Overview

When a local community hospital with 2,000 employees was acquired by a larger 10,000-person hospital system, the two organizations needed to unify Lawson systems. Because the smaller hospital was running Lawson v9.01 and the larger organization had upgraded to Lawson v10, the decision was made to first upgrade the smaller organization and then merge the systems while also moving to the Cloud.

Challenge

The company had brought in an implementation partner but knew that having a project-based provider work with them wouldn’t give them all of the help they needed, so they also opted to bring in Surety Systems for supplemental support. While the external partner would work to help them establish what would be needed for the move to the cloud, they first needed to finish their usual end of year projects, convert data from their open enrollment system, and upgrade the smaller hospital to v10. Then they’d need help maintaining core pieces of their system while their primary in-house team attended training and strategy meetings for the move to the cloud. Finally, they needed someone who could help build out interfaces, reporting, and assist with testing through both upgrades and the process of unifying the Lawson systems.

The Solution

Surety Systems was able to start quickly on the project to assist with all of the year-end work, help to set up benefits for the new year and convert data from their open enrollment system. Once those projects had all been completed, Surety helped them upgrade the smaller hospital from v9.01 to v10, so that both hospitals would be on the same system.

The new upgraded system was set up in parallel to that of the larger organization so that it would be easier to unify the systems when tackling the upgrade to the cloud. The in-house team needed significant training in advance of the move to the cloud, so Surety Systems provided backfill support while their team attended training on best practices. We were able to embed our consultant within their in-house team where she could work directly under the vice president who was in charge of the project.

In this way, their VP could leverage the depth of Surety’s expertise by moving the consultant to whichever role or task needed the most support at any given time. While many of their in-house team were knowledgeable on their own specific areas of Lawson and very skilled at maintaining the system, implementing a new system requires different skills. Our expert had implementation experience and was able to provide a more rounded skill set, helping to get the new system set up.

During her time on the project, this included work transitioning the hospital from S3 to Landmark and Global Human Resources (GHR). In addition to providing backfill support, our consultant worked to create new vendor interfaces in Infor Process Automation (IPA). For example, she helped establish new FMLA interfaces, tackle some invoicing reconciliation for an insurance interface, and work on the interfaces for long-term and short-term disability. These were especially complex because they involved pulling data from both organizations until the systems could be combined.

Surety helped convert the benefits data, and review that data in the new system. Our consultant’s experience with creating test scripts allowed her to assist with testing the cloud-based system.

The Result

With help from Surety, the hospital system was able to complete their end of year tasks on time, despite the acquisition, and successfully upgrade to version 10 of Lawson. The in-house team is now fully prepped for their move to the cloud, without a slowdown in their typical workload.

In addition to the upgrade and their usual projects, the organization is now benefiting from the new vendor interfaces Surety’s consultant set up using IPA; rather than having to handle invoicing and FMLA paperwork manually, the system now processes those documents automatically for both organizations.

Today the company is preparing to launch into the cloud—they’ve completed their first complete benefits cycle test, handled the setup, and imported actual employee data to make sure things are configured properly and will run smoothly. They’re currently set to move completely into the cloud later this year, with much more streamlined HR processes that require a lot less employee involvement and time—and Surety will be with them every step of the way.