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The development team is putting the finishing touches on by far the largest iteration of the ESM6 build, measures. Pure agile gurus would have encouraged us to break this iteration up into 8 separate iterations given its size but because of our skilled developers, we were able to still pull off a long but very successful build! Unlimited data series, Excel based tables, in line data field calculations with compatible Excel fields, automatic target schedule setting, multiple measure charts per data set, data sourcing, and excel input/output for easy data management in ESM6 make this our biggest achievement yet.
Historically, ESM required final calculated numbers such as a target, actual, variance, and forecast. With ESM 6, if desired, those raw data calculations can be done right in ESM or easily sourced in from excel by the end user. We will also enable period groups for month to date, quarter to date and year to date summary series. This means you can track your total performance for a period in time without manual computations. Our measure charting enhancements should remove any restrictions users have felt in the past with complex measure calculations, roll up, and visual charting. We are very excited to get this out into beta testing later in 2012. Get ready!
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Imagine your strategic elements (themes, objectives, measures, driver measures, initiatives, initiative KPIs, and milestones) as an alignment “web” or “family tree” through which there are causal relationships. While some of these relationships are close, say 50-75% of their performance feed into the next element’s performance, others are distant, and perhaps say only have a 3-5% impact on another element from the same scorecard or from a cascaded scorecard. If there were only a way to represent that impact that would be wicked cool.
Now there is. The team has completed the build out of the ESM6 automatic performance status indicator setting iteration. If you want to in ESM6, you can activate this capability to have milestones and initiative KPI performance feed into the overall initiative performance. Initiative performance can then feed up into objective level performance. Similarly, driver measure and cascaded measure performance can feed up into strategic measures from both a performance status indicator level and at the raw data level. Strategic measures, cascaded objectives, and initiative performance indicators can then feed up into objectives and finally, objectives into themes. The ESM team is getting ready to automate your performance status indicators. Are you? We look forward to sharing this new capability with you soon.
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As we analyze our Execution Premium Community (XPC) site traffic from this past year we clearly see initiative management take the top spot. Strategy review meetings, leadership facilitation, measurement, and making strategy personal all sit as hot topics as well, but all came in half as popular as initiative management.
The team just finished the initiative management iteration for ESM6 and with its completion comes excellent capabilities in initiative criteria defining, ranking, and mapping. Through numeric weighting, ranking and scoring based off of how the initiative will impact the strategy, an organization will gain a solid grasp of which initiatives to select for their active portfolio. ESM6 initiative capabilities takes the user through the identification process, enabling you to brainstorm, propose, activate, pause, and complete initiatives in an easy to navigate interface. We look forward to sharing this new capability with you soon.
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ESM5.5, a minor point release is in final beta testing and available at http://beta.executivestrategymanager.com. We plan to go live with this release next week. More details on it are below. Feel free to use the beta site to do your work. It hits the same live production database meaning changes made there will reflect on the live ESM site and vice versa.
This is a seamless transition to end users as all the processes they follow today will be the same in ESM5.5. If initiative KPI management is of interest to your team, we should set up a call where I can show you around that area. The team is still hard at work with ESM6 and I’ll be exposing you to the that new version towards the end of the year.
Enhancements include:
· Dynamic page loading to speed up page load time
· Additional query enhancements beyond the work we did earlier this year to speed up the overall system
· Slight look and feel changes along with some minor functionality enhancements
· Fully flipped Arabic version available by user (go to your profile and select Arabic for your language option). Note, data entered by user remains in language originally entered.
· Initiative summary page listing of initiative KPI names and status indicators
· Initiative detail page listing of associated initiative KPIs with status indicators (KPIs can have unlimited data series).
· Cross browser compliance with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome
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Now that the Execution Premium book by Drs. Kaplan and Norton has been out in the market for a number of years, let's take a look at the benefits that can be realized through the XPP implementation in your organizaiton. Let's take it a couple stages at a time. Stage 1 and 2 looked at Develop the Strategy and Translate the Strategy. Now let's look at stages 3 and 4: Align the Organization With the Strategy and 5: Plan Operations. In these stages, the strategy has been clarified with scorecards and strategy maps at the enterprise level so now they need to be cascaded down into the business and support areas to ensure vertical alignment. Individuals might employ personal Balanced Scorecards and development plans to link the performance review process with the strategy. A communication program around the strategy is also paramount. The organization can begin to link strategy to key processes, driver models, and dashboards. Rolling forecasts and dynamic resource allocation are often found around the operational planning step.
