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In 2005, the pharmaceutical industry was experiencing unprecedented changes which threatened the very sustainability of both the global industry and all those within it. Patents protecting an entire generation of products were set to expire, innovation--the lifeblood of the industry--was becoming more expensive and riskier due to increased regulatory scrutiny, and governments and managed-care companies were making drug reimbursement more difficult, shifting costs to price-sensitive consumers. These unfavorable factors culminated in a perfect storm for pharmaceutical companies as they faced both increasing costs and risks, amid declining revenues and net profit. Among these companies was New Jersey-based Merck, a world-class pharmaceutical firm boasting 60,000 employees and a host of innovative medicines and vaccines sold in over 150 countries. Their grim outlook indicated a loss of $10 billion by 2010 due to expiring patents and unfavorable industry trends; analysts ranked them near the bottom of the entire industry for earnings-per-share growth.
Enter CEO Richard T. Clark who, upon entering in 2005, boasted a new strategy plan as priority number one. It's name? "Plan to Win." It's nature? Strategy Execution. Clark clarified his organization's vision through its long standing values: "never forget that medicine is for the people." A global human health organization was created effectively aligning the independent region which previously acted as silos, into one efficient management system executing on a common vision.
Next, a Strategy Realization Office (SRO) was born whose goal was to translate strategy into specific objectives, measures, and initiatives. They implemented a strategy execution process which cascaded the strategy down through the companies divisions and managed risk throughout. Next, the executive team commenced two-day workshops to instill an intangible, but vitally important recipe for success: a greater understanding of, and commitment to, the strategy. With strategy management and execution as Merck's new core competency, it doubled it stock price within a year and fortified its position as a global leader in its industry. Clark knew a transformation of this scale is an immensely difficult task, and that many good strategies are poorly executed or never executed at all. Clark knew that amid turmoil, giving clarity to your strategy, aligning your organization, and making strategy management and strategy execution a core competency is the key to success.
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A recent Financial Times article by Stefan Stern begins with a straight-forward yet vital admission, "We need to talk about strategy." This strenuous economic climate has not only transformed the markets, it argues, but the very nature of our organizations. Comprehensive cut-backs and uncertainty about the future have inherently changed the workplace, and it is in these tumultuous times in which strategy management is most vital. Stern references a study done by U.K. consultancy Stanton Marris in which 45 executives were interviewed on their repositioning strategies. The research suggests four areas which are most needed of executives to address: 1. uncovering hidden risks that undermine strategy; 2. using the power of organizational identity; 3. reviving the strategy process; 4. adapting leadership styles.
Executive Strategy Manager (ESM) does just that; ESM enables for the effective communication of your corporate strategy and the identification of key performance drivers at all levels of your organization. It utilizes the world-renowned Balanced Scorecard system and drives integrated meeting management, enterprise alignment, performance management, and initiative management. ESM is designed specifically for the efficacy of strategy management and inherently helps clarify and communicate strategy, thus avoiding hidden risks (1). It also aligns leadership incentives, the organization, and the people to strategy (2), translates strategy into action plans (3), and makes strategy management an organizational core competency (4).
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In July-August Balanced Scorecard Report, the article "The Power of Strategy Execution in Healthcare" tackles the issue of managing the gap between healthcare needs and financial resources. "Can healthcare systems reduce spiraling costs while still maintaining the quality of care?" According to this article the answer is definitively "Yes!" Through a disciplined planning and strategy execution system, healthcare organizations can reconcile the tension between the pressure to reduce costs and the demand for higher-quality health care. Organizations that have a comprehensive strategy process and clearly defined day to day operations can reduce risk, improve financial performance, lower liability costs, and improve clinical care. The ESM aids our healthcare clients in executing on their strategy by taking them step by step through both the construction of, and reporting on, Balanced Scorecards and strategy maps.
The Executive Strategy Manager enables organizations to create and execute such a strategy process. Healthcare organizations such as Abbott GPO, American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, Nemours, and Miami Children's Hospital have achieved success in such areas through the implementation of the Executive Strategy Manager. Strategic Objectives can be easily communicated to employees through Strategy Maps and reviewed during strategy meetings. Users are able to measure strategic objectives with Key Performance Indicators, based on data provided and available data sources. Management can thus concentrate on those objectives or targets that are performing sub-optimally and move forward into the development and tracking of strategic initiatives. Executive Strategy Manager not only enables users to visualize the performance of the organization's strategy, but creates a sense of ownership and pride as all employees work toward success.
