Digital Humanities Blog

  This project has been an interesting experience. It helped me dive deeper into company processes and understand how large systems are put in place in the workplace, giving me a bird's-eye view of how businesses operate rather than a restricted, small-scale perspective. It forced me to step out of my comfort zone, engage with different professionals, and learn from their experiences and expectations. At the same time, it helped me find connections between the digital and the humanities in places I least expected. When I first chose this topic as my Applied Digital Humanities final project, I had concerns. My first concern was that the project wouldn't satisfy the requirements for the class, that it would either fail to be considered "digital" or fail to be categorized within the humanities. But I took that shot in the dark to uncover how systems hidden behind corporate jargon actually have a real, ground-level impact on the lives and everyday processes of individuals...

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...

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are typically designed to centralize business processes into a unified information system integrating various business operations. The goal is to create a single source of truth for organizational data and processes. However, many organizations operate multiple ERP systems simultaneously, a structure sometimes called two-tier ERP. In this architecture, a company may run one ERP at the corporate level and separate ERP systems in subsidiaries or divisions, allowing local units to maintain independent processes or specialized workflows. Especially considering big organizations with international reach and multiple branches, it sometimes becomes necessary to use multi-ERP systems to integrate business functions that operate in different contexts. This approach contradicts the ideal of a fully centralized ERP architecture, but in practice it is very common in large enterprises. This leads me to question whether ERP systems follow their own premi...

Dawn Keig is a professor of strategic management in the business department at Whitworth University. She teaches various classes related to management, information systems, and organizational structure. She has been an advisor for my interdisciplinary major for two years and has ample experience in project management, as well as serving as a systems integration lead. When I reached out to Dawn and told her about my project, she expressed interest and mentioned that she had experience integrating ERP systems across various industries before her time in higher education. My main goal for this interview was to get her technical opinion by leveraging her expertise in the subject so she could tell me the pros, the cons, and the opportunities I may not have seen. I also hoped she could point me toward things I had not thought about and guide my project process. During our conversation, Dawn explained that throughout the history of businesses there has been a pendulum swinging between central...

 

Background:  PREFACE: Raw interview transcript is posted on the blog.  Chitra Bose is a project manager for ERP implementation at Delaware Consulting. Delaware is the partner company that assists with implementation, workshops, validation, software integration, and organizational change management for Avista's ERP implementation project. Chitra has been in the business for 30 years and has extensive experience in ERP systems, their benefits, and their potential drawbacks. Summary of The Interview: This interview provides a practitioner’s perspective on ERP systems, especially in the utility industry. Most of our conversation revolved around integration, efficiency, implementation risks, change management, AI integration, and workforce adaptation. Chitra emphasizes that ERP systems serve as a “single source of truth” that improves organizational coordination but also require careful selection, training, and change management.  Chitra mainly argues that the vital benefit of...

Before analyzing the pros, cons, and potential of ERP systems, I think it is very important to provide a brief overview of the history of these systems. When starting this project, I assumed ERP systems were recent phenomena in large enterprises. I was led to believe that because the way I was exposed to them at my place of employment made it feel like not only something new to the company, but also something new for the wider industry. However, after doing some research, I found out that I was wrong.  The history of Enterprise Resource Planning systems goes back to the 1960s. At the time, many companies and industries in the United States focused on manufacturing, and there was a need to use computerized technology to keep track of raw materials and products in terms of procurement. The first form of these centralized systems was called MRP, or Materials Requirements Planning. J.I. Case , a manufacturer of tractors and construction machinery, worked with IBM to develop one of th...

Project Focus This project examines Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems as socio-technical infrastructures that reorganize knowledge, labor, and authority within large organizations. Rather than treating ERP as merely business software, this study frames it as a digital infrastructure that reshapes how disciplines communicate, how workflows are structured, and how institutional knowledge is produced and controlled. Using the ongoing ERP implementation at Avista Corporation as a case study, this project analyzes whether ERP systems meaningfully integrate organizational functions or simply reorganize and redistribute existing silos under a centralized technological framework. What is an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning System):  Enterprise resource planning (ERP) refers to a type of software that organizations use to manage day-to-day business activities such as accounting, procurement, project management, risk management and compliance, and supply chain operations.  ...

Project Focus: Pros and Cons of Enterprise Resource Planning as an Interdisciplinary Infrastructure What is an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning System):  Enterprise resource planning (ERP) refers to a type of software that organizations use to manage day-to-day business activities such as accounting, procurement, project management, risk management and compliance, and supply chain operations.  ERP systems tie together a multitude of business processes and enable the flow of data between them. By collecting an organization’s shared transactional data from multiple sources, ERP systems eliminate data duplication and provide data integrity with a single source of truth. - Oracle: What is ERP? (https://www.oracle.com/erp/what-is-erp/) Project Objective and Motivation:  The objective of this project is to critically examine enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems as interdisciplinary socio-technical infrastructures that shape how labor moves across an organization. I will ...

Good Data:  Data whose originator had good intentions:  The FEWS Net (Ethiopia): FEWS NET monitors and provides early warning analysis of ongoing, imminent, or emerging threats to food security and maintains the flexibility to analyze unanticipated crises around the world. Between 1983 and 1985 there was a heavy drought and famine in Ethiopia particularly in the northern region.  FEWS NET has significantly helped Ethiopia by providing early warnings and detailed food security analyses, enabling timely responses to famine threats. By monitoring factors like rainfall, crop yields, market prices, and nutrition data, it predicts food shortages and identifies at-risk populations. These forecasts have allowed the Ethiopian government and humanitarian organizations to prepare in advance, mobilize resources, and implement targeted interventions, such as food distribution and cash transfers. The FEWS NET is data being used for a good purpose that has a positive life saving impac...

Data whose originator had good intentions: Eugenics: Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices aimed at improving the genetic quality of a human population, often through selective breeding or sterilization. The concept has its origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, drawing on advancements in genetics and evolutionary theory. Okay labeling this as "good intentions" is a stretch but for the sake of the argument given by the leaders of the eugenics movement, let us take their word for it and assume this was an attempt at a scientific breakthrough Reflection: Eugenics is an immoral and pseudoscientific theory that claims it is possible to perfect people and groups through genetics and the scientific laws of inheritance. Eugenicists used an incorrect and prejudiced understanding of the work of Charles Darwin and Gregor Mendel to support the idea of “racial improvement.” In their quest for a perfect society, eugenicists labelled many people as “unfit,” including eth...