UNDP Jobs - 51605- PeopleSoft Production Support Specialist

PeopleSoft Production Support Specialist

Location :

New York, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

Application Deadline :

30-Nov-14 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

3 years (based on satisfactory performance)

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) uses PeopleSoft Enterprise applications as its corporate ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, and implemented more than 23 modules within Finance, HCM, EPM, CRM and Portal applications. The PeopleSoft environment for UNDP is referred to as Atlas, and it is accessed throughout the world.

Working within the Production Support Services section, the individual contractor will be working closely with the Atlas Production Support Team to address applications (primarily PeopleSoft Finance modules) related issues in production, and with the Change Control Team to review and support change and system integrity solutions. UNDP performs code development (enhancements) and applies fixes to failed delivered processes.

Duties and Responsibilities

The key tasks and responsibilities include but are not limited to:

Acts as the primary technical liaison for production issue resolution to the Business Support and Client Services teams and business units;
Works directly with the Atlas Service Center in recording and resolving application issues that require further technical involvement, whether overall issues or isolated cases;
Develops and implements plans to resolve critical and urgent production or non-production issues;
Monitors and drives issue resolution with the Application Service Provider;
Develops and maintains a strong relationship with the Application Service Provider;
Serves as focal point for key processes such as batch schedules, interface, and table and data management;
Oversees the daily operations and execution of daily operational procedures, processes and tools used for tracking and problem resolution knowledge capture;
Oversees Tier 3 technical support requests;
Manages and monitors day-to-day technical support and maintenance of business systems;
Identifies process re-engineering opportunities to provide system stability, performance and minimize unscheduled down time;
Develop and execute plans for communicating key issues to the business community including end-users in headquarters as well as country offices;
Working closely with the Atlas Development group on resolving issues, as most technical and functional resources with expertise in and responsibility for specific application modules will belong to this group;
Provides technical support for PeopleSoft code/projects migration between non production and production environments for all Atlas environments;
Perform code validation for objects migrated to production and execute data fix requests in production;
Monitor and provide support for Control-M jobs and Interface processes;
Extended support for PeopleSoft Applications in Production and Training environments;
Liaises with the hosting service providers in ensuring the effective implementation of performance tuning, optimization and troubleshooting database/application related issues to meet business and user requirements.

Competencies

Good working knowledge of PeopleSoft Finance 9.x application modules and PeopleTools 8.5x environment;
Strong working knowledge of SQL/Plus, Application Designer, SQR, Crystal, PeopleCode, Application Messaging and DMS scripts.
Good understanding of UNIX shell script commands;
Good understanding of the Application Server, Process Scheduler, and Web Logic server in Unix and NT environments;
In-depth understanding of the perspectives and needs of the customers for owned software component(s) support;
Strong analytical and problem solving skills;
Strong communication skills - both written and verbal;
Strong command of standard desktop software (Excel, Word, Outlook, etc.);
Proven ability to effectively manage tasks and activities

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Master's degree in IT, Computer Science or Engineering or Bachelor's degree in Information Systems or Computer Science.

Experience:

Master's degree: Minimum 2 years (3 years for Bachelor's degree) of direct and relevant experience, which demonstrates increasing level of responsibility (of which 2 years shows functional and technical knowledge) with respect to PeopleSoft environments and responsibilities;
Experience in software requirements gathering and use case development;
Prior working experience in the provision of extended production support service.
The individual must have worked in a minimum PeopleSoft 9.0 application environment.

Language Requirements:

Proficient in written and spoken English;
Working knowledge of another UN language is an asset.

Application Procedure

Qualified and interested candidates are hereby requested to apply. The application package should contain the following:

Online application with brief description of why the Offeror considers her/himself the most suitable for the assignment;
Personal CV or P11, indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the email and telephone contacts of at least three (3) professional references.

Only Shortlisted candidates will be requested to submit a Financial Proposal.

