aligning strategy with execution - the secret to success

8/14/2019 Aligning Strategy With Execution - The Secret to Success

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Aligning Strategy withExecution The Secret toSuccessStrategy and goals set direction, but execution drives

results. How can you unify these often disparate paths?

By Laura Mooney, Senior Director, Corporate & Product Marketing

This white paper is provided courtesy of


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The Heart of the Problem Mind the Gaps

Setting strategic objectives, putting processes in place to achieve them, and realizing the results

you desire seems simple at least in theory. In reality, organizations of all sizes struggle with

making this happen. Why?

We could launch into many reasons to address that question, but the heart of the problem lies in

three distinct silos within your operations strategy, analysis, and execution and the gaps that

exist across these critical functions.

Gap #1: The Strategy Silo

Most organizations have a set of people who are focused on strategy. Strategy includes dening

the mission of the organization, setting key objectives, taking an inventory of critical assets systems, people, data, products, customers, suppliers, services, etc. and outlining plans for

growth or consolidation across these assets. The titles vary by organization, but this team often

includes executives (such as CIO, COO, CFO, CEO), enterprise architects, strategic planners,

program managers, and enterprise modelers.

The larger your organization, the more likely you are to be using multiple types of technology to

help with these activities. Technologies such as spreadsheets, modeling tools, Visio, scorecards,

Aligning Strategy with Execution The Secret to Success | Metastorm Inc.


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and of course our much loved Microsoft Word documents and PowerPoint presentations. The

combination of the output of these comprises your overall strategic plan and provides an overall

understanding of the organization as it stands now and where you would like it to go in the future.

The Strategy silo should ideally align and collaborate with the Analysis and Execution silos, butmost often it does not. However, before you can effectively tackle that challenge, it is important to

standardize your strategy efforts as much as possible. Otherwise you end up with mini-silos within

your strategic planning efforts and this just adds to the chaos and further hinders results. See the

Tip #1 callout box for tips on how to standardize your toolset for clearer understanding.

Lets say that you achieve a strong, cohesive strategic modeling function. You have a big picture

view, you know the interrelationships and dependencies of critical assets, and you can use your

enterprise model to identify the key processes that impact your objectives. Congratulations

you now have complete understanding. Understanding is critical, but understanding without

the means to analyze and optimize your use of assets in an effective way i.e. through effective

processes leaves you with nothing but a bunch of pictures and strategic plans that collect dust

on your bookshelves.


Tip #1 Standardize your enterprise modeling

technology.

While use of Microsoft Ofce software such as Excel, Word, and PowerPoint will

likely remain in use for reporting and presentation purposes, it is most critical to

standardize on a single modeling tool. A single enterprise modeling and architecture

tool will allow each strategy stakeholder to model its piece of the business in a

common format, allow for collaboration across multiple participants, and enable

the models to come together easily into a single enterprise view. The resulting

enterprise-wide model can then be viewed at a high-level or viewed in detail by

drilling down into specic areas of the enterprise. A strong Enterprise Architecture

(EA) and Modeling tool will provide the following:

Ability to model all assets and interrelationships, including systems, data, people,

resources, products, services, customers, processes, etc.

Ability to work on, share, and manage models in a collaborative online environment.

An interface and methodology that is intuitive and easy for business users of all

types to use.

A set of reference model frameworks that accelerate adherence to desired industry

standards.

Ability to roll multiple models up under a single framework and overall enterprise

model.


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You should now clearly see how a gap between the Strategy Silo and the Analysis & Optimization

Silo is a critical roadblock to aligning strategy and execution.

Gap #2: The Analysis & Optimization Silo

An Analysis & Optimization Silo often results from organizational attempts to improve quality

and perfect processes. Initiatives such as Six Sigma, Lean, DMAIC, ISO 9000, value chain

analysis, and TQM trigger the formation of teams focused on process discovery, denition,

and optimization. Typical roles involved in process analysis and optimization include business

analysts, blackbelts, quality executives, IT analysts, and experts trained in a specic quality

discipline or optimization technique. As is the situation with the Strategy Silo, the Analysis &

Optimization Silo is often comprised of scattered mini-silos throughout the organization. This

makes closing the gap between strategy and analysis a complex and difcult challenge.


