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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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ESM users can now rapidly build personal dashboard views of your scorecard with version 5.0. The bookmarking of strategic elements continues to serve as a way to build a quick update page view. We've taken bookmarks a step further and integrated them into the "My ESM" landing page.
This integration will allow client administrators to edit all their users' "My ESM" bookmark views from the manage access area within client administration. So when users log into the ESM for the first time, all the data they are responsible for updating is clearly positioned on the page. Likewise, this function also enables client administrators to build out personal dashboard views for executives since many are not trained on how to bookmark. End users will also be able to set bookmarks within the Quick Update by drilling down into specific strategic elements or by editing the bookmark layout within their "My ESM". Naturally, "My ESM" allows users to see all their scorecard strategic elements in one list and easily select those to be bookmarked.
The Quick Update page enables you to update all of your elements in one location. We've built in copy forward capabilities for the elements you bookmark. You can copy forward both performance status indicators and all report specific data for all of your bookmarked elements with a few mouse clicks.
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ESM 5.0 is set to release to all ESM clients on April 27th, 2009. This version represents enhancements compiled from 10 years of end-user feedback, which has created our most user-friendly ESM ever. The latest version of the 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. As this feature shows, the ESM team is constantly working with end-users to create the most user-friendly experience possible.
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Executive Strategy Manager 5.0 contains many new and improved features. One of the very first change users will notice will be the new interface. The new user interface was designed with enhanced and secure functional capacity. With this release, Design Center, Report Center, and Meeting View truly merge into an interdisciplinary enterprise platform to mirror the interactivity and integration necessary for rapid scorecard design, editing and reviews. Changes to the user interface include:
- Single-screen navigation
- Streamlined design
- Quickly navigate between scorecards
- Announcement link to maximize main screen interface
- Report Center renamed to Quick Update to better represent applicability
- Easy access to user profile
- More intuitive icon images to represent ESM action
- Increased full screen flexibility
We will be introducing you to more new features over the coming weeks in our blog, briefings, and webinars. Currently in its Beta period and in a limited release, ESM 5.0 will be available to all of our customers by April 27th.
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ESM Features
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Posted
3/26/09
@ 11:48 AM
by ESM Team ESM Team
A recent post about hospitals on Harvard Business Publishing's blog is a good example of how organizational evaluation in general and best practice sharing in particular are great ways to minimize waste and mistakes. In the case of hospitals, this can save lives. Author David Champion describes hospitals that created initiatives to reduce infections, create saftey checklists, and overall, looked for ways to implement best practices. Hospitals found that by implementing these ideas and changing behavior throughout their organization, they saved money and lives.
Palladium and the ESM have a long history of working with hospitals and others in the healthcare industry to achieve their goals. The Executive Strategy Manager is a great platform for identifying organizational shortcomings, and for creating and executing initiatives designed to mitigate these shortcomings. The ESM is also a great tool for conveying best practices as described in
this earlier blog posting . Professionals in the healthcare industry can design their scorecards and strategy maps to reflect the objectives and methods they believe best, and measure their success. In times like these when organizations are short on cash, identifying simple and cheap ways to minimize cost are critical.
You can read the article here .
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Rather than simply thinking about risk as a hazard to be avoided – a natural disaster or a fluctuation in the market or currency – companies should also think of risk as the flip side of the coin that is opportunity. This is the contention of a recent article on Harvard Business Publishing's website (they are also the publisher of the Kaplan/Norton Balanced Scorecard Report). Identifying strategic risk can allow companies to calculate how to advance in certain aspects of their business. Understanding it can help organizations to decide such things as what products their customers want, whether they should acquire another company, whether to pursue strategic alliances, or whether pursue a newly identified niche in the marketplace.
The article discusses several methods of strategic risk management, such as "double betting" to minimize the risk of obsolescence, and helping customers control their own risks. It is easy to imagine how an organization might use the Executive Strategy Manager's software for creating Balanced Scorecards to help identify key risk factors and opportunities. Possible strategic objectives could include "Manage Risk", "Identify Potential New Markets" or "Develop Alliances". Initiatives could stress such things as collection of client feedback, research and development, or fraud detection as ways to gauge and adjust to a changing marketplace. This will allow executives to see risk in a broader view as part of the overall organizational strategy, while also driving the execution of the strategy on the part of managers.