STAGE 3: ALIGN THE ORGANIZATION WITH THE STRATEGY
- Defines the corporate role so that organizational units receive strategic guidance & direction
- Cascades strategy maps and scorecards to ensure organizational alignment to the strategy
- Leverages synergies between corporate, SBU, shared services, and other units to ensure alignment
- Communicates the strategy so that everyone understands his/her role in executing it
- Aligns team and individual goals and incentives to ensure the behavioral changes required for success
STAGE 4: PLAN OPERATIONS
- Identifies critical processes required to execute the strategy
- Establishes cross-functional business teams to drive performance across organizational boundaries
- Develops rolling forecasts and dynamic resource allocation to link strategy and operations
- Implements driver based planning to identify the critical levers of performance
- Creates operational dashboards that identify the key performance indicators that drive performance
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Balanced Scorecard,
BSC Hall of Fame,
Business Leadership,
Client Success,
Competitive Advantage,
Decision Making,
ESM Development Team,
ESM Features,
ESM General Information,
ESM Tips and Tricks,
Initiative Management,
Innovation,
Operational Reporting,
Personal Balanced Scorecard,
Reporting,
Risk Management,
Software as a Service,
Strategy Maps,
Sustainability
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Posted
9/7/11
@ 2:25 PM
by ESM Team ESM Team
Now that the Execution Premium book by Drs. Kaplan and Norton has been out in the market for a number of years, let's take a look at the benefits that can be realized through the XPP implementation in your organizaiton. Let's take it a couple stages at a time. Stage 1 and 2 of 6: Develop the Strategy and Translate the Strategy. These stages are where the organization performs S.W.O.T. analysis, Gap and shift statements, identifies key overarching strategies, clarifies the mission and vision and key risks. Then the strategy is developed into Balanced Scorecards and strategy maps. Typically an Office of Strategy Management (OSM) or other like group/individual is tapped to manage the strategy implementation and execution.
STAGE 1: DEVELOP THE STRATEGY
- Defines how shareholder value will be created to achieve new levels of performance
- Identifies required changes from current to future state so the organization understands it
- Quantifies vision, values, mission, objectives, and risks so they are measurable
- Analyzes strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats to determine course of action
- Formulates strategy so that the entire organization can execute it
STAGE 2: TRANSLATE THE STRATEGY
- Clarifies strategy with a strategy map to produce a one-page action plan that works
- Develops a Balanced Scorecard to specify objectives, targets, measures, and initiatives
- Identifies key risk indicators that must be managed to avoid failure to execute
- Focuses on initiatives with the greatest impact to accelerate time to results
- Allocates resources dynamically to produce the most effective outcomes
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Balanced Scorecard,
BSC Hall of Fame,
Business Leadership,
Client Success,
Competitive Advantage,
ESM Features,
Initiative Management,
Innovation,
Operational Reporting,
Personal Balanced Scorecard,
Reporting,
Strategy Maps,
Sustainability
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Posted
8/31/11
@ 3:19 PM
by ESM Team ESM Team
Following an informal survey of speaking with ESM users, I found that about half of you are not maximizing the capability of action items in the ESM.
Action Items are meant to be the actions that an organization records as they make decisions during a strategy review meeting. Action Items are a very flexible way of capturing the follow up items from a reporting meeting. These items can be assigned to individuals and to categories. When someone is assigned an action item, they are sent an email reminding them of their action item. They can be sorted and exported to excel instantly for use offline as necessary. With the proper level of access, a user can add action items right on the screen. When completed, an action item can be marked complete, which allows for another level of flexibility within the application.
For organizations that utilize the "My ESM" feature should also consider assigning users to action items so that each action can be tracked by its owner(s) under an "open" and "completed" section. Action items can be entered into the ESM during a review meeting and once assigned to the user(s), will display within My ESM. While users can complete this step by selecting the action item and bookmarking it in their My ESM, client administrators can perform this function through the manage access page under permissions and security.
