Welcome to the last in our series on the Intrafocus seven-step Strategy Planning Process – and today, we’re turning our attention to automation and the benefits of a cutting-edge strategy management tool. So now we have all seven steps:
- Foundation,
- Assessment,
- Strategic Objectives,
- KPIs and Targets,
- Strategic Projects,
- Communication,
- Automation
The challenge of managing strategy data
Organisations of all kinds are drowning under data. Whether it’s operational performance metrics, regulator performance data, customer service feedback figures or staff attendance, most managers must deal with a vast amount of data and information requests daily. So throw in the prospect of managing strategy data, and things can get difficult pretty fast! This is even riskier if your managers are relatively new to the strategic planning process and learning their roles and responsibilities. The risk of daunting them with regular and ongoing requests for strategy updates, dashboards, and presentations is likely to be highly disengaging. You might even find that managers start to push back or respond negatively to your new efforts to formalise a solid, successful business strategy – especially if they perceive that it will simply result in more work for them.
Automate your strategy
Thankfully, there are now extremely powerful, intuitive and accessible software systems that make your strategy automation as easy as possible and take manual updating, management and reporting out of the equation. Some of the benefits of this type of software system include the following:
1. Comprehensive strategy data management There’s no way of getting around it; today’s organisations are incredibly complex and data-driven. And for your strategy implementation to succeed, you must measure your KPIs, targets and project progress. Automated strategy software packages make it easy for you to build in every element of your strategy – your vision, purpose, priorities, objectives, KPIs, targets and projects. From this point, the systems automatically prompt updates and allow existing organisational data systems to feed in for automated data updates in a timely fashion. Your strategy data is robust, up-to-date and accessible at a touch of a button.
2. Better accuracy By moving away from old-fashioned, clunky systems that require manual updating – think spreadsheets, for example – the accuracy and quality of your data improve. Human error is inevitable with manual updates, but not so with software systems.
3. Better efficiency Equally, by using a single point of contact system, your strategy managers can log onto the system and download reports, charts, dashboards and presentations at the touch of a button. This is far less wasteful and time-consuming than sharing manual reports by email. It also helps to lower your carbon footprint by reducing your internet network burden. Considering that the green impact of clicks is growing within consumer audiences, this can be a great way of moving towards your organisational carbon neutrality goals.
4. Ready-made dashboards The real power of these automated strategy software packages is that they pull in your organisational data to create compelling strategy dashboards – at the touch of a button. Your managers can select the things they want to report against, choose their preferred graphs and charts, select your pre-designed and branded templates, and create in a single click! The same applies to presentations and reports – the process is fast, accurate and intuitive. The results are great for your audience.
Software package we recommend
At Intrafocus, we have worked with various evolving strategy management systems over the years. Our clients tend to find the most value in Spider Impact to automate your strategy. It is used by some of the biggest brands in the world, including NATO, Sun Life, Philips and O2. With Spider Impact, your business can:
- Structure your KPIs in tailored scorecards
- Allocate ownership for Objectives, tasks and KPIs
- Aggregate your KPIs into informative, attractive dashboards
- Create linked initiatives/projects whenever needed
- Build reporting sets that automatically update
Even better, because the system needs a device and an internet connection to work, your team can use it anytime and from anywhere – supporting flexible working strategies and business travel.
Using Spider Impact within your organisation
Intrafocus has helped thousands of businesses to use Spider Impact as part of their Strategic Planning Process, and we can help your decision-makers, and IT leads plan its implementation, training and rollout smoothly and with maximum adoption from your employees. It’s a great way to up your data game, save time, bring your teams together and maximise the chance of success with your business strategy rollout.
Keen to find out more?
You can even enjoy a 30-day free trial of Spider Impact to find out whether it’s for your business. Looking for some help with your business strategy? The Intrafocus team is here to assist, and with decades of experience, we’re in a great position to unlock your business strategy success. If you have enjoyed this seven-part series and want to know more about the process, please look at our Strategic Planning Process pages.
