ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT

CASE: TROJAN TECHNOLOGIES INC.

Brief Background on Trojan Technologies Inc. Trojan Technologies Inc. was set up in 1977. It was into the business of disinfecting water and waste water through UV light applications. This technology had proven to be an effective alternative to chlorination and hence had gained wider acceptance. At this time, only 10% of the municipal waste water sites in North-America used UV based technology. Hence, there was a huge potential for increasing market share for Trojan. At the start, it had a headcount of only 3 staff which had increased to 50 by 1992, the same year in which the company completed a successful IPO. In 1991, it had introduced its 2nd generation technology, the UV3000 wastewater disinfection system.Between 1994 to 1995, the sales revenues of the company increased from roughly $20 mn to $50 mn. Commensurately, the staff strength increased to 190. By 1997, 93% of Trojans sales came from wastewater products and only 7% from cleanwater systems. It was estimated that sales in 1198 would touch the $70 mn mark and grow at the rate of 30% Y-o-Y to reach the $300 mn mark by 2003. The company estimated that it would need approximately 1000 employees by then to staff its expanded business. Trojans Customers and Organisational Structure Customers of its wastewater disinfection systems included municipality contractors and municipalities themselves. Therefore, it was essentially in a B2B kind of business. The customers of the clean water systems on the other hand were varied and included individuals, municipalities and industrial companies. Its single project sales to one of its clients fell in the range of $100,000 to $500,000. Given the size of the sales, the Sales & Marketing and the Technology departments were crucial to the success of the company. Equally important was the After-Sales service department which ensured warranted service to the customers. This helped in positive word-of-mouth advertising. The main points of customer interaction included 1. Quote/Bid process 2. Configuration of Project structure

3. Project shipment and system installation 4. Technical support and warranty claims 5. Parts order processing This structure worked fine until there were only 50 employees and the employees in each department had immediate connectivity to employees in other departments. Problems faced byTrojans clients However, as the company grew in terms of its technologies, clients and geographies, this immediate connectivity between the departments was lost. Each department completed its own portion of the project and handed it over to the next department. However, the next department took up the project only after it completed its previous project. Meanwhile, the client didnt know whom to contact for updates. Ideally, the client side technical expert wanted to have a single POC from Trojan from start to finish as this would help in better co-ordination and tracking of problems. However, with the increasing need of specializing in a single service, Trojan couldnt meet this expectation of its clients. Internal Problems within Trojan: In the Project Engineering Department, there were 7 specialists for various technical components of the products providing support to the Marketing department. These engineers learnt on the job and from their colleagues. They had no formal training programs upon recruitment to prepare them for these roles. The company continued its practice of recruiting them not for any specific roles. These specialists were a commonly pooled resource within the company. They were accessed by any/all active projects preventing them from acting on specific projects as the clients would desire. Even though the Service department had expanded to take care of the potential queries and service requests in the future, yet it was pretty unstructured. On account of Trojans clients being widely dispersed across geographies, its service personnel had to travel a lot causing burnout.

Career progression at Trojan earlier meant being recognized for the significant contribution one made to each of the projects. Now, with increasing differentiation of work at Trojan, not everybody had a chance to get involved in everything. That resulted in employees not knowing what to do in the changed circumstances to move ahead in career. Recommended Solution: The root cause for most of the problems experienced at Trojan and its customers is because of centralization. This reduces the understanding of individual customers and thus the relationship with the customer takes a hit. Therefore, creating teams for each customer would address this problem. Such a structure would be beneficial since each customer is a high value customers and the long duration of their association with Trojan. The team would consist of employees from Product engineering, Marketing and Service who focus on that particular customer. The customer specific team would know the customer thoroughly and the service extended would be more customized and quick. Possibility of delay between departments is reduced due to the focus. If creating teams for specific customers leads to underutilization of resources, we can create teams for a group of customers based of geography, segment etc. The next big structuring would be the recruitment &training programs. The recruitment process should be backed with better forecast of required talent. The number of talent from each field electronics, biology, controls programming and mechanical engineering should be known and be hired accordingly. The training programs for Product engineers can be done in two phases. The initial phase of 3 to 4 weeks would consist of training the engineers about the products and the technology. The second phase of informal training would involve learning about the specific customer, the installation etc. During the 3rd week, the engineer is given a choice to specialize in her chosen field and is trained specifically in the field. On completion, the engineer is put either into the Centralized Product engineering team or the customer specific product engineering team. The specialists are put in the centralized product engineering team and their expertise is pooled across the company. The customer product engineering team is close to the customer location so that it is easier to work with the customers. The consequence of this system would be better role definition.

Clear job description and growth opportunities for employees should be briefed to the employee during the induction program. If there are two separate structures customer specific teams and top management the number of roles would increase and there would be more opportunities for promotion and career growth. The employees in the customer specific teams would still be a part of one of the departments. Regular communication and reporting within the department would help the employees to be in touch with the happenings in their field. Simultaneously, being close to the customer would translate to better customer service and relationship. De-centralizing installation teams and service teams would lead to lower burn out due to travelling. With the above structure, it can be inferred that a few departments should be centralized and a few decentralized. The suggested structure is given below: Centralized Departments: Call Centre Product Engineering - specialists Sales and Marketing Knowledge Base HR and training Sales and marketing

DecentralizedDepartments (Regional Offices): Installation team Service Teams