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Several of our product experts recently returned from Palladium’s 2010 Americas Summit, held this year in La Jolla, CA. It was a great conference – strong attendance, great speakers, and considerable insight to be gained from both the case studies presented, and personal conversation.
As our experts provided attendees with live demos, they recount numerous occurrences of present clients passing by, and joining in to offer first-hand testimonials. Thanks to them, and to all of you, for being such being such strong proponents of ESM. Hearing the stories of your successes is valuable to those looking for more information, and also makes us truly proud to be a supporting part of your strategy management programs.
Recurrent obstacles identified by attendees we spoke with included 1) employee engagement and 2) effective communication of strategy and strategic performance. As indicated in the third step of the XPP, Alignment requires organizations to align business units AND employees alike to the strategy. In doing so, they often times overlook the most critical component of alignment– communication. Communication is paramount in a Strategy-Focused Organization to develop buy-in and commitment to the strategy at an individual level.
Over the last decade, ESM has made addressing this commonly shared weakness a priority. In continually improving the product to support evolving need, two new features were released this month: a second generation release of ESM’s Personal Balanced Scorecard component – PBSC 2.0, as well as a capability for integrating ESM with SharePoint.
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The ESM team is hard at work innovating, designing and building ESM 6. This effort began in February 2010 and will continue through to Beta launch in early 2012. Through our recent surveys, direct client requests, and guidance from Drs. Kaplan and Norton and Palladium’s strategy consulting experts, we’ve compiled over 200 potential enhancements to include in this release.
As our developers share these new enhancements with the larger ESM team, we get more and more excited about where the ESM community is pushing the application. After all, it is you, the client, who’s advancing our application as you use it in your organization and provide us with feedback.
Some of the latest features to be built include automatic status indicator roll up across the scorecard. For example, milestone performance status indicator can impact the overall initiative status indicator, which in turn impacts objective performance status indicator. Objective status indicators can also automatically set based off of cascaded objectives and underlying measures. Measure can be automatically set by either data roll up or status color roll up. Objectives then roll up into perspectives and themes and then ultimately into an overall scorecard performance. It will be up to you if you activate this feature and just how far you want automatic status color setting to go in your organization.
We’ve also seen a new measure charting interface, allowing for unlimited data series, data calculations between columns, and multiple charts that can be displayed against the same measure data set. We will enable much more complex data roll up since different underlying measure series can feed into various higher level measures. For example, historically ESM required final calculated numbers such as a target, actual, variance, and forecast. With ESM 6, if desired, those raw data calculations can be done right in ESM or sourced in from data sources or data bases. We will also enable period groups for month to date, quarter to date and year to date summary series. Our measure charting enhancements should remove any restrictions users have felt in the past with complex measure calculations, roll up, and visual charting.
As we continue our development efforts we look forward to sharing our development efforts with you.
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I just came across an excellent account of the Balanced Scorecard effort undergone at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. In this paper, BSC champion and strategy director, Alasdair Macnab, along with Chris Carr and Falconer Michell from University of Edinburgh tell the implementation story. They focus their research on how the Balanced Scorecard approach can be successfully adopted for nonprofit businesses. The team also reviews why the Executive Strategy Manager was selected as the preferred solution and how it streamlined the data reporting and presentation while providing leadership and employees froma cross the organization critical line of sight into the strategy.
Key findings cited from the paper include:
Just as strategies are specific to an organisation, the balanced scorecard (BSC)/strategy map can and should be adapted to suit an individual organisation to leverage the full power of the BSC system.
• The effort and commitment required from senior management involved in transforming strategy management processes should not be underestimated as individuals/departments will become more accountable for their actions, particularly in the public sector, and resistance to change may be experienced as a consequence.
• If an effective costing system is developed, such as the one described in this report, management will see how their staff are directing their efforts, particularly important in knowledge based organisations.
• With their intimate knowledge of the organisation, the management accountant is well placed to become very involved or direct the transformation process to manage strategy execution leading to improved effectiveness/profitability of the organisation. In this way the management accountant becomes more of a strategic partner to the business.
• The research relates primarily to the practitioner who should find it helpful as the work is based on research subject to academic rigour but is translated into a pragmatic approach via the case study; thereby demonstrating its usefulness to a real organisation.
