Brigham Young University partnered with Gideon Taylor to transition from a 12-person internal PeopleSoft support team to a six-person managed services engagement — without sacrificing quality, transparency, or responsiveness.
The Challenge
BYU serves nearly 35,000 students from over 100 countries, with PeopleSoft underpinning its Campus Solutions, Finance, and Human Resources operations. When IT leadership began planning a transition of their Finance and HR environments to Workday, 12 experienced full-time employees were slated for reassignment away from PeopleSoft administration.
Rather than backfill those 12 positions, BYU wanted to maintain — or improve — the quality of PeopleSoft support across all three pillars with fewer resources. That raised some practical concerns: Could an outside partner match the institutional knowledge of a long-tenured internal team? How would communication and transparency hold up with off-site support? And how would security be managed with non-BYU staff accessing critical systems?
BYU’s existing support model also had structural issues. Requests were handled ad hoc — a user would email a developer directly, and that developer would drop what they were doing to respond. There was no consistent ticketing process, no centralized prioritization, and limited visibility into how time and resources were being spent across functional areas.
The Solution
BYU partnered with Gideon Taylor to implement a PeopleSoft Managed Services engagement covering all three PeopleSoft pillars — Campus Solutions, Finance, and Human Resources — including PeopleTools and PUM updates, production support, issue tracking, and required reporting.
GT’s approach started with process, not headcount. Rather than simply replacing BYU employees with GT consultants, the team redesigned how support work was organized, tracked, and prioritized.
Structured ticketing through ServiceNow. Every support request — whether it came by phone, email, or chat — now gets logged as an incident or enhancement in ServiceNow. GT organized BYU’s 20+ functional departments into distinct ServiceNow product groups, so tickets are automatically routed to the right team member. Teams channels were established for real-time communication when systems were being updated or going offline.
Layered communication cadence. Twice a month, BYU management and GT senior leadership meet to review the contract, service hours (including unused hours that roll forward), and any open items. GT’s Project Manager holds separate bi-weekly calls with BYU’s primary sponsor to address current needs, upcoming tasks, and changes. Daily phone calls and active Teams chat fill in the gaps. GT also uses incidents as training material so the entire team benefits from what’s being learned on any given issue.
Agile sprint planning with client-driven prioritization. GT runs standing two-week sprints for each PeopleSoft pillar. At the start of each sprint, story points are assigned based on the work ahead. During sprint reviews, GT and BYU users assess what was completed and what’s coming next. BYU users also have access to a report in Teams where they can rank their priorities for incident response and enhancements — giving GT clear visibility into what matters most, rather than the old model where whoever asked loudest got served first.
Validation before resource allocation. GT discovered that as BYU’s subject matter experts were pulled into other roles across the university, less-experienced users sometimes reported issues that were really knowledge gaps rather than system problems. GT built in a review step to validate each request before assigning resources, keeping the team focused on genuine incidents and enhancements.
The Results
50% Reduction in Support Staff
BYU went from 12 internal FTEs to 6 Gideon Taylor team members — with no decrease in support quality or system functionality.
Greater Transparency Than Before
The ServiceNow-based ticketing system and structured communication cadence actually give BYU more visibility into how time is spent across each pillar than they had with their internal team.
Scalable When It Matters
The engagement launched prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. When BYU identified areas requiring additional resources, GT scaled quickly to meet those needs — demonstrating the flexibility that a managed services model provides over fixed internal staffing.
Proactive, Not Reactive
The shift from ad hoc developer requests to sprint-based planning with client-driven prioritization means BYU’s PeopleSoft support is now organized around institutional priorities rather than whoever happens to ask first.
About BYU
Brigham Young University is a private research university in Provo, Utah, serving nearly 35,000 students from more than 100 countries. BYU’s IT Administration Department manages PeopleSoft environments supporting Campus Solutions, Finance, and Human Resources for the university’s operations and worldwide outreach.
