Gideon Taylor enables clients to envision and create custom solutions using eForms and workflow technology, OCI cloud hosting, UiPath RPA, always-current managed services, full-service consulting staffing, WebUX, and conversational AI. The organization was founded in 2001 and is an Oracle custom solutions provider for business, education, and government organizations. Andrew Bediz and Lynette Chaudoin from Gideon Taylor recently presented on delivering a smarter, easier, better user experience with the state of Tennessee as their customer example.

Customer Example: State of Tennessee

The Challenge 

Tennessee reached out to Gideon Taylor to share that they had user experience problems that needed to be resolved

Before Gideon Taylor, Tennessee’s user experience was a bit of a Frankenstein situation. They were using a mix of Fluid and Classic pages. They had applied changes to their navigation approach several times and continued to attach new things to the site.

There was no holistic strategy on how users would use and navigate the system. There were too many places for users to look to click. For users—especially new users—the experience was confusing.

An increasing number of links, files, folders, and work centers were muddying the waters for users. Gideon Taylor knew that they needed to start fresh and dive in deep for Tennessee.

As a first step, Gideon Taylor launched a workshop. This was a comprehensive user experience review to determine common themes and pain points associated with employees’ use of Human Capital Management, Enterprise Learning Management, iHub, and Edison Help Desk systems.  The workshop included 3 main pillars:

• UX Focus Groups – Included personas representing employees, managers, HR, and IT. By giving everyone a voice, they avoided bias from the squeakiest wheels.
• User Surveys – Gained insights from a broad range of employees based on their personal experience with the system(s).
• Help Desk Case Analysis – Collected data from Jan. 2023 to June 2023, accounting for more than 22,000 submitted cases.

Based on the workshop, Gideon Taylor determined there were 3 top themes to focus on:

1. Painful Navigation
2. Unfriendly UI
3. Approvals & Notifications

After identifying these themes, Gideon Taylor used a metric called NPS (Net Promoter Score) to analyze their survey results. Ideally, an organization would receive a score of 50 or more. Tennessee’s NPS returned a score of -25 (on a scale of -100 to +100), indicating an overall unfavorable view of the current state of the system(s) by employees. Simply speaking there were more people dissatisfied with the current software than those who were satisfied.

Based on the results, executives were left with the question of whether or not to implement SaaS. The issue with that is the cost. Should they spend hundreds of millions to implement SaaS? Is there a way to solve problems at a fraction of the cost?

Gideon Taylor found a way.

The Plan

Pillar #1:WebUX

The first step in solving Tennessee’s system issues was to focus on Tennessee’s WebUX. It needed a modern look, consistency on the glass, and simple navigation. The team could achieve this by leveraging the PeopleTools stack. This would avoid new vulnerabilities and security issues.

They applied a fully responsive mobile version and a single menu for navigation. This “Mega Menu” would break down everything in Tennessee’s PeopleSoft ecosystem into 5 simple pillars: Benefits & Health, Learning & Career, Pay & Tax, Time & Leave, Travel & Expenses.

Users were given the capability to drill into a category and achieve focus for that category.

For instance, when you go to Benefits & Health, you can see related links, PDF policy info, insights and alerts, and more. With the new functionality, a brand new user who wants to take action should immediately be able to find the pillar that it falls under and the appropriate click.

Gideon Taylor knew that one of the common pain points with Fluid navigation is that it can take 5 clicks to get to your end result. The Mega Menu is a one-click, see-everything  approach that empowers Tennessee to avoid that pitfall and simplify the user experience.

By having a homepage for each pillar, Tennessee can communicate news and information to users without it getting lost from the main homepage. This gives each pillar area autonomy and control over their portion of the experience. The pillar page pulls real time data, is action-oriented, and is driven by business processes.

There are also alerts that show up at the top of each homepage for the most important information.

On the right (slightly covered up in the alert image above), a consolidated To Do List brings in tasks from HR, HCM, ELM, and Finance. You can toggle between them. This To Do list supports Fluid approvals, worklist items, action items, and custom items. It’s a one-stop shop for users.

When viewing the transaction page, it may look like it was created with a large number of customizations. However, there weren’t any customizations at all—only configuration.