See:” Implementation of the balanced scorecard and an alternative costing system at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh,” available at the following link:
Access the full report here
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Balanced Scorecard,
BSC Hall of Fame,
Business Leadership,
Client Success,
Competitive Advantage,
Decision Making,
ESM Development Team,
ESM Features,
ESM General Information,
ESM Tips and Tricks,
Initiative Management,
Operational Reporting,
Reporting,
Risk Management,
Software as a Service,
Strategy Maps,
Sustainability
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Posted
7/22/10
@ 11:43 AM
by ESM Team ESM Team
If you have yet to decide on a software application to help you manage your strategy, we've compiled over a hundred functionality requirements you should consider when evaluating solutions.
Technical and Administrative Requirements:
General Requirements
1. The software must be browser-accessible and work on the firm's Intranet as well as Internet
2. All of the firm's employees must be able to use the software without having to install software on each PC
3. The software must be fully integrated and use the same technological platform
4. The software must be based on recognized standards and open interfaces. The software must not contain any proprietary elements
5. The software must be ready-to-use standard software that is under further development and has a version number
6. The software must be delivered with complete user documentation that describes all the software's possibilities
7. The software should have a separate user-configurable presentation layer and a separate configurable data layer
8. The software should be able to interface with company databases and import data via SQL queries and tab- or comma-delimited file import or the like
9. The software should be able to handle other data than that which belongs to the scorecards
10. The software must be extremely user-friendly and intuitive in use. All parts of the user interface must be in English
11. The software must have flexibility in selecting presentation method
12. It must be possible to present data in tables, graphically or in reports presentation form for each critical measure
14. It must be possible to print out the chosen presentation or export it in PowerPoint and as a PDF
15. It must be possible to build reports and export them in an appropriate Microsoft Office format
16. The software must have intuitive navigation logic
17. It must be simple for the software to present figures for the current period and other defined periods, like year to date
18. The software must be able to store and display archived versions of the scorecards, strategy maps and data
19. The company should be able to configure, without third party assistance, menus and texts in the user interface to use our own terminology
20. It must be possible for the company to define its own help texts in the user interface
User Admin Requirements
21. The software must allow the client administrators to add and manage users
22. The software must allow the client administrators to set user permission levels
23. Each user must be authenticated individually before he/she is granted access to the software
24. User identity must be the key for gaining access to scorecards, critical measures (KPIs), drill- down, reports, strategic initiatives and comments
25. It must be possible to regulate what access each user needs to a data field (read, write, update or delete)
26. The software must have role-based access control, so that defined roles specify which access a user has
27. After an inactive period, the software must perform a new authentication before granting the user access to the software
28. The software must have functionality for logging activity in the software, including logging of user and time when data was changed or deleted
Administrator Requirements
29. Since management of the software will be spread among several people, it is a requirement that the administration tool (to set up and manage the software) be multi-user (simultaneously logged on)
30. It must be possible to grant different access rights to different administrators.
31. It must be possible for employees in the company's various operations to set up and manage the software
32. It must be possible to create a "scorecard template" that can easily be distributed or copied to each operation so that it is only necessary to create all the scorecard logic once
33. It must be easy for the administrator to cut and paste perspectives, strategic objectives and critical measures
34. It must be easy for the administrator to read, update and delete data from the software. It must be possible to limit access to this functionality
35. It must be easy to add, change and delete perspectives, strategic objectives and critical measures (KPIs)
36. The software must have tools for automatically configuring presentation in web format
37. It must be possible for the company to handle maintenance and upgrading to new versions of the software
38. The software must be able to track and report on all update activity by user, scorecard, and by date
39. The software must have the capability to assign shortcut access to specific users or via strategic elements
Functionality Requirements:
Strategy Map and Scorecard Entry
40. The software must conform to the Kaplan-Norton Balanced Scorecard Methodology. It must at least have the following structure: strategy map, scorecard, strategic perspective, strategic themes, strategic objectives, measures and initiatives
41. The software must have no limitations on the number of perspectives, themes, strategic objectives, measures or initiatives that can be used
42. The software must have customizable fields for the storage and reporting of data for each part of the scorecard (strategy map, scorecard, strategic perspective, strategic themes, strategic objectives, measures and initiatives)
