Spherion Corporation, a leading recruiting and staffing company, provides integrated solutions to meet the
evolving needs of companies and job candidates. The company has sourced, screened, and placed millions
of individuals in temporary, temp-to-hire and full-time jobs. Spherion has approximately 700 locations in the
United States and Canada, and employs more than 300,000 people annually through its network. Spherion
supports 40 PeopleSoft environments on a DB2 platform.
The Challenge
Spherion was using Quest’s Stat® for PeopleSoft solution for its end-to-end change management and
version control needs. But the company’s new Stat administrator, Marvel Mayfield, had no experience with
the solution. Spherion needed a resource to help Mayfield learn how to use Stat as quickly as possible.
The company sought to leverage Stat’s automation for easier version control, migrations and auditing for
Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.
And as Mayfield delved deeper into her responsibilities, she encountered issues with locking in the database
as well as managing large CSRs, and needed help to resolve them. “We have an environment where some
of our databases are down more than they are up,” explained Mayfield, “One of the problems was that our
developers were trying to add objects to the database when it was down, which led to locking. Another
problem was the size of CSRs, some of which has more than 20,000 objects.”
The Quest Solution
Besides providing superior products, Quest also supports all its customers with implementation, training and
technical assistance. Spherion turned to Quest Support and Quest’s Professional Services Organization (PSO)
to learn how to use Stat quickly and effectively, and resolve issues fast.
“I worked hand-in-hand with Quest to learn more about Stat,” said Mayfield. “And we definitely benefited
from the help and modifications Quest Support and PSO gave us to work around our issues. Overall, I’ve
seen more willingness from Quest to tenaciously stick with an issue until it is resolved than I have from other
support staffs that I’ve worked with.”
The Bottom Line
With Quest Support and PSO assistance, Spherion can get the most out of the Stat solution. Stat’s advanced
version control helps the company to handle objects with ease. “Stat makes us more efficient because
of the way it moves objects—not only PeopleSoft objects, but file objects—so there’s a lot less manual
intervention,” said Mayfield.
Stat has also enabled a more efficient process for satisfying Sarbanes-Oxley requirements—saving Spherion
a significant amount of staff time by providing access to most of the necessary information in one place.
“Stat reduces the number of hours we need to spend on the audit process because it’s faster to locate the
information we need,” stated Mayfield.
Stat also simplified the process of migrating changes across environments. “Moving changes within multiple
environments is just drag and drop with Stat,” said Mayfield. “It’s beautiful.”
Working with Quest support and services, Mayfield successfully gained the knowledge she needed to
use Stat and reap its benefits. Plus, Quest Support and PSO not only resolved the issues the company had
encountered, but Quest PSO worked with Quest R&D to ensure that the next version of Stat included
enhancements Spherion needed. “Our Quest PSO consultant figured out that our developers were doing
some things that were not helping our issues, but also that Stat needed a couple of fixes to handle things
better,” explained Mayfield. “He not only identified the problem and provided workarounds for us—he made
sure that the modifications were added to the latest version of Stat—5.4.”

Quest Support’s quick response time in returning calls on urgent issues ensured that Spherion avoided
downtime. “It’s critical that our end users are not impacted by disruptions,” said Mayfield. “We have a very
highly customized PeopleSoft environment. We are constantly making changes and moving a lot of code.
Whenever I’ve called Quest Support about a production issue, I get a call back within five minutes.”
About Spherion
Spherion Corporation is a leading recruiting and staffing company that provides integrated solutions to
meet the evolving needs of companies and job candidates. As an industry pioneer for more than 60 years,
Spherion has sourced, screened, and placed millions of individuals in temporary, temp-to-hire and full-time
jobs. Spherion provides its services to more than 8,000 customers, from Fortune 500 companies to a wide
range of small and mid-size organizations. To learn more, visit http://www.spherion.com/.
About Quest Software, Inc.
Quest Software, Inc., a leading enterprise systems management vendor, delivers innovative products that
help organizations get more performance and productivity from their applications, databases, Windows
infrastructure, and virtual environments. Quest also provides customers with client management through
its ScriptLogic subsidiary and server virtualization management through its Vizioncore subsidiary. Through a
deep expertise in IT operations and a continued focus on what works best, Quest helps more than 100,000
customers worldwide meet higher expectations for enterprise IT. Quest provides customers with client
management as well as server and desktop virtualization solutions through its subsidiaries, ScriptLogic and
Vizioncore. Quest Software can be found in offices around the globe and at www.quest.com.