Gideon Taylor enhanced the pages instead of changing them. Above, you can see a vanilla component page. The menu covers up the default Fluid header. On the side, you can see complementary information which was injected instead of being customized. Rather than requiring a guided learning from users, these fly-outs come from the right to share information about the page the user is on. They can provide information such as a glossary, text, or instructions to enhance the user experience. Overall, this helps to unify the experience even on a vanilla page. While the branding on this page isn’t exactly identical to Tennessee’s page, it is similar.

Tennessee also used the PeopleSoft helpdesk. Gideon Taylor wanted to make sure the helpdesk was ingrained in the experience. They added the Help icon to the top right corner, where users are accustomed to finding help. Users can ask AI before creating a case, or they can go straight to creating a case for the Help Desk.

Pillar #2: eForms

The state of Tennessee has been in the business of improving business process automation for quite a while. They became a GTE forms client 11 years ago. They implemented an EPAF management solution at that point. Their BEFORE matched the technology expectations of that time.

The position change form looked like this:

Additionally, Tennessee had at least 15 PDF forms. The forms were confusing and needed to cover a huge range of uses. Users did not actually know how to request security based on this process.

After working with Gideon Taylor, Tennessee’s experience became fully Fluid for the user. It embraces the Mega Menu to alleviate extra clicks and confusion. The new system offers validation messages for the user, addressing past complaints.

Other updates include:

• Fields show based on user workflow or security role
• Attachments were added and only update when required (in lieu of numerous PDFs)
• Positions can be modified, created, or abolished with an associated reason
• If there are multiple incumbents, there is easy and consistent access throughout

Tennessee updated all of the existing forms and implemented both Fluid position and Fluid Job Data.

The security form became more automated, as well. The page loads in every role the user has, which can be extremely useful for managers who need to regularly validate user access. In Tennessee’s old system, managers couldn’t see what users had access to. They were generating reports and sending them out to discover security. Now, this crucial information is at their fingertips. They can even take action on the current roles.

Route controls have been in PeopleSoft for a very long time. Many people, however, are not familiar with them. As a user selects the role in Role Selection, the user is able to see only the roles they are eligible to have. As roles are added, you can set up a route control. The end user can pick one role and remove others. Route Control is a very flexible framework that can be used for several purposes including business units, departments, and text descriptions.

Additional pages can show for the state of Tennessee. Some of these are external systems that are allowed to be integrated with PeopleSoft. There are conditional segments that show up based on the role the user has.

Finance has a ton of requirements. The Finance page shown below has 35 unique component interfaces that fire at the end. It routes to approvals, then a message is pushed to OIM. OIM adds or removes the user’s roles and pushes it to systems that are synced with it. Once OIM is finished, the system fires 35 component interfaces to enter user preferences, Pcard access information, and more.

Pillar #3 IDA

The final pillar of the solution Gideon Taylor created for the state of Tennessee would answer the need of ongoing user questions. IDA, is the 24/7 digital assistant, delivering quick answers via AI for users. Tennessee actually calls there IDA “EDA” because their system is called Edison. The chatbot can be accessed anywhere in Tennessee’s Edison experience. It can look up data in real time. It can point you toward the process of changing your password, processing transactions, changing employee benefits, requesting more help, etc. The chatbot summarizes what it is going to do and then creates a ticket if the user wants more help.

EDA has been running for about 6 months. Below are the most popular questions asked according to the data. Tennessee’s audience asks a little bit of everything, which supports just how useful EDA has been for such a vast audience and explains why their previous website was not sufficient for the user base:

Top FAQS

Top 10 FAQS users asked from April-October 2024

1. How do I reset my password?
2. Where do I find my current performance document
3. How do I delete a direct deposit account?
4. Can I view my paystubs
5. Can I add or update a dependent?
6. How do I change and view my 401K/457?
7. Where do I find training?
8. How do I contact the Edison Help Desk?
9. Employee Policy Acknowledgement Eform Instructions
10. Where are the job postings?

Top Topics

Payroll

Benefits

Performance Management

Results

Executives at Tennessee were thrilled with the work of Gideon Taylor to create a smarter, easier, better user experience.