Selection and Modelling of Initiatives

The role of strategy is typically to improve an organisation’s Value Chain.  This ‘improvement’ can be shown as a ‘cause and effect’ relationship that impacts selected parts of the model as shown in the following schematic:

There are many methodologies such as the Balanced Scorecard that can help organizations to choose the most appropriate initiatives. But whatever method is chosen, they will need to be linked to the VCM, as together they form the overall plan of how the organization intends to meet its objectives.

A natural way of viewing initiatives is to consider them as new projects that consist of a number of activities not currently being performed by the organization.  Unlike a budget, initiatives will be continually proposed and form a ‘wish list’ of what an organization could choose to do, but may not necessarily do.

To assess which initiatives are to be adopted requires a planning system to model them in isolation and in combination with other initiatives.  This allows managers to optimize the impact of initiatives with the resources available while taking into account the market opportunity and competitor activity.

Once chosen, initiatives will need to be tracked in terms of their impact and the resources being consumed.  This will be for both past performance – did they achieve what we had planned - and future performance – are they going to achieve what we planned.  Depending on the answers, initiatives may then need to be reviewed, replaced or even cancelled.

To manage the planning and execution of strategy requires a range of data to be collected with each initiative, including:

Why?  What was the reason behind the creation of the initiative?  Is it addressing a particular issue with the value chain or is it in answer to a particular threat.

Who?  Who will be responsible for its implementation and delivery of results?  They may not necessarily be the same person and it may involve multiple departments.

When?  What are the timescales for the initiative to start and end?  Is a minimum duration required to achieve an impact and is it dependent on the action of other initiatives or actions?

Impact?  What is the impact on the value chain – i.e. how it will add value to which activities and by how much?

Resources?  What resources are required for its implementation?  What departments need to be involved and what role do they play?

Activity?  What are the milestones through which implementation can be monitored?

Risk?  What risks are being run and what is the potential impact on overall performance?  What other activities are in jeopardy if this initiative fails?  Where possible, how can those risks can be measured?

Each of the above needs to be displayed when selecting initiatives over others, and in monitoring performance to determine whether they should continue, require modification or should be cancelled/replaced.

CorPeuM Benefit

CorPeuM provides a planning environment that allows users to propose initiatives that can then be selected and combined with ‘business as usual’.  CorPeuM is able to automatically intelligently link resource, activity and success measures, so that users only see data in context but without incurring a high maintenance overhead.  Once selected, CorPeuM then goes on to monitor their implementation and subsequent impact on overall results.