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As I attend conferences and events around the globe promoting the Executive Strategy Manager as the Kaplan/Norton solution to drive rapid scorecard design, alignment, and best practice strategy management reporting I always hear the same question: Does this process add value?
We've blogged on a few studies that show the value of the BSC, including a
recent study on the value of the ESM application. I'm happy to see that 17 years after its creation, the BSC approach is stronger than ever, more widely used than ever, and with breakthrough results. The authors in this most recent study find three key benefit areas from applying the Kaplan/Norton BSC methodology as part of building a Strategy Focused Organization. I quote from the abstract: (1) a better translation of the strategy into operational terms, (2) the fact that strategising becomes a continuous process, and (3) the greater alignment of various processes, services, competencies and units of an organisation. Find additional information in the March 2009 European Accounting Review
here.
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In trying times like these many organizations fight to change strategy to adapt to new economic conditions. While these changes in strategic direction have clear implications for high-level objectives, management teams must also turn this strategy into unit and individual level action. Kaplan/Norton Balanced Scorecard methodology operates on the theory that while strategy is translated top-down, the real business value comes from bottom-up execution of strategy. The Executive Strategy Manager enables strategy execution by helping companies to translate strategy throughout the organization into day-to-day operations.
The Executive Strategy Manager delivers rich features that support the accountability, collaboration, and communication of your organization's performance and strategy. The application's user interface is intuitive and easy to navigate, making it ideal for strategy managers and executives alike; there is no need for specially trained IT support. By putting the right information at your finger tips, static performance data is transformed into actionable knowledge, enabling real-time decisions that drive results. The ESM is shaping the way organizations efficiently manage, execute, and communicate strategy to achieve breakthrough results.
Click here to try the FREE TRIAL of the Executive Strategy Manager!
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In tough economic times like these, strategy becomes the central focus for organizations looking to adapt. While the focus is on developing the most savvy strategy for the economic environment, this philosophy often leaves out emphasis on execution. The distinction between companies who survive and go under during these trying times is often based on their ability to effectively execute strategy. According to Melissa Raffoni, the three keys to strategy execution are: communicate the key points, develop tracking systems that facilitate problem solving, and set up formal reviews.
The Executive Strategy Manager helps organizations drive their business strategy by following these three areas of emphasis. The ESM drives communication by providing accountability with each strategic objective by linking users to their pertinent objectives. Using the line of sight created by the strategy map with status indicators in the ESM, organizations can push the focus of their meetings to troubled areas of the scorecard. The ESM also steers organizations towards strategy execution using formal reviews in two ways: synchronized periods and Personal Balanced Scorecards. Synchronized reporting periods provide an even timetable for evaluation across a scorecard, setting up formal reviews throughout an organization. Personal Balanced Scorecards layout objectives on an individual basis, helping to both communicate strategy as well as drive formal reviews on a periodic basis. The Executive Strategy Manager works to drive effective strategy execution using these three key points, a critical tool in this economy. To learn more or sign up for a free trial follow the below link:
Click here to learn more!
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Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Kanter writes, "in good times, the temptation to accumulate can be indulged because growth masks inefficiencies." What about times like today? Kanter suggests that companies should consider shedding unnecessary product lines during lean times – often they are forced by circumstances to take this step. She gives several examples of companies that have gone through this, including Timberland, Gillette, and Ford. Complexity in corporate structure, within smaller business units, or within a product line will lead to problems more often than not.
Complexity leads to new costs - perhaps most often costs related to management or overhead - that are not always accompanied by corresponding profits. Kanter concludes, "when everyone else suffers from over-complexity, there is a market for products and services that simplify life." Palladium's Executive Strategy Manager is an excellent tool for organizations trying to achieve this kind of organizational streamlining.
Using the Kaplan/Norton Balanced Scorecard system, organizations can quickly identify which areas of their business are contributing, and which ones are not. The Executive Strategy Manager's can be used both to measure a corporation's overall success, or smaller business units within an organization. One of the ESM's most powerful features, one that relates directly to Professor Kanter's discussion, is its ability to create a cascaded alignment that shows how objectives and initiatives in a "child" scorecard affect the "parent" scorecard. This allows leadership to ensure that every business unit is contributing directly toward the execution of the organization's strategy.
