Question

For this Discussion, read the case study "Creating a Process-Oriented Enterprise at Pinnacle West".

• What challenges does Brown, the CIO, face in creating a process-oriented organization?
• What are the requirements for creating a process-oriented culture in an organization? To what extend does Pinnacle West address these requirements? Where is it lacking?
• Is it necessary to push the process-oriented culture to the entire company, or is having a process-oriented information technology organization sufficient for driving value from business information systems?
• What lessons can you learn from the Pinnacle West case, and how might you apply those at your organization? How effective is management at promoting a process-oriented culture? What could management do better or improve upon to create or implement enterprise-wide business information systems? Provide specific examples to support your observations.

Answer 1

1. The first challenge faced by Denny Brown is the resistance of employees and the organizational culture which has been consistent since the inception of the company 120 years ago. The process-oriented model would affect every employee working in the organization because they would have to change their working style and their reporting structure.

The subsidiary for Pinnacle West, APS has been facing problems regarding clear communication protocols for the center of the organization to its subsidiary. Therefore, the company would have to make sure that all the human errors along with the ambiguity of information shall be removed. Furthermore, the priorities that are being set by the company to bring transformation in the business requires alignment with the corporate strategic objectives and vision as discussed in the case.

            The company also developed an aim of providing higher services to its clients along with achieving higher availability. However, due to financial constraints it is difficult for the company to achieve those results as it has been outlined by the company. Along with this, Brown was faced with the challenge of developing the leading practices for maintenance process because the previous practices was not attributed to maintenance failure. The company needed to develop a plan and a corrective action that such incidents like fire could be prevented in the future.

            Furthermore, another challenge faced by Brown includes the integration of all the data which is achieved through transmission and substation needs to be analyzed in a way that forecasting could be done accurately. Brown also had to develop a pattern analysis for the data so that an effective action plan could be implemented so as to establish a maintenance task.

Lastly, the company did not had a formal structure while it had been heavily dependent upon it employees in order to get the work done. Therefore, an expert power or the personnel power is influenced during the operations of the company where employees have power to challenge its top management.

2. According to Janne Othonen, creating a process-oriented culture requires the following;

• Having a genuine focus on the customer – it is important to always aim at satisfying customers at all times. Customers’ needs should come first at all times.
• Focus is on mastering from a customer oriented perspective – focus on building customer trust by delivering quality services.
• Have fact and data driven management – state clear measures for gauging the performance of the business and gather necessary data and carry out analysis using the hey indicators . In a situation where it does not contribute to success then there is need to eliminate it.
• Create boundary less collaboration culture – one should break down the barriers that the organization face and to improve team work within the organization.
• Require proactive management – goal setting is important and this should be done frequently to ensure that the organizational goals are met.
• Support a drive for perfection, combined with a tolerance for failure – one must be willing to take chances and this is through trying new ideas as well as approaches that have some risk of failure to make changes leading to perfection.

3. Yes, it is necessary for one to push the process-oriented culture to the whole company. Big business transformations are happening within IT today. Businesses have become more focused on better customer-facing through services, along with IT supporting people and new or current technology.

4. Pinnacle showed the importance on how to be adaptive to processes or ideas to succeed. Brown  was a key factor in taking the organization from a functional process to a process-oriented organization. Management could improve by implementing enterprise-wide business information systems along with case studies of other organizations that have made the same or similar change. If possible bring in management from another organization as a consultant to over proposed changes and recommend if they will be of value to your organization or not. There is need to bring in management from other similar companies as a consultant to oversee the proposed changes.