Intrafocus Insight
What about Artificial Intelligence?
What about Artificial Intelligence? While most of us puzzle over our smartphone's latest features, the tech industry is forging ahead with huge leaps in artificial intelligence. No longer a sci-fi dream for the future. Estimates suggest that by 2030 Artificial...
Predictions for 2019
What can we expect in 2019? The new year has arrived and it's the time for business leaders everywhere to feel refreshed, revived and reinvigorated for the year ahead (unless attempting to decipher the latest implications of Brexit!) It's also a natural point to make...
What is a Gap Analysis?
What is a Gap Analysis? In our bid to develop a sound business strategy, we must carry out robust strategic analysis, assessment and research. This can sound daunting initially! Happily, however, there are valuable tools that exist to support each stage. Today we'll...
How to Ride the Christmas Slowdown
Riding the Christmas Slowdown Unless you work in the retail sector, the chances are your business will experience a natural slowdown over the Christmas period. A combination of office festivities, annual leave, the inevitable round of office lurgies and a general...
What is a Value Proposition? (and how to write a good one)
What is a Value Proposition? A key enabler of your business strategy is your value proposition. But although the term may be commonly bandied around organisations - especially in marketing departments - not everyone understands what it is. In fact, Intrafocus, through...
Are you ready to present your strategy?
Ready to present your strategy? The right strategy makes the difference between long-term and sustainable success, or slow decline and failure. Take our 10-question quiz to check your strategic readiness. The need for an expert strategy applies whether you are a...
Company Specific KPIs
Company Specific KPIs Why do you need company specific KPIs? When asking this question, take a step back and answer this alternative question first: “Do I want to be the same as everyone else or do I want to be better, stronger and faster?” If the answer is the...
Employee Health and Wellbeing
An employee health and wellbeing strategy is essential Much has been made in recent years about the 'war for top talent' - but the fact is that many organisations have struggled to retain the excellent employees that they have sought to bring into the business in the...
Month End Reporting
Effective Month End Reporting In this article, we examine end of month business reports in detail and cover their importance to the business and the process for their management. 1. Why are end of month reports so important? There was a time when month-end business...
KPI Monitoring Software
KPI Monitoring Software Welcome to our fifth and final article in our series about Key Performance Indicators. For this final topic, we turn our attention to the advantages of KPI monitoring software. Remember, before these sophisticated automated software tools...
Interpreting KPI Results
Interpreting KPI Results Welcome to the fourth article in our series on Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. This week we are going to focus on the interpreting KPI results. Once the hard work has been done to create and implement the right measures, how are these...
Understanding KPI Thresholds
Understanding KPI targets and thresholds Understanding KPI Targets - This week we continue our article series on Key Performance Indicators: the measures by which an organisation's progress towards strategic goals and objectives are measured, typically using a...
What are KPI Objectives?
What are KPI Objectives? Welcome back to our article series on Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. Last week we introduced the concept of KPIs and investigated their organisational context and application. This week we are going to move on to our first specific area...
KPI Overview
KPI Overview In this latest article series, we are going to take an in-depth look at the ins and outs of Key Performance Indicators, commonly abbreviated to KPIs. We'll begin with a KPI overview and explore their context within organisations, before moving on to a...
How to run a strategy workshop: Post-event
Post Event In this final article of our strategy workshop series, we look closely at perhaps the most important stage of all – Post Event: the transference of the workshop outputs into usable, ready, business-as-usual processes. Why is this so key? Most business...
How to run a strategy workshop – The event
The event Welcome to the second in our article series about running a successful strategy workshop. In the first article we looked at the preparation stage and now we move on to the event itself. The agenda We recommended that the strategic development process chosen...
How to run a strategy workshop – Preparation
In this short article series, we’ll examine the art of organising successful strategy workshops as part of your organisational strategy development. We’ll begin by identifying the necessary preparation, review the event success factors and lastly, define the necessary...
Strategic Process – Strategy Evaluation
Strategic Process - Strategy Evaluation Over the past four weeks, we have looked at the basics of the strategic process and worked through four of the five main steps required for a successful strategy, taking us right up to the implementation. Now we turn our focus...
Strategic Process – Implementation
Strategy Implementation In this article series, we've been looking at the strategic process and going 'back to basics' on the different steps involved in creating and delivering a successful organisational strategy. After defining, researching and planning, we now...
Strategic Process – Strategic Objectives and KPIs
Strategic Objectives and KPIs This is the third article in our ‘back to basics’ tour of the strategic planning process. Previously we have looked at vision/mission definition and the research and analysis stage. Now we move on to the formulation of strategic...
Strategic Process – Research and Analysis
Research and Analysis - In this five-week article series, we are going ‘back to basics’ to examine the organisational strategic process in detail. Last week we looked at vision and mission. Research and Analysis This is the data-driven, number-crunching phase of the...
Strategic Process: Vision and Mission
Strategic Process: Vision and Mission In this article series, we will be going ‘back to basics’ and examining the five different elements of the organisational strategic process. These elements – at their most basic – are vision, mission and goal setting, research and...
10 tips when building a dashboard
Building a dashboard Building a Dashboard - In this short series of articles, we have explored the topic of business performance and looked at the dashboard approach to delivering management information for decision-making. We also looked at some of the common errors...
Common Mistakes When Building Dashboards
In the example above of a real dashboard - http://citydashboard.org/london/ we can see multiple common mistakes. First there is far too much information; second, it is crowded; third some information is pulled from sources no longer available and so an error appears,...
What Makes a Great Dashboard?
What Makes a Great Dashboard? In this article series, we are going to look at the value and use of business performance dashboards. These are typically presented to managers in end-of-month reports. In the first article, we will look at the elements of a good...