Leading integrated business application vendors such as PeopleSoft Inc., Oracle Corp. and SAP AG are more than willing to oblige. Part of the heightened appeal of commercial software comes from improvements in the applications, which let users tailor functions through simple table changes rather than writing new C code. Calif. In some cases, that meant agencies bought custom programming services at 10 to 20 times what they had paid for the commercial software. Table-driven packaged applications are much easier to modify. He dismissed the idea that expensive implementation services cancel out the savings from buying commercial applications.
Commercial software is the wave of the future.
Most agencies have limited experience replacing applications developed in-house with integrated commercial packages. The Veterans Affairs Department is just now testing the PeopleSoft Human Resources Management Software for Federal Government base benefits package at six VA medical centers, the Austin Finance and Automation Center, and at its headquarters. VA will begin a similar pilot with PeopleSoft federal payroll modules around the end of November. The U.S. Mint this month bought more than a dozen PeopleSoft integrated application modules to handle everything from finance and personnel processing to manufacturing, order processing, sales and distribution. The Army's Sustaining Base Information Services program in September 1996 bought integrated property management modules from Intergraph Corp. of Huntsville, Ala., for the Army Real Property Management system.