To read the entire post by professor Kanter, click here .
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Creating alignment is a daunting task for many corporations, as individual business unit goals often create lines of conflict. While many corporations find getting aligned a struggle, maintaining alignment is an even bigger challenge. Drs. Kaplan and Norton have created an alignment "checkpoint" system to maintain continuity throughout an organization.
Citing the second law of thermodynamics which states entropy (disorder) continually increases, they emphasize a continual injection of new energy in the strategic alignment process. The Balanced Scorecard Concept (BSC) works to instill a lasting commitment to continuity by promoting both accountability and communication across business units. Managing alignment as a process within the BSC becomes continual as a result of these key goals.
The Executive Strategy Manager (ESM) is the only software endorsed by Kaplan and Norton to create these alignment "checkpoints." As the leading application in not only BSC creation but enforcement, the ESM enables alignment between business units and corporate methodology. ESM functionality allows shared objectives and initiatives to be cascaded between units of an organization. Kaplan and Norton are the leaders in strategy execution methodology and have chosen the Executive Strategy Manager as the only application to support their work.
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How should organizations communicate their strategy to their employees? David Norton and James Coffey of Palladium Group have addressed this challenge in their article "Building an Organized Process for Strategy Communication" in the Balanced Scorecard Report. They claim that many organizations need to improve: 95% of workers typically do not understand their organization's strategy. This can be especially true in a down economy, when employees and organizations may be frightened into a kind of tunnel-vision of pure operations in which they ignore strategic concerns.
The authors also suggest that the more "front line" employees become aware and involved in strategy, the more important they believe it to be.Norton and Coffey discuss several tools management can use to ensure strategy is communicated throughout the company including internal surveys, CEO messages, workshops, and meetings.
The Executive Strategy Manager is an ideal platform for connecting employees to organizational strategy, whether through their input into a divisional scorecard, their own personal scorecard, or their participation in Strategy Review Meetings. ESM users have access to this and many other articles by industry leaders that will give them insight into their own strategy and execution. Some articles are broad and methodological, others are more detailed and contain specific tips people can incorporate in their organization's strategy execution.
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Initiatives play the pivotal role of change agents for the Strategy Focused Organization (SFO). Many organizations fail to appropriately manage their initiative portfolio, and in turn lack the mobility to execute on their strategy. The successful SFO is able to focus the following key steps on initiative management: mobilizing executive leadership, translating strategy into operational terms, aligning and motivating the organization, and creating a continuous strategy review process. The ability to implement these key factors determines the fate of strategic change initiatives.
The Executive Strategy Manager gives companies the tools they need to implement their initiative management systems. The ESM is developed by the minds behind the Strategy Focused Organization, Drs. Kaplan and Norton, and provides the meeting management, communication, and governing tools organizations need to execute strategic change.
The Executive Strategy Manager allows for better meeting management by enabling you to communicate your corporate strategy and identify the key performance drivers at all levels of your organization. The ESM will help you create strategic alignment at the corporate, division, and individual level and encourage active participation in strategic themes throughout the organization. The ESM has proven itself as a successful guide in helping organizations create a sustainable strategy execution program.
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A company's success is often determined by their ability to adapt to a changing environment. While many companies will recognize the need for change, 70% of organizational transformations fail. Jayme de Lima says this failure comes from lacking employee commitment, as written in his article "Managing Change: Winning Hearts and Minds." A lack of downward communication in an organization hinders employee understanding on a personal level, which creates difficulty when trying to win over employees. Palladium's Executive Strategy Manager helps users communicate corporate ideology throughout an organization by aligning each employee with new corporate strategy.
Companies who lack a systematic change management program often lose steam with strategic initiatives before they begin to take root. By implementing the Balanced Scorecard Concept (BSC), companies provide concrete business goals throughout the organization. With a new goal in place for their business unit or management team, employees can see how company-wide transformations affect their day to day operations. The Executive Strategy Manager (ESM) provides the perfect tool for creating alignment during change in an organization. The ESM uses interactive tools to allow employees to track their contributions to the greater corporation's. Some of these tools include Personal Balanced Scorecards for individuals, cascaded scorecards from the corporate to business unit level, and My ESM to track employee goals that align with corporate strategy.