Click here to read the article.
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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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The Executive Strategy Manager is pleased to announce the release of its beta version on March 16th, 2009. On this date we will begin a limited release of the latest version of our application to selected organizations. This time will allow for an initial review stage of the application, as well give time for training clients. At that time there will also be a webinar and feature overview released for all clients to preview the new version.
The beta version of 5.0 will be released to all other clients on April 27th. We will provide webinars to familiarize clients with new features, as well as offer live demos of the new version for interested clients. Please send us your name and email address at npeper@thepalladiumgroup.com if you would like to take part in this live webinar on Monday March 16th, otherwise the tape will be available to you for on-demand viewing. The transition to 5.0 will be a gradual process, and we will be sure to get each and every one of you up to speed before phasing out 4.5 in late June 2009.
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With the release of the ESM 5.0, many in the team are testing various components of the application. I was testing some of the new copy forward capabilities today and wanted to share just how cool this enhancement is in the strategy reporting space.
The ESM 5.0 now has the ability to copy forward all performance status indicators and/or period specific reporting data with just one click. Drs. Kaplan and Norton were hesitant to add a function like this in the ESM to avoid the common pitfall we see with some scorecarding organizations: just one or two individuals update the report information for all the themes, objectives, measures and initiatives. These organizations are setting themselves up for failure because this structure conflicts with the natural change management aspect of scorecarding and strategy mapping. In the end this enhancement made the list because there are times when it's appropriate to copy forward entire sets of data to streamline the reporting cycle. Strategic elements that are on track might require minimal editing between reporting periods and can be copied forward to allow for more time spent on thoughtful analysis around off track items.
With the New Year, many organizations are refreshing their strategy maps, updating ownership, and establishing reporting cycles. You will be happy to learn that the ESM 5.0, due out in just a couple months, will make the ongoing management of your strategy that much easier.
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To maximize employee alignment and productivity, it is not sufficient to just change the way compensation is structured – companies need to ensure their employees are plugged in to the strategy, and are aware of how their performance affects it. Travis Manzione's article "Empowering the Individual to Execute Strategy" in the Balanced Scorecard Report discusses the challenges of connecting individual employees to organizational strategy. He also gives advice and provides real-life examples of how workers have been able to build effective Personal Balanced Scorecards that align with the organizational scorecard that covers their area of business.
Users of the Executive Strategy Manager (ESM) who are creating their own targets are only a click or two away from this and a myriad of other articles and resources to help them think about and create the best possible targets for their organization.
Organizations which have been successful in making strategy execution a core competency have turned to the ESM Personal Balanced Scorecard (PBSC) module to implement a strategically-aligned performance management process. As part of the ESM Enterprise Edition the PBSC module enables individuals within organizations to rapidly develop and align personal objectives (including measures and targets) to enterprise and business unit strategic objectives. Realizing the diversity of organizational culture, the PBSC fields can easily be edited to fit your specific needs. The PBSC provides organizational leaders a view of enterprise goals and how they are executed by individuals.
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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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The ESM team is pleased to officially announce the forthcoming ESM 5.0 Beta release in Q1 2009. Thank you to all the past and present clients over the past 8 years for your feedback on how to make the ESM as user friendly and effective as a meeting mangement solution as possible.
To read the full release, please click on the following link:
Read the 5.0 Press Release
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Did you know that the ESM can automatically evaluate the performance of your measures?
The attendees of our webinar on the Target Scheduler do!
Learn how to schedule threshold bands by period, so that when data is manually entered or sourced into the ESM, the performance color for that measure is automatically displayed.
Replay the session at https://breeze.palladiumes.com/p86173230/ or review the Target Scheduler reference guide in the FAQs and Help section of your account.
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The ESM is the only application that has the core meeting view interface to present the right level of strategic information to leadership. At the end of the day effective strategic decision making is at the heart of what organizations are trying to achieve. In our new 5.0 release, we are really expanding on the features of Meeting View and making the entire application just as meeting friendly. Although the release dates have yet to be finalized, expect a beta version of ESM 5.0 late this year and the full release in early 2009. Find a partial list of the new 5.0 enhancements after the jump.