43. The software should allow the import of images for use in strategy maps
44. The software should allow for customizable objects on the strategy map
45. The software should have an intuitive user interface for the creation and manipulation of strategy maps that mimics standard presentation software such as MS PowerPoint
46. The software must have functionality for showing strategy maps with cause and effect relationships between strategic objectives
47. The software must have customizable views of the strategy map, objectives, measures, initiatives, themes, performance summaries, alignment matrices and action items
48. The application must have the capability to build theme maps
49. The software must have the ability to have several scorecards for an organization or operation
50. The software must be able to present data for all levels in the organization
51. It must be possible to navigate from the main strategy map to strategy maps for other operations or to underlying data for individual strategic objectives
52. The software must allow for the creation of multi-level cascaded scorecards
53. Free navigation between the different levels in the organization must be possible
54. It must be possible to include an underlying level in the organization in several higher levels
55. The software must have the ability to link objectives, measures and initiatives across strategy maps at different levels of the organization and have the data update automatically
56. The software should provide for Alignment matrices to ensure alignment of objectives, measures and initiatives across scorecards
57. The software must have the ability to link 'child' objectives and measures to 'parent' objectives and measures
58. The software must display the status of each objective, measure and initiative using a 'traffic light' system with parameters that are customizable by the user
59. It should be possible to regulate color coded calculations by using formulas, e.g. 10% improvement over last year, when calculating color code (red, green, yellow)
Data Collection
60. It must be easy to build a presentation of key figures
61. The scorecard must support different time frequencies and periods. A scorecard must be able to contain key figures that are measured in time periods that deviate from the scorecard's reporting frequency
62. The software must have functionality to show trends. The software must have functionality for manual data collection
63. The software must have an alternative for automatic data collection from other data systems
64. The person who sets up a form for manual data collection must be able to specify who (persons and groups) is to answer the form, and notification must be given via e-mail
65. The person who sets up a form must be able to designate another as responsible for data collection (usually the one responsible for the corresponding key figures)
66. The software must be able to present underlying detail data for all key figures
67. The software must contain weighting of key figures in order to give weighted color coded results at all higher levels (strategic objectives and perspectives)
68. It must be simple for the person responsible for data collection to gain an overview over missing response
69. It must be possible to set up automatic reminders via e-mail on missing response
70. It must be possible to set up forms with fixed frequencies (i.e. monthly) for data collection
71. The software should have customizable views so a user can immediately find the data they are responsible for updating
72. When submitted data are registered, critical measure values must be updated automatically
Data Reporting
73. The software must include a reporting function with standard (pre-built, included) reports including overall status reports, theme-based status reports, data exception reports, measures status reports, initiative status reports and alignment matrices
74. The software must allow the creation of customizable reports for the export of data
75. It must be simple to find descriptions of individual critical measures with respect to measuring, responsible person, data source, frequency and measuring levels for red, yellow and green
76. It must be possible to show result attainment for strategic objectives in the strategy map using color codes (red, yellow and green)
77. The software must have functionality for presenting goal attainment for a critical measure by (minimum) presentation of data, goal attainment, tables and graphs
78. The software must have extensive functionality for graphical representation of results
79. The software must have functionality for presenting underlying data in "drill-down" reports
80. It must be possible for the tool to attach relevant reports or documents to each objective, measure and initiative
81. The application must have external link capabilities at the measure level
82. The software must have functionality for calculating and presenting key figures such as budget deviation, and user satisfaction
83. The software must have the ability to create and display multiple types of charts, consistent with basic Excel functionality
84. Reports must be dynamic so that it is possible to navigate from a report to the underlying data or key figures for further details
85. Managers and editors must be able to directly edit their charts and performance reviews from the graphical view of strategy map(s)
86. It must be possible to distribute reports to individuals or groups of employees, or make them accessible from scorecards, perspectives, strategic objectives or critical measures
87. As described above, all reports must be exportable to an appropriate Microsoft Office program and PDF
88. The application must have the ability to display theme maps and analysis views into the strategic theme (with supporting objectives, measures, initiatives)
89. The application must have the ability to show driver measures and manage basic calculations between driver and strategic measures