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People may think of the Balanced Scorecard simply as an internal strategic tool for organizations; however, Dr. Kaplan's recent article "Managing Strategy with External Partners" (co-authored by Dr. Asís Martínez-Jerez and Bjarne Rugelsjøen) presents compelling examples of how the Balanced Scorecard can be used to manage organizations' execution of strategy with their external partners. In short, the Balanced Scorecard is a powerful tool for organizations forming strategic alliances. Companies found that the Balanced Scorecard could be expanded to create a Relationship Scorecard that allowed for an integrated view across organizational boundaries.
The Executive Strategy Manager (ESM) offers a flexible platform for the creation of scorecards and strategy maps. The ESM allows for the incorporation of whatever perspectives an organization deems most important to them. A Relationship Scorecard built on ESM could be structured around such perspectives as those discussed in Dr. Kaplan's article: Relationship Value, Relationship Strength, and Future Value and Growth.
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Companies have become overly reliant on Business Intelligence to focus decision making on results. While the reporting, query, and analytical tools are important to the success of a business, an accumulation can bog down the decision making process. Many companies are turning away from such BI-centric methodology and refocusing resources on Performance Management.
Performance Management provides decision makers only data which is relevant to the strategy of the company. This approach allows executives to focus on making timely evaluations with pertinent information. Dr. David Norton of the Palladium Group describes the delicate balance of combining strategy and operations as such: "If you don't link strategy and operations, then you're stuck in either a bottom-up world, where you're focusing on operations and you don't really have control of whether it's impacting the strategy, or you come top down and focus only on strategy, but you can't make things happen." Using Performance Management software like Palladium's Executive Strategy Manager (ESM) facilitates the active linking of strategy and operations. Businesses can use reports and analysis gathered by operations to drive successful strategic execution with the ESM.
Click here to read more about Performance Management in Doug Henschen's article "Decision Time."
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Cutting costs becomes a crucial goal of executives as they react to the business climate of a downturn. With this change in focus, many comapanies lose sight of long-term strategic execution. Drs. Kaplan and Norton call for a strict allocation of funds to focus on strategy execution and prevent this common pitfall of the strategy focused organization. Strategic expenditures (or StratEx) allow companies to continue building for the future while simultaneously cutting the excess costs of the past.
The Executive Strategy Manager is a strategy management application that seperates strategy from operations. Therefore, strategic initiatives and the StratEx budget is presented and tracked in the ESM so that leadership can see the exact strategic impact it had on the organization's overall strategy. The ESM helps the organization focus it's strategic initiatives while driving down inefficiency, two keys to the success of an organization during an economic downturn.
Click here to read Norton and Kaplan's article, "Protect Strategic Expenditures"
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I've had a lot of organizations ask me how to "tell the story of their strategy" using their strategy map in the ESM as their guide. I'd like to provide our ESM community with an example approach that could be adapted for your organization. Once upon a time...
This strategy map tells the story of our strategy over the next 3-5 years. We believe that if we achieve these strategic objectives, we will achieve our strategic destination of becoming a XXX organization. (I often see a top level financial or stakeholder objective here. We regard the lower two perspectives as to what we are putting into the strategy and the top two perspectives as to what we are getting out of the strategy, our outcomes.
In order to achieve our strategic destination, we need to have the right people, skills, and culture (point to L&G perspective) to help us execute on our key internal business processes, organized by the following key themes (point to and say each theme). If we do these things internally, we believe we will successfully execute on our customer objectives--driving the customer outcomes we are looking for. Happy customers become repeat customers which become referrals to increase our customer base. Ultimately, this will drive healthy revenue growth (or the stakeholder outcomes you desire). And we always need to be cognizant of managing our operations (point to financial right side of the map).
Now that I've walked through the high level story of our strategy, allow me to now drill in on the cause and effect logic behind our objectives.
First, we have XXX key objectives that we've called out on our map to signify that they are absolutely critical to our success. Read each objective.
Within Learning and Growth perspective we have the following objectives.....these drive each of our themes internally. Within the first theme we have the following perspectives (work through the theme starting at the bottom and working your way up showing the cause and effect logic). Then do the remaining themes.
Move up to the customer perspective and if they are written in quotes, then say this is through the eyes of the customer. This is what they are looking for from us. Then read each objective.
Finally, present your financial objectives as the ultimate test if you are executing on your strategy.
Speak to how you measure success via measures that sit behind the strategy map (show the full BSC summary tab), with initiatives that are helping you close the gap between your current state and what you are trying to achieve.
Good luck.
