on table of values and some are based on
position. The procedure for handling advances and retrospective payments
is quite involved and complex.

Absence management is also quite complex as they have 17 different types
of leave with different accrual rules and applicability of allowances etc.


3 OUR SCOPE OF WORK
The scope of work agreed with CSB was as follows: -
  • Discussions with User representatives in all relevant areas of
      operation
  • Preparation of SRS for the various modules
         o HR Related areas of Business Group, Organization structure,
            Location, Job, Position, Grade etc.
         o Recruitment
         o Training and Administration
         o Employee Relations
         o Absence Management
         o Payroll
         o System Administration
  • Setup and customization parameterization design for all the modules
  • Design for Conversion of data from the legacy systems
  • Design and development of interfaces and reports
  • Design and development of identified Workflows
  • Localization for Oracle HRMS for Bahrain
  • Setup and customization using sample data
  • System testing on sample setup using converted sample data
      provided by the Customer
  • Training to the end users
  • Two Parallel runs for Payroll
  • Live run of Payroll

4 APPROACH USED
We had a team of 6 persons working on the project. The Project Manager
had responsibility of being the functional consultant on Payroll also. We
had one team member who was a Functional consultant for HR,
Recruitment and Training. We had 4 technical resources. The Customer
had a full time Project Manager and other members from the systems
development team of the MIS directorate were co-opted as and when
required. However the Head of Systems Development was a permanently
co-opted on the HRMS implementation team.


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We used a discussion room technique for capturing the requirements from
all the users. We had several discussions with the relevant user
representatives. The requirements were studied and mapped against
standard Oracle functionality and the gaps were identified. Solutions were
found to bridge the gaps. As a policy we had decided not to develop any
customized forms and use Oracle functionality with work around as far as
possible. We were successful in implementing this policy. SRS documents
were prepared that documented the existing functionality, the required
changes, the proposed solution and the implementation strategy.

On the basis of the SRS the setup design documents were prepared and
reviewed. Localization for Bahrain was carried out on the Oracle HRMS
installation. Setup for all HR data like Business Group, Location,
Organization, Job, Position etc. and employee data was carried out on a
Test database. Sample data was converted using conversion data scripts.

Absence types and leave elements and associated rules were designed and
setup.

We prepared design documentation for Payroll elements, their associated
fast formulae, validations, skip rules and element links. The elements were
implemented and tested on the Test database.

Reports were designed and developed. Pay slip printing was required in
English and Arabic and hence we had to put in special efforts to develop
the multi-lingual pay slip.

Interfaces for importing data into the Oracle system and exporting data
from the Oracle system were developed.

Workflows were designed and implemented in the area of Training and
Recruitment.

System testing was done using the sample test data provided by the
Customer. Corrections if any were carried out. Errors found were
investigated and corrective action was taken. The Customer then carried
out system testing.

After successful system testing, the conversion of data for the first parallel
run was commenced. Since the data was very voluminous special care had
to be taken. Two parallel runs were done for two consecutive month’s data.
To compare and tally payroll from both the systems we wrote a utility to
electronically compare the outputs of both the systems. This utility gave a
report of mismatches. The mismatches were investigated and corrections if
any were made.



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Conversion of data from the legacy system to Oracle HRMS was done
again just before carrying out the live run.

The Project was completed as per the plan. Our team worked very closely
with the Customer’s team to ensure that the work progressed as per the
schedule.




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