Peoplesoft Consultant Jobs

Position Title:PeopleSoft Consultant

Client - United Nations

Duty station:Offsite

Period of assignment: 22 working days, July 2023

Rate: Based on Experience

Organizational context

The UN Agency, is a specialized agency of the United Nations with headquarters in Rome, Italy and over 40 offices globally. IFAD’s mission is to transform rural economies and food systems by making them more inclusive, productive, resilient and sustainable. We invest in the millions of people who are most at risk of being left behind: poor, small-scale food producers, women, young people and other vulnerable groups living in rural areas.

Treasury's mission is to support IFAD in its overall vision by providing specialized, high quality and cost-effective cash management and investment services and to assist IFAD Management in the administration of IFAD finances and in the implementation of financial decisions.

The Information Technology Division (ICT) is responsible for providing information technology solutions and services to support the operations of IFAD and to ensure that, in fighting rural poverty, IFAD makes the most effective use of Information and Communications Technology tools and services.

Technical Context

Oracle PeopleSoft (HCM and FIN) is a fundamental component of the IFAD Application infrastructure and the current application version is 9.2 (PeopleTools 8.58) in both Financials and HCM.

IFAD Treasury Services uses the Banking and Accounts Payables modules in PeopleSoft Financials.The management of payments are done through the Accounts Payables module.

On a daily basis, IFAD executes cash management activities (payments, disbursements, investment settlement, liquidity transfers, receipts and reconciliation) through different processes that involve both PeopleSoft and SWIFT system. For example, on a daily basis, IFAD receives bank statements in SWIFT that are then uploaded into Peoplesoft Financials for subsequent activities (reconciliation, accounting etc).The current format used by IFAD for SWIFT messages is FIN categories MT1xx, MT2xx, MT3xx, MT5xx, MT9xx,sent to IFAD financial counterparties and commercial banks.

ISO 20022 is global language for payments messaging. Already used by payment systems in over 70 countries, in the coming years it will be the de facto standard for high-value payment systems of all reserve currencies supporting 80% of global volumes and 87% of value of transactions worldwide. With payment systems of all reserve currencies adopting ISO 20022, the financial community with consensus has decided to move to the new standard in Financial Institution payments and reporting.

ISO20022 standards are currentlyreplacings some MT categories of SWIFT messages and their equivalents, which are unsuitable for supporting evolving transaction needs for cross-border and high-value payment information. The new messages will drive enhanced speed and efficiency; reducing manual intervention, costs and helping to pave the way to enhanced straight-through processing (STP) and strengthen security.

Deadline for banking institutions was in March 2023, while final deadline for corporates and other entities is currently set at November2025. Under current information, by November 2025 all financial institutions processing SWIFT messages must be able to receive and process compliant ISO 20022 messages. After a period of coexistence, the corresponding legacy for the SWIFT MT messages impacted by the transition will be decommissioned on the SWIFT platform.

IFAD must adopt this standard to ensure continuity of its payments and financial transactions.

• At a second stage, priority would be to understand the changes required in PeopleSoft to add/enhance the fields in the new ISO standard for the equivalent of MT1xx and MT2xx.
• It is perceived that the first priority would be to verify the possibility of integrating incoming messages (tipically bank statements category MT9xx) and verify what changes are required in PeopleSoft in order to receive the ISO-based bank statements from IFAD banks.
• As IFAD financial counterparts (commercial, central banks, Global custodian etc.) will have to abide mandatorily to the new standards, IFAD as sender and receiver of SWIFT communications will need to have systems in place to exchange the new type of incoming and outgoing messages.
• Currently, the results of TRE’s preliminary discussion with both SWIFT and IFAD commercial banks seem to confirm that IFAD could continue to send the current SWIFT MT messages until November 2025 (end of SWIFT support to the current standards as, at SWIFT level, IFAD is not considered a banking institution.

Duties and responsibilities

Under the supervision of the ICT Project Manager in co-ordination with the Business Owner (Treasury), the incumbent will assess the as-is situation and propose a technical solution and pathway for IFAD to be compliant with ISO requirements.The findings should be documented for IFAD providing a technical approach and high level estimate of requires resources to implement the solution.

The incumbent will work closely with the business owner and ICT to carry out the following steps:

1.Understand the current process in terms of receipt, upload and processing of payments and bank statements

2.Understand the current process for the production and output of payment files which are uploaded to the SWIFT platform.

3.Analyse the ISO20022 requirements relevant for IFAD processing

4.Propose a technical solution or solutions for the adoption of ISO20022 within Peoplesoft to enable compliance with ISO20022. Ideally the proposal should include either a demo of the proposed solution in a vanilla environment of the vendor or high level setup in an IFAD vanilla environment.

5.Document the high level technical approach of the solution in PeopleSoft for the processing of bank statements and payments post ISO20022 adoption by some or all IFAD banks.Include consideration for the scenario of staggered adoption by banks.Also include consideration of any potential changes to the Cash Management team’s processes and procedures.

6.Provide a high level estimate of the resourcing and timeline for the implementation of the technical solution in Peoplesoft.

Professional requirements

Qualification and experience

§University degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or related discipline with at least five years of professional work experience in the implementation and support of PeopleSoft ERP Applications

Functional Requirements

§Extensive demonstrable experience (at least 5 years ) of working with PeopleSoft Financials 9.2 with particular experience in developing and configuring Cash Management, Banking and Accounts Payable

§Demonstrable hands-on experience of configuring and implementing Financial Gateway in at least 3 projects

§Any prior knowledge of IFAD processes would be helpful

Technical Requirements:

§Extensive demonstrable experience of at least 5 years with PeopleSoft FIN 9.2, in particular Banking, Cash Management and Accounts Payables modules.

§Development experience with People Tools 8.5x

§Good working knowledge of writing and customising PeopleCode, (knowledge of Application Packages would be an advantage)

§Previous experience in generation of XML files

§Knowledge of SwiftNet messaging would be advantageous.

§Good working knowledge of of Application Engine, SQR

§Good working knowledge of PeopleSoft Query

§Extensive experience with sql preferably with Oracle databases

§Experience of working with SWIFT or similar payment systems would be advantageous

§Knowledge of ISO20022 would be advantageous

§Demonstrable experience of documenting technical solutions

§Experience of report writing as part of project approval processes within large enterprises

§Clear and concise communication skills, particularly written communication.