Question

Based on your reading and analysis of the case study, post your response to the following:

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.

Please be specific, and use citations and references as appropriate and necessary

Answer 1

What challenges does Brown, the CIO, face in creating a process-oriented organization?

Brown’s process orientation was based on his conviction that the functional model had run its course (Raghu, T. S. 2010). According to Brown the reasonable approach to business transformation is process alignment and service orientation (Raghu, T. S. 2010). The way to make this happen was to convert from a functional model to a process model. First was to transform their IT, they were using the functional model for fifty years so this task proved to be difficult (Raghu, T. S. 2010). Along with that was the creation of a process engineering services group to provide support for information services process and continuous improvement (Raghu, T. S. 2010).

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?

Requirements for creating a process-oriented culture according to Janne Othonen (2012) begins with:

· Having a genuine focus on the customer – “Always seek customer satisfaction and value through fulfilling their needs” (Janne Othonen, 2012).

· Focus is on mastering from a customer oriented perspective – “Build in competitive advantage in delivering value to customers” (Janne Othonen, 2012).

· Have data and fact driven management – “Clarify key measures for gauging business performance, gather the necessary data and analyze it using key variables” (Janne Othonen, 2012). If it doesn’t contribute to great customer service the get rid of it.

· Create boundary less collaboration culture – “Break down organizational barriers to improve team work throughout the organization” (Janne Othonen, 2012).

· Require proactive management – “Set goals for providing customer experiences, review them frequently, establish clear priorities and focus on problem prevention rather than resolutions after the fact” (Janne Othonen, 2012).

· Support a drive for perfection, combined with a tolerance for failure – “You must be willing to try new ideas and approaches that have some risk of failure in order to make changes leading to perfection” (Janne Othonen, 2012).

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?

Yes, it is necessary 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.

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.

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 oversee the proposed changes and recommend if they will be of value to your organization or not.

References

Raghu, T. S. (2010). Creating a process-oriented enterprise at Pinnacle West (Ivey Publishing Case Study No. 9B10E002).

Othonen, Janne. August 29, 2012. 6 Key Ingredients for a Process Culture that Brings Results. BPM Leader: Independent community for business process management professionals.