Initiative Management
90. A strategic initiative must at least contain activities and milestones
91. A strategic initiative must have functionality that allows it to be linked to the strategic objective it supports
92. A strategic initiative must have functionality that allows it to be linked to the theme it supports
93. It must be possible to assign responsibility for a strategic initiative or parts of one to specific persons
94. It must be possible to assign shared initiatives to the business units responsible
95. It must be possible to provide "view only" rights to specific initiatives across the organization
96. It must be possible to track progress against milestones, variance to budget and net benefits realized
97. The software must alert those who are involved in a strategic initiative concerning deadlines and updates via e-mail
98. It must be possible to link comments and documentation to a strategic initiative (e.g. project plans and documents)
99. It must be simple to export data from the software for further follow-up or analysis in other tools
Personal Scorecards
100. The software should allow for the entry of Personal Scorecards for all individuals within the organization
101. These scorecards should link personal objectives, measures and targets to organizational objectives
102. The field names and types in the personal scorecard should be customizable by the organization
103. The software should have a process and tutorial to assist employees in their creation of personal development plans
104. The software should allow for management oversight and approval of personal objectives
105. The software should store an audit trail for all changes
106. The personal scorecard software should allow for performance tracking
107. The software should allow users to set custom reminders with email notification
108. The personal scorecard software should allow for the weighting of objectives in calculating overall performance
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How can your organization make better decisions during tough economic times? In an article entitled, "Smarter Execs Focus on Goals, Not Just Metrics," Doug Henschen describes the growing importance of decision based analytics. How are the most decision-support savvy execs doing it?
The answer comes in a four step process:
1) Start with organizational goals. 2) Create metrics that monitor those goals. 3) Provide analysis of the metrics. 4) Make better decisions!
A decision support interface can be helpful to track the performance trends of your organizations predefined goal. The data is not enough; rather the value comes from the Performance Analysis and Recommendations. Often times, organizations become victims to dashboard style interfaces that reflect data without analysis. The mistake comes in monitoring the data as a day to day indicator of the health of the business rather than the performance of it. Without strategy or goal orientation an organization is subject to share incorrect measures and ultimately fails to identify those areas that are under performing.
Here's a tip on how the ESM can help your organization focus on the goals, not just the metrics. My ESM was designed to provide easy access to strategic measures along with their performance analysis and recommendations, in an individually configurable view. Executives can log into the system and immediately see metrics of interest and their performance against the goals. With our roll-over functionality each measure is complete with a performance analysis and recommendation for each reporting period. Management teams that make use of the data through analysis and recommendations, have proven to make decisions that improve efficiency, develop innovative products, get closer to customers and outsell competitors.
To read more about the success of organizations like Fortune 10's Valero, Balanced Scorecard Hall of Fame winners, and Johnson & Johnson, in their decision making: Click here to read the full article.
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Captain Earl Armbruster: You almost tore that boy's arm off!
Action Jackson: So? He had a spare.
As a Palladium consultant helping clients implement the Balanced Scorecard, I've had my share of meetings where I've felt like my arm was being torn off. And the next three hours seemed like one of those meetings. I booted up my laptop, straightened my tie, and said to myself "How would Action Jackson handle this?"
We were preparing for an upcoming Strategy Review Meeting and the day's agenda including reviewing over 70 measures with the reporting team. While this activity was necessary, and part of our methodology, I was not looking forward to the additional work I knew the meeting would generate.
I was going to use ESM to step through each measure, review the graphs, and look for common mistakes like missing titles, incorrect axis labels, and confusing color schemes. My plan was to write each discrepancy in my notebook and spend the evening in my hotel room transcribing the notes, sending individual emails to the reporting team, and creating a simple spreadsheet to track the follow-up activities. If I was lucky, and the mistakes were limited, I might be able to skip dinner and finish before midnight.
Fortunately, our ESM Consultant was onsite to assist. She introduced me to a new feature in ESM – Action Items – that not only made the meeting run better but gave me enough time to eat dinner and get a good night's sleep.
Action Items are automated reminders, or "ticklers," accessible from the Meeting View screens. Clicking the "Add Action Item" icon brings up a window allowing you to create an action item associated with a particular measure, objective, or initiative. The template can be completed quickly, and is automatically associated with the owner of the component. When that owner logs into ESM, the Action Items are displayed on his or her dashboard along with the relevant due-dates.