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Palladium's Managing Director and CMO sent out a note this morning exploring Cari Tuna's article in today's Wall Street Journal.
An article in today's Wall Street Journal, "Executives Shift to Survival Mode," reports that The Conference Board has reconfirmed that executing strategy remains the number one issue facing executives worldwide. Palladium's value proposition addresses this issue directly, now prominently featured in the banner at the top of our home page:
Palladium Group is the global leader in helping organizations execute their strategies by making better decisions. Our expertise in strategy, risk, corporate performance management, and business intelligence helps clients achieve an execution premium.
The Conference Board, based in New York, conducted surveys in August and October; 190 executives responded to both surveys. The top two challenges of "greatest concern" cited were: (1)"Excellence in execution" and (2) "Consistent execution of strategy by top management." "Excellence in execution" (actually executing) moved up in importance by 9 percentage points in two months; "Consistent execution of strategy by top management" (consistently executing) increased by more than 5 percentage points.
That's what Palladium BSC Hall of Fame organizations do to achieve their execution premiums: achieve results, and consistently continue to achieve them. The concerns of executives around the world and Palladium's value proposition have never been better aligned.
The ESM supports Kaplan and Norton's best practice methodology to drive "excellence in execution."
To access the article, click on: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122714668753343401.html
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In a recent article in McKinsey Quarterly (Sept 2008) they wrote about managing IT during a downturn. They stressed the importance of not making across the board cuts, but that it was now more important than ever to look at IT's role in the business and be more strategic (read selective) in what investments and reductions are made. Our strategy maps, scorecards, and initiative management processes and practices can help companies navigate these treacherous waters in a resource constrained world. We should listen for these cues during our client and prospect conversations and think about how we can help them make better decisions that will address short term issues, yet still position our clients for longer term success when things turn positive. Remember those who make the better decisions now will do better (survive longer) and be positioned for the next upturn in the economny.
Palladium Announces XPA™--Execution Premium Assessment--based on the Kaplan-Norton Strategic Management System
New Tool and Book Based on Close Collaboration between Palladium, Kaplan, and Norton
Palladium Group Inc., the global market leader helping organizations execute their strategies, has announced the Execution Premium Assessment (XPA), the newest offering designed to help companies understand the strategic performance gap between where they are and where they want to be. XPA, the latest tool in an integrated suite from Palladium, is based on more than fifteen years of research by Drs. Robert Kaplan and David Norton, the world's preeminent authorities on strategic performance management, and the best practices of more than 100 high performing organizations.
XPA is a two week process consisting of executive interviews, document reviews and a comprehensive survey that capture's an organization's view of its performance and issues through the lens of execution premium best practices. The survey uses a proprietary algorithm to show the cause and effect relationships between drivers of performance and performance results. In addition, XPA can show organizations how their performance compares to high performing companies globally, and where to focus improvement efforts to maximize near-term results. Insights from the process provide a shared framework integrating the diverse components of the management systems to help the organization clarify strategy, drive performance, and optimize data.
"Palladium's approach to assessment helped us to gain a better understanding of how to close our performance gaps," said John Smith, division senior vice president, Store Development, Collective Brands, Inc. "It enabled us to achieve measureable results."
"Palladium assessment tools provided us with an understanding of where we were and where we needed to be," said Sophie de Villers, vice president, Strategy Management, Canadian Blood Services. "The resulting roadmap put us on the path of translating our strategy into measureable results."
"Industry research and conversations with our clients reveals that execution is the number one challenge for CEOs. XPA will help our clients execute their strategies successfully, allocate resources efficiently, and improve decision making with insight based on data they can trust" says Dr. David B. Friend, Chairman and CEO of Palladium. "The Kaplan-Norton approach is a proven model that helps our clients achieve their own execution premiums."
The Execution Premium: Linking Strategy to Operations for Competitive Advantage (Boston: Harvard Business Press, August 2008) is the most recent in a series of books authored by. Kaplan, a Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and Chairman of Professional Practice at Palladium, and Norton, Founder and Director of Palladium. The book profiles organizations that have achieved a true execution premium. The premium, evidenced by outcomes such as share price, revenue, profit, customer loyalty, employee engagement, or brand value, is achieved "by doing the right things right." The book describes a six-stage management system that shows organizations how to integrate strategic planning with operational execution. This system serves as the foundation for XPA.