ESM 5.0 Feature Highlights
New User Interface - Meeting View is now the heart of the application, allowing for streamlined navigation and easier scorecard design and editing
Key word search - Quickly search for text throughout your scorecard(s) for quick updates
Enhanced PBR Charting Library - Select from a core set of PBR web charting measures for faster measure chart construction
Ownership Permissions - Multi select accountable users for ownership to action items and email reminders
Additional User Restrictions on Sensitive Strategic Information - Restrict user access by strategic element
New Copy Forward Capabilities - Copy forward data for one strategic element or for the entire scorecard reporting period
Improved Resources - Updated help area with reference guides, 20 eLearning courses (additional fee), community room, and best practice library browsing
8,000 line item objective/measure library - Our consultants have compiled the most inclusive library of best practice objectives and measures by industry and function
Other enhancements include:
Assign, view and sort actions items by strategic element (theme, objective, measure, initiative, milestone)
Addition of performance status indicators for action items
Ability to assign action items and driver measures to analysts and other user roles
Automatic email generation that is defined by client administrators
Additional custom report center fields
New layout options in Meeting View, including split measure report charts
Improved PDF report generation for a crisper export
LDAP support for local installs
Enhanced cross browser support
And more...
And don't forget, in addition to these enhancements, we've already taken huge steps in security and reliability in the past year. Late last year we launched our new highly-secure and super-reliable datacenter which keeps our application running well over 99.5% of the time. And earlier this summer we partnered with Akamai Technologies which delivers the ESM across the globe at blazing speeds. It makes one think maybe we should change our tagline to "Fast. Safe. Reliable."
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The ESM team is working hard to make best practice guidance, advice, and training available to ESM users right in the ESM application.
We have received rave reviews about the BSC library that is embedded in the Meeting View section of the ESM and requests for more information just like it. You will be happy to know that a future release of our 20 course eLearning product is in the works. The product will have an integrated look and feel, common to our next generation of ESM products. Palladium's eLearning system helps you and your team develop strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards and then report on them as part of your ongoing strategy management. Our product is interactive and engaging with self-check questions, exercises and case examples. Stay tuned for the release of this product as part of the ESM.
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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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Performance is big to us. We're constantly striving to enhance the performance of the application in any way that we can, because we know how frustrating it can be trying to use a slow website. That's why we were so excited to finally be perusing a partnership with Akamai to help deliver our application to the far reaches of the globe. Don't get me wrong, we've always had very good performance and very good global coverage, but there are a few spots around the world that saw excessive latency and delays that were out of our control.
As of July 26, our Akamai solution is turned on, and the ESM is on FIRE. We're seeing better than a 50% improvement on latency over the entire globe. Chronic trouble spots like Mexico, Middle East, and Australia are now seeing speeds similar to what we get here in our office - 20 miles away from our datacenter. I've attached the before-and-after performance results from our monitoring service and it's clear that we now have top-notch global presence. Feel free to take a look – it's astounding how uniform world-wide performance is now.
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I recently came across a case study, published just last month, titled "Information System Effects on Organizations Balanced Scorecard Work". This study was focused exclusively on the ESM application – something our team believes to be the first of its kind!
The study concluded that the ESM does, in fact, positively impact an organization's rate of successful BSC implementation and utilization. The findings also allude to a correlation between the time of ESM introduction and the avoidance of common pitfalls.
Read at http://biblioteket.ehl.lu.se/olle/papers/0002989.pdf or stay tuned for more!
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The Executive Strategy Manager is on the cusp of another enhancement stage or transformation. As Drs. Kaplan and Norton's position on the integration of key process management with strategy evolves, the ESM is there to incorporate the necessary functionality to ensure our users are effectively managing and executing their strategy.
In the world of strategy, formally linking a strategy map/Balanced Scorecard to key processes is a relatively new concept. For example, should key processes have a relationship with strategic themes, objectives, measures, and initiatives? I'd imagine that it would be some combination and dependant on if the organization is historically objective or measures driven. In my ideal world, I'd see key processes linking to the organization's objectives in much the same way as initiatives. There could be multiple key processes for any given objective and perhaps even KPI dashboards against those key processes.
The beauty of the Balanced Scorecard is it's simplicity and the ESM team is sensitive to maintaining that simplicity in our application. However, strategy management cannot occur in isolation from the key processes managed by the organization so I encourage you to think about how that linkage would occur and let us know your thoughts.
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