1. Providian Trust being the 10th largest financial and fiduciary services provider, slowly deteriorated in terms of profitability and competition in 1994 due to lack of efficient business process and IT. The key motive behind the initiation of Access Plus was due to the following reasons: * Forceful client demand on the part of PITS division. * Trust division lacked control and discipline. * Operation efficiency and outdated reporting systems as far as the clients concerned. * To convert the trust divisions expired information system to more efficient system. * Seeking improved methods to serve the clients. * Time, Quality and Cost improvement. * Improper tracking of all the services gave way to a huge price and thus led to a centralized tracking system. * Lack of knowledge on using different types of technology and software. * The institutional custody business became technology concentrated with some of them outsourcing the entire backroom function to have an effective operations. * The Front and back offices performed administrative functions. So there were blame games between trust officers and operations people. 2. To ensure success of Access Plus project, Providian has to make many organizational changes: * Give computer lessons to front office and back office aiming to teach them to process data through computers. * Full project testing can be implemented and deadlines have to be extended. * Communication among all divisions of the company have to be enhanced and people who are going to be affected by the change have to be involved. * Adapt to market changes regularly and also change to a better client/customer oriented environment. * The client relationship managers, sales team, and portfolio managers would be decentralized to enable them to sell to their clients and the trust operations would be centralized. * Changes have to be made to the front office of PITS, Personal Trust, Operations department back office which is responsible for handling and maintaining records for securities. * The primary caretakers of data, taking responsibility for trust account administration and existing trust information is the operations group and here the information would be converted to the Access plus system. * The company houses two IT departments, retail banking being supported by 204 IT personnel but only 30 IT personnel are in the Operations Department. More IT personnel have to be added in the Operations department as they would produce huge number of data which flows into the database. 3. Harley Davidson and Providian Trust were both huge companies with a very big network and huge market share. Each organization has their own strength, weakness, success and failure. Both companies built a large network and had an enormous market share. * The employees of both the companies were experienced but employees of Providian lacked knowledge required for changing the system. * The strategy of Harley Davidson was organized, ready to change and executed well compared to Providian Trust employees. * Providian trust had a strong personal two-way relationship with the clients compared to Harley Davidson. * There was a very strong leader for Providian trust who supported greatly to success compared to Harley Davidson. * There was lack of communication and Providian Trust employees failed to meet deadlines. * There were constant differences between the executive group members of Providian Trust which made it difficult to implement the project and created a lot of chaos. Harley Davidson executed the whole process a lot more efficiently and set themselves up For long-term success.

4. I agree with the role that the internal auditor Peter Storey played throughout the project. * The SWOT analysis proved how the program was not going to be a success. * Peter played an important role in bringing the points up but the communication was not professional. * The board of directors had to be notified on the risks identified within the audit report upon Michael LeBlanc’s response. * The key point raised by him was regarding documentation all everything was important in terms of auditing. * Any delay would have had an impact on the auditing process. * Conveying the right information in a timely and professional manner to the trust members and the higher authorities would be more effective.
Peter should not be fired, instead Michael LeBlanc should be the one fired for continuing with the project even after he was warned on the different changes that needed to take place. 5. A sense of urgency has to be created within the organization on the way have to change things and leads to a culture change of the organization. Schedule various training programs and train them on the basics of computers so that issues can be sorted when the project is running. There should be only one vice-president unlike many in the steering committee. This would allow us to receive input from those that will be working on the trenches with the new software and create a powerful guiding coalition. Their advice would be beneficial when it comes to deciding which program we should select.
I would also develop a vision and communicate that vision to the organization. This would lead to empower others to act on the vision. We must also plan for and create short-term wins. Additionally employees who are involved in the improvements must be recognized and rewarded. Finally, I would institutionalize new approaches by ensuring that managers are continuing to train personnel on the changes that have taken place. . I would have tried solving it by bringing the auditor Peter and other members under a single roof and talk with them before Peter has actually raised the voice. I would have first analyzed the SWOT before actually taking this up. There are many contributing factors for this like the lack of computer knowledge among the members and the environment is completely change resistant.