Stragety Framework

  • Overview

    Recent surveys showed that as many as 70-90% of business strategies failed. Why? It is relatively easy to create strategy, but more often than not working on more urgent operational and day to day work takes a front seat. Well, executing strategy is hard.

    At CIG, we know this very well and hence we have created a framework which consists of a suite of processes, practices and measurements to help execute strategy. We name them Discover, Interact and Optimize, the DIO framework.

    • DISCOVER - Discover the roadmap and strategize to win.

    • INTERACT - Execute the initiative while managing the risk.

    • OPTIMIZE - Prepare For the Future, Optimize the Present. Check the outcome and continue to improve.

    We believe this framework will deliver dramatic improvements in business agility, operational efficiency and IT maturity with significant cost savings to your organization.

     

  • Discover

    The Challenge

    Classic project management approaches lack the links to strategy and governance needed to deliver strategic results. And this leads to the vexing strategy execution gap. At CIG, this is the Discover area in our DIO framework. Here, we formulate the visions into strategy and quantifiable, executable components.

    The following is a list of typical challenges we hear all the time from our clients:

    • Why can't I find somebody to understand my organization before trying to re-invent it?

    • How can I drive change in the organization while maintaining my current relationships with colleagues, customers and vendors?

    • Who can provide market intelligence and solutions without being a specific provider?

    • Why can't somebody provide me with options and comparisons for solutions and let me decide which one is better?

    • Who can provide me with a roadmap to change instead of a big change that will disrupt my organization and has humongous cost?

    • Why can't I approach it one step at a time?

    • Who can help me make decisions quickly and efficiently?

    How do we address these challenges?


    The Practice

    The challenges are the business problems and they are wonderful sources for vision and strategy generation. We map them to one or many strategies, translate the strategy into a portfolio of measureable components for execution.

    At CIG, we manage components based on best practices and produce quantifiable measures. The following is a list of deliverables we'll typically produce.

    • Business trend analysis

    • Understanding current and transformation offerings

    • Market and competitive analysis

    • Market segmentation and SWOT analysis

    • Compliance to regulatory changes

    • Solution intelligence, comparison analysis and recommendation

    • Strategic planning and step-by-step roadmap to balance business impact and investment

    • Program and project management by breaking down priorities into key tasks

    • Assist gaining commitment by identifying business relations and using appropriate interpersonal styles and techniques to accommodate acceptance of ideas and plans

    • Presentation and negotiation

    • Budget creation and oversight to assist in financial decision making by developing alternative courses of actions based on assumptions, facts and available resources

    • Business case studies and tangible and measurable Return of Investment (ROI) and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

     

  • Interact

    The Challenge

    Today´s economic challenges and the changing landscape for businesses makes executing strategies (strategic) even more critical. Yet, as many as 70-90% of businesses fail to deliver on their strategy. It comes down to the difference between working in the business (operations) vs. working on the business (delivering on strategy).

    While we may imagine that the barriers to executing strategy are often external − like the economy, competition or customer demographics; it is actually internal issues that get in the way of successful execution. These include: the way we work together, senior management challenges, corporate culture and past habits.

    At CIG, we assist organizations to drive, execute, govern, and measure portfolios to improve business performance and objectives. While interacting with the execution, we hear these challenges all the time from our clients:

    • How can we have a consistent approach to project management and planning?

    • What can we do to allocate resources efficiently and work in a collaborative environment?

    • Where can I get visibility into project activities? Are we on budget, on time and following the original scope?

    • What are the risks and options to mitigate them? What are we doing with issues?

    • What are the vendors doing? Are they aligned? Are we getting the value that we need and were promised?

    How do we address these challenges?

    The Practice

    We fully understand the challenges. At CIG, we find the key ways to ensure organizations focus on execution. To ensure a successful execution, we'll integrate success factors matrix, risk mitigation plans and options analysis into programs and projects so that there is a measurement metrics to be used for governance.

    The following is a list of services we typically provide during Interact.

    • Governance and PMO

    • Portfolio management

    • Performance optimization

    • Process maturity

    • Program management

    • Project Management and Planning

    • Building a successful project team and delegating responsibilities and results

    • Vendor management and alignment

    • Project controls and performance measurements

    • Lesson Learned and closures

    • Communication management

    • Risk and issue management

     

  • Optimize

    The Challenge

    Successful execution of strategy and realizing benefits hinges on effective application of the practices of portfolio, program and project management. Application of any best practices will only be as successful as the organization´s ability to understand, use and measure these practices.

    How can we enable the organization´s ability to understand, use and measure these practices that are enabled in the strategy? Often organizations ask these questions as the strategy is becoming more mature:

    • Who can help me build operational dexterity and making decisions quickly and efficiently?

    • How can we move from good to best?

    • What is continuous improvement in my organization?

    • Who can provide mentoring and coaching?

    The Practice

    We understand the challenges. At CIG, we'll establish a maturity realistic roadmap that is based on the organization's process and people change management using the best practices.

    • Assessment of the current maturity level,

    • Development of an achievable roadmap to reach maturity

    • Keeping the momentum going by supporting the execution and measurement of the recommended improvements

    • Assessment of business culture adaptation

    • Integrate Governance Frameworks into the existing frameworks and practices:

      • Process Management
      • Change Management
      • Performance & Execution Management
      • Resource Management

    • Establish Process Standards & Best Practices

    • Assert continuous improvement and measurements methods such as LEAN/Six Sigma, Kaizen and TQM