Kodak

Eastman Kodak

Eastman Kodak went through a considerable transformation change since it was founded. The organization structure at Eastman Kodak was a typical classical hierarchy with the CEO overlooking the entire organization. Later in 1984, the company went through a transformation change in which it was reorganized into 29 separate business units grouped into four lines of business. It included Photography (PPG), Commercial and Imaging Group (CIG), Chemicals (EC), and Health (HG) and three international segments. Each group operated under its own general manager.

Later again in 1988, Eastman Kodak launched an Information Systems Department (ISD) which was responsible for development of business applications and management of small-scale computer network operations.

After going through change management organization, Eastman Kodak made alliances with IBM, DEC and Business Land. The new organization consisted of three distinct organization entities: Kodak’s Corporate IS organization; Kodak’s Business Group/ Business Unit IS organizations and the Alliance organization.

The strategic stand during the transformation change at the beginning was focused on downsizing its business core units by cutting employment by 10%. Cutting costs was also a priority as they moved to outsourcing of some of its business processes, especially in the IT area if it met its core function of the company or if there was value in it.

ISD was responsible for management of large data centers and voice and data communications. Eastman Kodak had its own IT management department that supported services that were not outsourced.

The type of culture that existed at Eastman Kodak was also transformed significantly. The major change was when part of its business processes was outsourced to other companies because employees had to adapt to whole new environment even though it was not a total change. Employees that had worked for Eastman Kodak for years are the ones that may have been affected most because they probably were used to the hierarchical type of leadership.

I think organization structure is the one that must have had an impact on other elements like IT because mainly after outsourcing some of its services. It meant that whatever decision these other element make or change, they had to consider the new allied division so to make sure its strategies a...

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...asing a pc for a Kodak end user.

The advice I would give Hudson concerning long-term management of Eastman Kodak’s networked IS organization is that she would want to consider automating the business processes with the Alliance organizations if they plan on outsourcing their services for over a long period of time. The benefit would be cost reduction time wise and faster service and product to customers. Some of the processes I noted are used on their websites (www.kodak.com), for example, delivering pictures to customers through email.

I think, as a company grows bigger, like Eastman Kodak has, its business processes become complex, and in this case, its complexity includes outsourced services. I think Eastman Kodak can benefit from this and so can the allied partners. An example is given in the case over service deliver process in which it says, “a Kodak end user acquiring a personal computer from Business Land had to contact not only Business Land but also IBM to establish a mainframe account, and DEC to install network connections.” I think there are processes that have not been realized yet that can be supported by an automated system but can only be realized as time passes.