We used this feature extensively throughout the review meeting; capturing specific follow-up items quickly and easily with no need for reminder emails. Accountability was improved; there was no longer the excuse of "I didn't get your email..." The resulting list of Action Items can even be sorted, to help with project management tracking.
The team completed their action items and the review meeting went exceptionally well. Chalk up another time-saving ESM success!
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Aligning leadership incentives and one's organization are fundamental components of successful and efficient business management. Few understand this axiom as well as SMDC Health Systems. St. Mary's Hospital encountered intense financial pressure in 1997 when Clinton's Balanced Budget Act called for the largest decrease in funding for Medicare in the program's history, some $116.4 billion. As a result, funding for both graduate medical education and for entire urban hospitals treating low income patients would be drastically slashed. St. Mary's, in an effort to beef up their economic strength in face of the deteriorating federal support, underwent a period of M & A which culminated in the creation of SMDC Health Systems as we know it.
This new organization needed to rapidly implement a new strategy and management system, and after struggling to formulate a successful strategic plan, they found their answer: the Balanced Scorecard. The Balanced Scorecard enabled then-CEO Dr. Peter Person to translate the company's idyllic mission, "To Bring the Soul and Science of Healing to the People We Serve," into a working strategy. Working with the best the organizational management industry has to offer, Palladium Group, SMDC finalized its first-ever strategy map and scorecard. The system facilitated SMDC's transformational change, enabling them to monitor progress with key performance indicators and measures tailored to their strategic initiatives. BSC took a disjointed, multi-silo company and converted it into a streamlined and well-integrated business. By July 2004, the corporate team had cascaded the HQ strategy map and scorecard down to 10 scorecards for SMDC's various entities, clinical service lines, and departments. The Balance Scorecard aligned the organization under the overarching strategy, and its successful execution translated to a $20 million improvement in SMDC's operating performance and stronger cash flow. Dr. Person notes the power of the system, "everyone was aligned along the same thought by way of understanding and collectively working towards an overall, common strategy." When we bring on new executives, says Person, we acculturate them to the BSC by explaining that "this is the way we manage and execute strategy."
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ESM 5.0 is revamped to deliver the world's largest repository of Kaplan/Norton Strategy Execution assets in an even easier, more reliable interface. You can now browse the extensive compilation of best practice assets, including but not excluded to: interviews, Balanced Scorecard Report articles, conference presentations, profiles, and templates, directly from the Resource Center.
ESM 5.0 now also boasts a refreshed objective and measure library. We've surveyed our consultants in the field for the best practice objectives and measures used in their industries and compiled an easy-to-search database. The ESM objective and measure library provides best practice guidance whether you're creating your first scorecard or refreshing your scorecard midyear. You can search elements by industry, function, and perspective. ESM 5.0 grants you access to the methodology of the world's leading experts and enables you to perfect your management system, maximize your performance, and secure competitive advantage. With ESM 5.0 give clarity to your strategy, align your organization, and make strategy management a core competency to reposition your organization for sustained success in this new economic environment.
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With the launch of ESM 5.0, bookmarking capability has expanded into the My ESM dashboard arena. We'd like to break down the feature for you so that you can gain maximum benefit.
Traditionally, ESM allowed users to bookmark strategic elements and then access those elements in one location for quick editing. ESM 5.0 makes this process simple and more central for the typical ESM end user. If you utilized bookmarks in ESM 4.5, these were copied over to ESM 5.0. If you haven't utilized bookmarks before the ESM 5.0 launch, we encourage you to navigate within the My ESM tab to manage your bookmarks. By selecting the strategic elements you are responsible for updating, you can then view them as a dashboard layout upon log in and via the quick update area, rapidly copy forward all period specific data within the selected strategic elements. Naturally, great care needs to be taken to ensure you are only copying forward data that you are responsible for reporting on. Likewise, you always want to be in the reporting period you are copying data into. This copy forward feature helps users avoid busy work of rekeying in information, especially when there are no changes to an element between a reporting period.
If you are a client administrator, via the ESM 5.0 client administration interface, you can set up and manage bookmarks for your users. This offers a simple solution to populate the dashboard of executives with critical information that they care about seeing.
