Dominion Gas and IMA Implement Oracle and Provide Framework for Future M&A Technology Integration

Situation

Dominion Gas, a major utility with over 6,000 employees and $6.4 billion in revenue, lacked a common financial system that could easily integrate data to efficiently assimilate new companies.  The company selected Oracle as the technology solution, but needed to overcome a history of poor implementations that were historically over budget and sometimes missed Target dates by as much as one year.  The Oracle implementation needed to be completed in a very tight timeframe, with many other simultaneous initiatives competing for the organization's resources and attention.

IMA's Role

IMA consultants first educated top leadership in the Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM) and together they defined a clear Business Case for Action.  Given the organization's very low baseline score of 35% probability of implementation success as measured by IMA's Implementation History Assessment, and other significant barriers such as 12 different sites, AIM was applied to provide a structured framework for the change.  Project team members were accredited in AIM so that they could work together with IMA consultants to:

• Develop strong Sponsorship at each site
• Ensure rewards were aligned with corporate goals
• Overcome the low trust and credibility of management
• Overcome a risk-averse culture that was highly political and rewarded turf-guarding

Throughout the initiative, IMA assessment tools were used to measure results and modify plans.