By issuing top-of-the-line mobile PCs to each of its more than 6,000 employees, PeopleSoft shows its commitment to its staff, even as the PCs make that staff more productive.

Company Profile
PeopleSoft* knows mobile computing as well as any company on earth. Since its origins in 1987, the global provider of enterprise application solutions has been outfitting employees with mobile PCs. Today, all 6,000 PeopleSoft employees at 39 sites in the U.S. and around the world use laptop computers. Even the temps use laptops.

"Mobile computing is part of the way we translate our values into action," says Steve Zarate, chief information officer at PeopleSoft. "We place a high value on our employees. Giving people the tools to work flexibly and to have more self-determination in terms of when and how they work is an important aspect of our culture. Giving mobile computers to employees shows that we don't just talk the talk, we walk the walk."

Mobile computing has improved productivity by enabling collaboration across distances and providing additional flexibility in the workday. But PeopleSoft executives point out that enhancement of employee morale is a key benefit.

Opportunity
Mobility Keeps Employees from Leaving
In the competitive world of enterprise software solutions, PeopleSoft has carved out a global position through highly responsive customer service and a corporate culture that attracts and retains top talent. Universal deployment of mobile PCs underscores PeopleSoft's commitment.

"As a software company, our product is the direct result of our employees' talents," Zarate notes. "Mobile computing helps us get the best people here, and keep them here once we've hired them. If you're competing for technology-oriented workers, mobile computing is a definite advantage."

	"Mobile computing helps us get the best people here, and keep them here once we've hired them." Steve Zarate, Chief Information Officer, PeopleSoft

Zarate notes that mobile PCs allow employees to work from home when a child is sick, for example, or to shift work hours around a doctor's appointment or other task. That flexibility reduces workplace stress, enhances productivity, and makes for happier employees.

The Personnel Payoff
Rapidly growing PeopleSoft is surrounded by serious competitorsnot only in terms of products, but also in terms of attracting and retaining high-quality employees. Despite this challenge, the company has sustained a remarkable growth rate, going from a start-up to a billion-dollar company in just 11 years. PeopleSoft is now the number two global provider of ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software.

Much of that success is traceable to the company's ability to solve the challenge of attracting and holding onto the best people. For PeopleSoft, that solution came through establishing and supporting a core set of valuesamong them a commitment to a fun work environment and world-class customer service. The wide deployment of mobile PCs is just one expression of those core values.

Solution
Standards Simplify Support
Clear and consistent standards help manage the amount of help desk training and simplify support management. The ability to maintain a standard inventory of spare parts, for example, enables quick swap-outs and repairs, thus reducing expensive downtime.

PeopleSoft has long reaped the benefits of mobile computing. Now the falling cost of ownership, combined with improving connectivity over the Internet, is making mobile computing more valuable to the business than ever before.

	"Anybody in the company can go to any office anywhere in the world, plug into any port anywhere in the office, and be recognized just as if they're in their own office." Steve Zarate, Chief Information Officer, PeopleSoft

The Productivity Payoff
At PeopleSoft, mobile computing increases productivity. Programmers and knowledge workers use their mobile PCs to complete tasks at any time of day, from any place they happen to be.

Ultimately, says Zarate, the goal is to make distance irrelevant. "We want it to be a minor detail whether somebody happens to be in Pleasanton, in Paris or in Perth."

To achieve that vision, PeopleSoft works to enable a mobile environment. The company constantly assesses employee needs and crafts equipment standards that meet them. The result: The mobile platform changes to fit the task.

Total cost of ownership is an area of specific focus, particularly since mobile PCs can cost more to manage than desktop systems. To reduce costs, PeopleSoft automates many management tasks, constantly striving to create consistent processes and standards.

For example, software upgrades are broadcast to employees worldwide over the network. When users log into the PeopleSoft network, their PC is automatically updated with the new software.

This low-touch approach is critical for international operations. "As we've opened new offices and expanded to new countries, we've used standard TCP/IP protocol, standard DHCP protocol, and standard networking equipment throughout the enterprise," Zarate explains. "So anybody in the company can go to any office anywhere in the world, plug into any port anywhere in the office, and they'll be recognized just as if they're in their own office."

Summary
Ubiquitous mobile PCs are a natural outgrowth of PeopleSoft's commitment to supporting high-caliber workers with the best tools available. With more than 6,000 mobile PCs in employees' hands, the company's commitment to freeing its people from their desks is strong. It shows the effectiveness of combining the innovative with the established in order to create a new, more mobile business entity perfectly suited to the e-Business environment.

Fortune* magazine ranked PeopleSoft sixth on its prestigious list of the 100 best companies to work for, up from number 20 the year before. The flexibility of mobile computing is a small but significant part of that achievement.