While your bookmark view can sit as one of your My ESM dashboards, feel free to build additional views into the strategy via the dashboard page. Standard dashboards can contain any element that exists within your scorecard. Scorecard managers are also able to build scorecard wide dashboards that get applied throughout all the users who have access to the scorecard and viewing rights to the information. Some organizations find the scorecard wide dashboard view incredibly powerful for listing off track agenda items prior to a strategy review meeting.
Be sure to reach out to your ESM account manager with questions or for guidance.
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We understand the importance of security when dealing with the sensitive nature of business information, even among an organization's internal users. In ESM 4.5, a user was granted scorecard access with one of six pre-defined roles. The latest version of the ESM allows greater flexibility in assigning access levels to users.
In ESM 5.0 we have added custom user access levels, which allow customization down to the individual strategic element. Now, administrators can limit users to pertinent scorecard elements, ensuring the security of sensitive information. This new permission structure gives administrators complete control over which areas of the scorecard are accessible, to whom, and to what extent.
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The latest ESM also offers increased page layout functionality; including measures split screen as well as organization defined custom layouts. The demand for this enhancement came from our end users, who requested more flexibility around the display of measure charts. We've enabled layouts where measures can be positioned side by side to keep them above the fold. We also have the ability to build custom "portlets" for users who wish to display a variety of strategic information on one page. For example, an organization might like to display an initiative detail grid on an objective detail page. These new data presentation capabilities facilitate a strategy review meeting the way you want.
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In ESM 4.5 the world's largest repository of Kaplan/Norton Strategy Execution assets were a bit hidden. We've gathered all our resources together and dropped them into the Resource Center. You can now browse best practice assets (interviews, Balanced Scorecard Report articles, conference presentations, profiles, and templates) directly from the Resource Center.
ESM 5.0 also contains a refreshed objective and measure library. We've surveyed our consultants in the field for best practice objectives and measures they use in the industries they serve and compiled this into an easy to search database. The ESM objective and measure library provides best practice guidance when you are creating your scorecard for the first time or refreshing your scorecard midyear. You can search elements by industry, function, and perspective.
The ESM will deploy an ESM community to enable best practice sharing between ESM users. Share reporting secrets, motivational approaches, and success stories with the community. Palladium has over 15 hours (20 courses) of detailed eLearning that takes a user through the creation of a Balanced Scorecard to the reporting, analysis, and ongoing management of the BSC program. Our eLearning follows the proven Kaplan/Norton methodology. In fact, they helped write it.
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ESM Features
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Posted
5/19/09
@ 9:34 AM
by ESM Team ESM Team
One of ESM's new features is its enhanced capability around strategic communication. Like action items, we allow for the multi-select of users for strategic element ownership, including email reminders. We debated the methodology implications of potentially not having just one owner for each strategic element and the practicality of allowing multiple owners outweighed the risks.
ESM 5.0 continues to have client administration project management functionality around email reminders, a useful function to see who needs to be reminded to complete their updates for reporting periods. We also added automatic email reminder scheduling to ensure you deploy reminders in a timely manner and allow you to focus less around the project management and more on the strategy.
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ESM Features
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Posted
5/11/09
@ 9:10 AM
by ESM Team ESM Team
Bain & Company's report "Management Tools and Trends" is released every other year. This report surveys executives at companies of varying sizes around the world. In the most recent version just released, the Balanced Scorecard ranks highly in both usage and satisfaction, actually improving in both categories since the previous report.
The BSC ranks 6th in usage and 8th in satisfaction (of the 25 tools considered in the survey). The BSC is used heavily throughout the world: between 49%-56% of all companies surveyed use the BSC i.e. its use is not heavy in certain regions and negligible in others. The heaviest use of the BSC is among large corporations ($2B ).
Interestingly, the top four tools (Benchmarking, Strategic Planning, Mission and Vision Statements, and Customer Relationship Management) in this report are inherent to the Executive Strategy Manager's scorecard creation process. For instance, Strategic Planning is the first step a user of the ESM would go through when creating themes, objectives, and measures. The ESM also drives strategic planning by providing an excellent platform for running strategy review meetings. Two other top tools, Benchmarking and Mission and Vision Statements, are typical features of scorecards created in the ESM. Finally, Customer Relationship Management is typically taken into account by objectives and measures in a scorecard's "Customer Perspective" area.
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