Palladium collaborated closely with Kaplan and Norton in the development of the book through its various education, conference, and research programs. Most of the cases are Palladium clients, representing a variety of business models throughout the world and across multiple industries. The ideas in the book were tested and vetted by these and other organizations that have adopted the Kaplan-Norton approach to strategic performance management. Palladium practitioners contributed practical advice and implementation experience in the use of strategic themes for multiple strategy execution processes, initiative management, driver-based planning, rolling forecasts, and how to link strategy to operational process improvement.
About Palladium Group, Inc. Palladium Group helps its clients link strategy and operations to achieve an execution premium. Palladium's expertise in strategy, finance, and IT--delivered through consulting, education, training, and technology implementation services--help more than 500 clients clarify strategy, drive performance, and optimize data. Palladium has offices throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Palladium's Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame for Executing Strategy™ recognizes organizations that have achieved an outstanding execution premium.
For more information on how the ESM helps track your progress over time as reflected in the assessment, visit www.executivestrategymanager.com
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For those of you who receive Gartner research, you should give "Using Corporate Performance Management to Deliver the CEO's Strategic Vision" a quick read (30 April 2008, ID Number G00157458). The key take away point I found in the article is that operational management is a lot better managed than strategy management in organizations today. Most readers cannot argue with that point. In support of that hypothesis, I've found in my work that there is a greater level of comfort around the operations; it is thought of as more tangible, easier to understand, discuss, and report.
The joint Gartner/Cranfield research study showed that scorecarding is one of the least mature areas of management by organizations today. I agreed with the article's key finding and could relate to it in the organizations I've worked with over the past 9 years. There was one sticking point in the article and it happened to be part of the recommendation coming out of the study: CPM applications have the strategy management capability but that organizations just aren't taking advantage of it. I believe the reason why organizations aren't doing a better job with strategy management and why they aren't taking advantage of the strategy management capabilities within CPM applications is because they aren't that good.
CPM applications do an outstanding job at operational management which could include financial consolidations, budgeting, planning, forecasting, profitability modeling, and KPI dashboarding. I do not think they are good at strategy management, which often takes the form of Balanced Scorecards and objective based strategy maps.
A key criterion in an application that drives strategy management is one that helps facilitate a healthy strategy review process. This translates into being able to separate the strategy discussion and decision making process from the operations. While they need to be linked, they shouldn't be discussed in the same meeting. Leadership is lucky if they come together for a few hours each month to discuss strategy. Since strategy is complex, they need at least this amount of time to cover their strategy map and scorecard.
When leadership reviews strategy, they need to focus on the analysis behind the data, not the data itself. The strategy management application must allow for performance analysis, recommendations, implications, actions, etc. so that leadership can quickly review the analysis, make a decision and move on. There's no time for drilling into spreadsheets or operational data, except on an exception basis, so keep the strategic and operational information visually separated in the meeting interface. The strategy management application must allow for easy meeting facilitation between corporate and cascaded scorecards, display alignment views, allow for strategic objective, measure, and initiative detail pages, and capture meeting decisions. While CPM applications have made some headway in a few of these areas they still have a way to go before CEOs can be blamed for simply not applying the strategy management capabilities in CPM applications.
I believe that if the CPM application capability around strategy management improves we will see adoption rates rise. Although technology is only one of the three pillars (people and processes being the other two) that drive effective management, it is becoming an increasingly important pillar in today's rapidly changing environment.
The Executive Strategy Manager is the answer to effective strategy management. It can sit on top (via data sourcing and web services) of virtually any CPM application and provide the right facilitation in strategy review meetings. Palladium is not striving to make the ESM a CPM application as the application's strong suit is in strategy, not operational, management.
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Some members of the ESM team just completed a local installation of the strategy management platform at an organization in the South Pacific. Following the week of installation, testing and training we walked away satisfied with having performed a successful implementation.
More importantly, this organization is now better positioned to access the software on their intranet and interface with the software at a lightening fast speed. The excitement around brining the ESM in house has prompted some really powerful discussion within senior management around how to best proceed with their strategy management and reporting. A situation familiar to most of us, the organization is used to operating as several quite distinct stovepipes, with little alignment. The ESM is now positioned to align their business and support units and help facilitate the information sharing necessary to drive strategy execution. The ESM team hopes to see this organization continue to make strides forward to achieving the
Execution Premium and one day apply for the Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame for Executing Strategy.
Over an out from the South Pacific
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