The financial proposal should specify the daily fee based on a 7 hour working day (lunch time is not included) and travel expenses quoted in separate line items. Cost of travel and living should NOT be included in the daily fee. However, all envisaged travel costs must be included in the financial proposal. This includes all travel to join duty station/repatriation travel. In general, UNDP should not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources. In the case of unforeseeable travel requested by UNDP, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between UNDP and Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed;
The successful Individual Contractor is eligible for reimbursement of cost of living at the rate of $189/day for the first 30 and $96/day for remaining days as per contract terms, provided that: a) he/she is commuting a minimum of 3 hours to work (one way); and that b) he/she presents all supporting documents in the form of receipts, vouchers, etc. as a proof;
If the Offeror is employed by an organization/company/institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under a Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate at this point, and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP;
The Financial Proposal is to be emailed to cpu.bids@undp.org on or before the application deadline given above with the heading “Financial Proposal for PeopleSoft Production Support Specialist"

Evaluation:

Applicants are shortlisted based on Required Skills and Experience stated in the TOR. UNDP may choose to interview shortlisted candidates. Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

After which the applicants will be evaluated based on cumulative scoring. When using this weighted scoring method, the award of the contract will be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

Being responsive/compliant/acceptable; and
Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation
Technical criteria weight/Interview Score (70%);
Financial criteria weight/Financial Proposal (30%).

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70% (490 points) of the maximum obtainable points for the technical criteria (700 points) shall be considered for the financial evaluation.

Technical evaluation - Total 70% (700 points):

Years of relevant experience: Weight = 20%; Maximum Point: 200;
Knowledge in database and PeopleSoft Applications and System process, Strong knowledge of UNIX scripting, creation and maintenance of database systems and implementation of PeopleSoft across a wide variety of application architectures: Weight: 40%; Maximum Point: 400;
Communication and work management: Weight: 10%; Maximum Point: 100

Financial evaluation - Total 30% (300 points)

Framework Agreement

UNDP plans to enter into the Long-Term Agreement (LTA) with one or two TOP ranked successful Individual Contractor/s to assure resources availability at the required timefame and/or increased demand for services requested. The service of who will be used on an intermittent and repetitive basis when needed and based on the fixed unit price. Other prospective applicants that are not contracted, at the UNDP discretion, will be placed in the roster of consultants to be used based on call basis for similar services.

Please note that the LTA does not form a financial obligation or commitment from UNDP at the time the LTA contract is signed, and that such an agreement is non-exclusive. When a specific need arises, the successful Individual Contractor/s will be approached and be provided with a specific TOR and deliverables (and time frame) but still within the scope of the responsibilities stated in the LTA. The successful Individual Contractor/s is expected to provide Confirmation of Interest on the specific services required and submit Financial Proposal based on the agreed LTA Daily Rate Consultancy Fee. Financial commitments will only be established each time a Purchase Order for the specific services/TOR for Individual Contractor is committed.

This LTA has a cumulative ceiling amount that may accrue to the individual contractor during the life of the LTA, but said amount shall remain as an upper limit, and must not and cannot be interpreted nor understood as neither a financial commitment nor guarantee of business volume.

The duration of LTA is for 3-year period subject to satisfactory contract performance.

Payment Modalities:

Payment to the Individual Contractor will be made based on the deliverables and upon certification of satisfactory completion by the manager;
The successful Individual Contractor is eligible for reimbursement of cost of living at the rate of $189/day for the first 30 and $96/day for remaining days as per contract terms, provided that: a) he/she is commuting a minimum of 3 hours to work (one way); and that b) he/she presents all supporting documents in the form of receipts, vouchers, etc. as a proof;
The work week will be based on 35 hours, i.e. on a 7 hour working day, with core hours being between 9h00 and 18h00 daily.
Payments are to be made to the Individual Contractor based on the number of days worked and deliverables accepted.

Annexes:

Annex 1: UNDP P-11 Form for ICs and SCs;
Annex 2: IC Contract Template; and
Annex 3: IC General Terms and Conditions.

These annexes can be found on the procurement notice at the following link: http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=19382

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Any request for clarification must be sent by email to cpu.bids@undp.org

The UNDP Central Procurement Unit will respond by email and will send written copies of the response, including an explanation of the query without identifying the source of inquiry, to all applicants.