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Automating Benefits Reprocessing at Wells Fargo

Session ID: 101900

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Agenda• Introduction• About Wells Fargo• Why we are here• Why the need for automation• Requirements and Functionality• Technology• Questions

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IntroductionJen JennrichBusiness Systems ConsultantLocated in Minneapolis13 years PeopleSoft Experience in BenefitsCurrently working as an Analyst Lead on the Upgrade to 9.2

Sreeni KurriApplications System EngineerLocated in Dallas15 years of PeopleSoft Technical ExperienceCurrently working as a Developer on the Upgrade to 9.2

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Wells Fargo Population• Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) Wells Fargo & Company is a

diversified financial services company providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage, and consumer and commercial finance through more than 9,000 stores and more than 12,000 ATMs and the Internet (wellsfargo.com) across North America and internationally serving over 70 million customers.

• We employ over 282,000 team members in more than 35 countries across our 80+ businesses

• Current US population consists of • 265,000 full-time employees• 16,000 part-time employees• 1800 flexible employees

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PeopleSoft Installations• Operate on a DB2 platform• Went live with PeopleSoft version 2.0 in 1993 (HR/Payroll/Benefits)• Multiple upgrades to 4.5, 6.0, 7.5, and 8.3 throughout the years• Implemented home grown Manager Self-Service (Staff Management) in 2003• 3rd party Time & Attendance System (Time Tracker)• Installed Benefits Administration in 2002• Implemented Automated Terminations Processing in 2006• Upgraded to PS version 8.9 in 2007

Future Plans• Upgrade to version 9.2 projected go live May 2014

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Why the need for automation?• On average around 100,000 events were reprocessed manually per year prior to Automating the Ben

Admin Reprocessing

• Manual reprocessing and re-applying of elections was laborious and time consuming

• Extra effort was needed from Ben-Admin on certain critical days before the Payroll in order to get the deductions correct

• Reprocessing of elections did not always occur on a timely basis

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Why We are HereWe have learned many things since implementing Ben Admin. Today we would like to share the benefits of;

• Benefit of investing in automation• Implementing similar changes

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Evolution of Automated Reprocessing

What we will cover;

• Ben-Admin and Reprocessing• Tracking Record• Automated OE Reprocessing• “Copy” Button• Automated Reprocessing

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Ben-Admin & Reprocessing• When Ben Admin was implemented March 2nd, 2002, we did not

have a good way to reapply elections when an event was reprocessed manually

• Reapplication was done by comparing two side by side On Demand screens

• Comparison allowed keying errors and there was no audit trail for research or escalations

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Tracking Tool • To reduce errors and to create an audit, there was a desire to

design a page to track elections and meet our audit needs

• In 2004, created a custom tracking record, ‘tracking tool’ to accomplish this

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Custom Tracking Record• Record created to capture every election made

• Record contains all the information needed to reapply elections

• Enabled the Ben Admin Team to easily reapply all the team member’s elections when reprocessing an event

• Eliminated the comparison need between two screens

• Reduced the risk for keying errors

• Assisted in the research of escalations that came into our HR Service Center which handles all benefit questions

PS_BEN_TRACKING_NW• Employee ID• Time Stamp • Sched ID• Event ID• Plan Type• Dep/Benef• Option Code• Deduction Begin Dt• Annual Pledge• Flat Amount• Beneficiary %• Contingent• Proof Received• Operator ID• Comment• Location

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Example from Tracking Record

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Automated OE Reprocessing • Implemented in 2005 as an additional step at the end of BAEMA (Ben

Admin Event Maintenance) job stream

• Started small

• Only reprocessed flagged OE events that did not have elections made

• All other flagged events were written to the BAS report for the Ben Admin team to work manually

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The “Copy” Button• Created a “Copy” button to automatically copy benefit elections from

the enrollment tracking tool

• “Copy” button was made available within On Demand to be used by the Ben Admin Team to shorten the processing time of their manual work

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Election Entry “Copy” Button

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Automated Reprocessing • Felt we had the opportunity to deliver more• Monitored the BAS reports to determine what events were being

written to the report on a daily basis• Enhanced our current process and developed a process to

automate data entry when an event was reprocessed • Allowed us to reprocess events where enrollments had already

been made • Flagged events could be flagged due to job changes or Qualified

Events

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How was this accomplished?• Created a single threaded application engine solution that processed only

one event at a time

• Used Component Interface (to copy elections) and Synchronous Application Messaging (to trigger Ben Admin)

• Created a list of very specific criteria of what events can be reprocessed using the automated process

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How was this accomplished?• All events that do not fit criteria are skipped and written to the

