- Assess Southern’s ECM system on the four dimensions of project success. How successful do you think this project is?
CASE STUDY 11-1 Implementing Enterprise Change Management at Southern Company
Atlanta-based Southern Company, a leading utility provider in the southeast United States, is valued by its 4.4 million electricity customers for its excellent service, and it ranks as Fortune magazine’s “most admired” company in its industry. That means quality is important in everything the company does. When David Traynor, the company’s business excellence manage, was charged with implementing a new enterprise change management (ECM) suite, 55 he knew its key users, employees in the IT department, would scrutinize the new system and be very critical if anything didn’t work exactly as it should.
The projected investment for the ECM was in the seven figures range, but the business case was straightforward. The justification was based on the savings in time and costs from reduced meetings and the ability to devote more attention to risky projects. The IT department was handling over 7,000 change requests a year, each of which required a time-consuming approval process no matter how small or routine it was. Each change request needed to be approved at one of the three hourlong review committee meetings that were held each week. Some frustrated employees were even starting to circumvent the approval process. Clearly, something had to be done. But even though the ECM suite had clear benefits, the IT department was not eager to work on a system that didn’t promise to be very exciting. Further, installing the ECM suite promised to markedly change the way the IT folks performed their work. “They had to log all their changes, gain approval, take all these steps that they weren’t being tasked with before,” said Traynor.
The department selected BMC’s Remedy software suite after spending 6 months designing the new process. Next came 10 months of customizing the systems and 7 months to build them. The first ECM phase was rolled out in August 2010. Surprisingly, the new system produced even more change requests than before-almost 3,000 additional ones each year. Traynor reasoned that before the ECM was switched on, a lot of changes must have been processed without any review. That was problematic given that about 8 of 10 requested projects have at least some level of risk, and 100% require resources to complete. Now the change advisory board meets monthly (rather than three times weekly) and deals only with emergency changes and high-risk changes that could affect critical sites or many users. Routine change requests are preapproved using standard formats.
Traynor hadn’t spent much time getting buy in from the IT department during the first phase of the ECM project. He now believes he should have started the ECM communication and training effort much sooner in the first phase. The second phase of the implementation, the incident and problem management system, was done differently. Traynor appointed
“ambassadors” from each IT unit as before, but this time they participated from the very first day of the second phase. Traynor encouraged them to talk with the IT employees in their unit so the employees were not playing catch-up as they – had been in the first phase. Rather, the ambassadors were actively involved in designing system changes: “They’ve put their fingerprints on it. ⦠We get a lot of mileage from [the ambassadors].” Traynor wants them to learn the ECM and play a major role in training and testing the system. He adds, “The hope is that [they] ⦠become the go-to person after we go live.”
Sample Solution
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However, the national congress leaders like Gandhi and few others did not understand him properly. Gandhi blamed Ambedkar on the ground that Ambedkar argues for âseparatismâ as against the âunity of Hindu cultureâ. This was totally a misapprehension of the concept of social justice. Moreover, as a leader of a popular party, Congress, Gandhi wanted the âvote bankâ namely the numerical strength of the untouchable population to remain linked to Hindu Social order in spite that they were being treated as sub humans occupying the lowest strata of Indian society. Therefore Ambedkarâ s struggle for separate electorates and separate settlement was fully opposed by Gandhi and his congress followers. Gandhi went to the extent of âfast unto deathâ at Poona for the sake of withdrawal of Ambedkarâs demand for a separate electorate. Such was the misunderstanding of Gandhi with respect to the notion of Justice and equality. In a specific sense, Ambedkar was forced to withdraw his demand for the separate electorates because, if Ambedkar had pressed further his demand, it would have meant death to Gandhi, the popular leader of the Congre Enterprise Change Managementss, and as a result, great upheaval in the country. People like Nehru persuaded Enterprise Change ManagementAmbedkar to suspend his demand for a separate electorate. The backdrop of this historical event however has its implications. It implies that while Ambedkarâs approach to justice is both historical and social, the Gandhian and congress approach to justice is merely reformatory and politically motivated in favour of the caste-powered people. Political Democracy is Primarily a S Enterprise Change Management ocial Democracy For Ambedkar political democracy is interlinked with social democracy. If social democracy is not aimed then political democracy is a failure. In a very powerful assertion, Ambedkar opines that a country could realize its political freedom only when it is socially free from its own social disabilities, namely Casteism and Untouchability. He warned that democracy would break down if its society were sick by social injustice. In his address to the Assembly, Ambedkar says, âThe third thing we must do is not to be content with mere political democracy. We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life, which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the princip>
