1. What problems do you think WellPoint might have encountered by moving so many employees to a web-based HR system?
2. What do you think WellPoint’s HR department should try to achieve in moving forward?
3. How can PeopleSoft make certain that WellPoint is happy with its service?

When Tom Van Berkem, senior vice president, HR, arrived at WellPoint (Thousand Oaks, Calif., $20.4 billion in 2003 revenue) seven years ago, he was faced with the challenge of cost-effectively managing human resources for a company of about 6,000 employees that planned to quadruple in size.
“We faced the strategic challenge to build an [HR] infrastructure for a Fortune 500 company to become Fortune 100,” says Van Berkem. “Our existing system wasn’t up to that challenge.”
Van Berkem’s vision for meeting that challenge was to centralize HR services, along with instituting sweeping self-service functionality and 24/7 call center capability—an ambitious set of requirements for that time. Having vetted all the vendor players in the marketplace, Van Berkem relates, WellPoint chose PeopleSoft (Pleasanton, Calif.) because, “We were looking for a vendor we thought shared our vision and most closely matched what we wanted.”