Help is indeed on the way. Children's has formed a PeopleSoft Advisory Group to help prioritize user feedback and requests. The group comprises senior-level managers, one level below senior executives. (The reason for this cutoff, says CIO Dan Nigrin, is that senior executives lack insight into users' day-to-day needs.)

"You need to drill down to the folks who have more interaction with the system," Nigrin says. In fact, under Nigrin's direction the Children's technology group is soliciting the opinions and advice of both senior- and junior-level businesspeople in determining how to meet the needs of the hospital as a whole.

Back to the Future

The plans for ERP2 are well under way (see "Next Steps," left, for a preview, and keep an eye out for our followup stories in future issues). New application modules are due to be installed later this year, and navigation is being improved incrementally.

One new application is eBenefits. Due to go live later this month, it will allow for all 7,000 Children's employees to select their personal benefits coverage online; the PeopleSoft system is currently serving a mere 100 to 200 users in HR, finance and purchasing.

Opening the system up to all users will undoubtedly stress it, but the IT group is applying what it learned during Phase I to prevent the problems from reoccurring. We expect Children's IT group to succeed in implementing ERP2 because its ties back into the business have never been stronger--it's a case of "cultural ROI," as Nigrin puts it. We asked the CIO what he considers the critical component to his team's future success: "Whatever the industry, it's important to make sure your IT people understand the focus of the whole business relationship and make sure their work supports that."

James Hutchinson is Network Computing's director of editorial content. Write to jhutchinson@nwc.com.