Digital Humanities Blog

Our team organized a panel discussion with the Whitworth Philosophy Department to discuss the digital world and its intersections with the study of philosophy, as well as the benefits and concerns we see when those two worlds collide. The invited expert panelists were Dr. Rebecca Korf, Dr. Keith Wyma, and Dr. Nate King. Dr. Rebecca Korf has experience in environmental philosophy and philosophy of science and has conducted research that fuses digital elements with philosophical concepts. Dr. Nate King teaches business ethics at Whitworth and studies how businesses in the digital world change, along with the philosophical questions and implications of that reality. Dr. Keith Wyma mainly focuses on ethics and the ethical practices surrounding AI use and production. Below are some of the questions that were asked during the panel: How would you define digital humanities? What do you see as its purpose in the present academic world? Do you believe digital humanities intersect with philosoph...

 The Avista ERP transformation project goes through several phases: Discovery, Prepare, Explore, Realize, Deploy, Run, and Hypercare. At the time this project was being discussed, Avista was in the Explore phase. Most of the preliminary requirements needed to begin the transformation had already been completed. The two earlier phases, Discovery and Prepare, mainly focus on understanding and evaluating business needs, assembling teams, and setting up the infrastructure and project plans necessary for implementation.      The Explore phase focuses on defining requirements, conducting fit-gap analyses, and hosting workshops that train responsible track and business leads on the changes that will come with the new ERP system. These workshops are divided into workstreams such as Work and Asset Management, Customer Service, HR, Supply Chain, and Procurement. Outside vendors and partner consultants guide employees through the upcoming changes within each workstream. The in...

 

     Wayne Manuel is the Vice President of Operations at Avista. His role has evolved significantly since he first joined the company as Chief Information Officer, a position in which he completed a full strategic plan within his first months. Over time he transitioned into a broader operations and technology role, and today he serves as the executive sponsor of the ERP implementation, signing contracts and meeting regularly with implementation leadership to keep the program on track.      Wayne and I sat down to talk about the origins, challenges, and philosophy behind Avista's ERP initiative. My questions focused on understanding how a project of this scale gets off the ground, what resistance looks like from a leadership perspective, and how the organization plans to bring its workforce along through the change.      During our conversation Wayne walked me through how the ERP vision first took shape. After joining Avista as CIO, he conve...

Mike Beil is a Senior Lead of ERP Fusion. His job focuses on ensuring that current systems integrate well with the upcoming SAP platform. He mainly works with data migration, validation, and ensuring the process of fusion aligns with the strategic goals that leadership aims to achieve with this implementation. Mike has served as a system engineer and as a cybersecurity expert prior to this position and has a deep understanding of how the vertically integrated utility works with its business functions. Mike and I sat down to talk about the technical considerations that Avista has to make when integrating into this large ERP system. My questions, unlike others, focused on understanding the backbone of our ERP systems and what is being done to ensure we mitigate some identified risks that come with it. During our conversation Mike spoke about the broader operational goals behind the ERP implementation. From his perspective, much of the motivation behind the project comes from the recogn...

Shannon Wade is a project manager at Avista Utilities. She joined the project management office to lead work for the upcoming Avista ERP implementation project. Previously she worked in the enterprise technologies department and has experience managing different system based projects from initiation up to deployment. I sat down with Shannon to mainly talk about how her role as a project manager would be affected by the ERP implementation and the pros and cons she sees for managers and employees once this system is deployed. During our conversation Shannon first spoke about the pace of change that the project management office has already been experiencing. The PMO recently transitioned to a new Cloud solution (this was around the same time I joined the company) and the team is still adjusting to that system through fixes, training, and ongoing changes. Because of this, the upcoming SAP ERP implementation represents another major shift for the same group of employees. From her perspecti...