BAS008 report

• If there was a discrepancy when the benefits are being reapplied, an email would be generated to the Ben Admin Team to handle manually

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Event Reprocessing LogicFor every event flagged with an address change, job change, out of sequence or disconnect flag we applied the following rules;• If event was Closed, reprocess • If event was Disconnected, remove address and job change flags• If event was Voided, remove out of sequence flag• If event was Prep-None, don't initiate the out of sequence on the

other events• If event was EM and is Open, write to BAS report

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Status Changes• If Notified (NT), reapply elections using the ‘copy button’

• Set process indicator back to NT instead of Entered (ET)

• If OE, set status to NT if in Open Enrollment open timeframe, otherwise set to ET

• For all other events, bas process status was set to ET

• Applied to our new hire, rehire, newly eligible and acquisition populations also

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Parallel Processing• With the enhancements to allow the app engine to process more

events, long processing times occurred with single employee processing. In 2011, Application Messaging and Asynchronous Processing was leveraged to process multiple employees at a time

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Technology – Parallel Processing

Select an employee

Single Threading (Using App Engine)

Process the employee

More employees to process?

Yes

EndNo

Select employees

Parallel Processing(Using Asynchronous Messaging)

Publish Asynchronous Messages

Subscribe the message to processthe employees events

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Technology – Asynchronous Message

Reprocessing functionality is contained in a

message.The application engine calls this

message for every emplid that needs

reprocessing.

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Technology - Queue

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Technology - Tips• To avoid the deadlock, used second

asynchronous message to finalize the event

• Make sure the remote call log file flag is set to 0

RCCBL Redirect=0

• Set the remote call run controls with the correct operator id

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Technology - Tips• Used employee id as the run control id for the remote call run

control tables (PS_BAS_ENR_RUNCTL, PS_BAS_ENR_EMPL, PS_BAS_ENR_PARTIC)

• Modify PSPBASCH to use the run control id when it is provided.

IF BATCH-RUN-ID OF SQLRT = SPACE MOVE REMOTE-BATCH-RUN-ID OF W-WK

TO BATCH-RUN-ID OF SQLRT DISPLAY 'APPLYING DEFAULT: BATCH-RUN-ID OF

SQLRT: ' BATCH-RUN-ID OF SQLRT 'END' END-IF

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Technology – Messaging Domain• Add dedicated Messaging server resources for new queues

• Publication Broker dispatcher

[PSBRKDSP_ACQPB]; Settings for ACQPB Publication Broker dispatcherRecycle Count=10000Allowed Consec Service Failures=0Dispatch List Multiplier=10Scan Interval=15Dispatcher Queue Max Queue Size=1000Memory Queue Refresh rate=1000Restart Period=120Queues=REORG_NW,REORG_1_NW,REORG_2_NW,REORG_3_NW,REORG_4_NW,PERSON_1_NW,PERSON_2_NW,PERSON_3_NW,PERSON_4_NW,PERSON_5_NW,BEN_ADMIN_1_NW,BEN_ADMIN_2_NW,BEN_ADMIN_3_NW

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Technology – Messaging Domain• Subscription Contract Dispatcher

[PSSUBDSP_ACQSC]; Settings for ACQSC subscription contract dispatcherRecycle Count=10000Allowed Consec Service Failures=0Dispatch List Multiplier=10Scan Interval=15Dispatcher Queue Max Queue Size=1000Memory Queue Refresh rate=1000Restart Period=120Queues=REORG_NW,REORG_1_NW,REORG_2_NW,REORG_3_NW,REORG_4_NW,PERSON_1_NW,PERSON_2_NW,PERSON_3_NW,PERSON_4_NW,PERSON_5_NW,BEN_ADMIN_1_NW,BEN_ADMIN_2_NW,BEN_ADMIN_3_NW

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Summary• In the first 16 months (July 2009 – October 2010) after implementing

automated reprocessing, automated the clean up of over 86,000 records, leaving the Ben Admin Team around 32,000 records to manually clean up on the BAS008 report

• In addition, only 1,552 emails were generated as true ‘errors’ for the Ben Admin Team to review and reapply elections manually

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Wachovia Merger

Automated Reprocessing and “Copy” Button

Implemented Ben Admin

Tracking Tool

Reprocess OE events with no elections

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Questions

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Contacts• Jennifer.L.Jennrich@wellsfargo.com

– (612) 667-0793

• Sreenivas.Kurri@wellsfargo.com– (651) 442-7925

Please complete your evaluation: Session 101900

Thank you!

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APRIL 7-11, 2014Sands Expo and Convention CenterLas Vegas, Nevada

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