Ryerson University is Canada’s leader for career-focused education, serving more than 25,000
undergraduate and graduate students. The university was founded in 1948 as Ryerson Institute of
Technology. Today, Ryerson University has five colleges, 12 undergraduate degree programs and more
than 130,000 alumni.
The university’s human resource application, PeopleSoft (which manages HR, payroll and benefits
administration processes), runs on Unix. The application has about 500 users and is maintained by about
eight IT staffers, including five developers, a DBA, a manager and a security administrator. For help
instituting efficient change management, Ryerson University turned to Quest Software.
The Challenge
During its PeopleSoft implementation, Ryerson University decided it needed an efficient change
management solution—and knew that automation was key. By automating manual efforts, the university
could reduce the risk of errors, enhance staff productivity, and effectively support a large number of end
users with their limited staff.
“When we began our PeopleSoft implementation, we had no automation in place, and so the risk of
things going wrong was high,” said Leo Plotkin, manager of HRMS Support for Ryerson University. “Plus,
we were tasked with supporting hundreds of users. A manual approach was simply not an option.”
The Quest Solution
After careful research, Ryerson University chose Quest’s Stat® for complete change lifecycle management
and control. Along with software revision control and versioning capabilities, Stat provides process
management, change request tracking and distributed development support—ensuring operational
excellence and easier compliance to regulatory standards. It is the only change management solution
that is certified on PeopleSoft PeopleTools 8.49 and below to handle both PeopleSoft proprietary objects
and flat files in their native format.
“I had used Stat with my previous employer, and I am a very big fan,” said Plotkin. “Along with its
automation capabilities, Stat is tightly integrated with PeopleSoft.”
Another reason Plotkin favors Stat is for its ability to track and inventory customizations and other
development work for later reuse. “If you set up Stat correctly in the beginning, you can save a lot of
money in the long run by cross-referencing changes to particular business requirements, and easily
access the code you need,” explained Plotkin. “Without this capability, it can be difficult and timeconsuming
to find the reasons behind changes, since documentation may or may not exist and IT staff
come and go. It can be especially challenging when it’s time to upgrade. Stat solves this problem by
identifying what code is part of which customizations—and why.”
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