Tip #2 Select the right business process analysis

tool and standardize on it.

We know you love it, but you must accept the fact that Microsoft Visio is not a true

business process modeling and analysis tool. It is a great drawing tool, but it does

not provide any intelligence to help you with process discovery or optimization. Nor

does it provide you with an easy path for process deployment. If you want to get

serious about process improvement, you need to select a business process analysis

(BPA) tool that provides:

Ability to model not only the process itself but also all of the people, systems, data,

services, resources, and associated interdependencies associated with that

process.

Ability to work on, share, and manage process models in a collaborative online

environment.

An interface and methodology that is intuitive and easy for business users of all

types to use.

A built-in set of optimization algorithms and methodologies that are proven and that

meet your specic industry and process needs.

Ability to import Visio diagrams so you can use what you have as a starting point.

A clear technology path for automation and deployment of process models either

a packaged connector to a third-party BPM system or ideally a shared framework

with a BPM platform from the same vendor.


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The Analysis & Optimization Silo is perhaps the most dangerous of the three. If analysis is not

linked to strategy, then you could be wasting valuable time, resources and money focusing on

the wrong things. You could be optimizing processes that have very little impact on meeting end

goals, and it is likely that you are not leveraging all of your enterprise assets in the most optimal

way across processes. Equally dangerous is the gap between analysis and execution. You canoptimize processes to perfection, but if you have no way to efciently deploy them and gain

insight into how these processes truly perform in practice then you risk failure. Many companies

have irted with bankruptcy at the same time they are winning quality improvement awards.

Why? Because they are either focusing on the wrong things a victim of the gap between the

Strategy and Analysis silos or they are optimizing processes with no way to actually deliver

and benet from the improvements a victim of the gap between Analysis and Execution. Or

perhaps both gaps exist.

The rst step in addressing the gaps that surround this silo is putting the right business process

analysis and optimization technology in place and to standardize it across the organization. As

with enterprise models, process models that are dened in the same toolset (a real processmodeling tool, not Visio) can be shared and combined to ensure interoperability and to better

optimize dependent processes. See the Tip #2 callout box for key criteria to help you select the

right business process analysis and process modeling tool.

Choosing the right technology also provides you with a path for process execution, a must-have

to avoid getting lost in the gap between the Analysis & Optimization and the Execution Silos.

Gap #3: The Execution Silo

A few years ago, the Execution Silo would have solely consisted of people doing their jobs

amidst a ton of paper, bureaucracy, and inefciency with no visibility and no control over what

happened outside of the scope of their particular job function. This may still be the case for

many organizations or individual departments, but thanks to the rapid adoption of business

process management (BPM) technology and methodologies, many departments are turning their

Execution Silo into a well-oiled machine of efciency and productivity. These organizations have

discovered how to lower costs, eliminate paper, streamline work, and capture a complete audit

trail of activities and data. If you have not deployed a BPM tool yet, see the Tip #3 callout box for

advice on selecting one. You cannot and will not be successful if you cannot execute efciently

and do not have consistency and control over your operations. BPM is no longer optional.

Process managers, IT analysts, business analysts, department heads, and IT developers are

using BPM software tools to automate and deploy process after process after process and

seeing substantial nancial return as well as a wealth of soft benets. This is good; however,

the majority of business process management projects fail to close the loop. They fail to really

leverage the data they are capturing for strategic analysis and they fail to circle back to simulate

and deploy better scenarios for continuous process improvement. Instead, they get caught up in

the automation cycle at the expense of linking back to strategic objectives hence the existence

of the Execution Silo.



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No matter how efciently you are running everyday processes, if you do not have visibility into

the impact of your actions, how your processes affect the enterprise as a whole, or how they are

contributing to strategic objectives, then you are delivering suboptimal results.

The Secret to Success Close the Gaps

The focus of this paper is helping you gure out how to align strategy, analysis, and execution.

The secret to success is simple close the gaps. Eliminate the silos by closing the gaps that exist

between them.

You can adopt all of the best practices and deploy all of the best people in the world within each

discipline, but if you do not close the gaps across these three silos your results as an organization

will always be suboptimal. That is why we focus on technology. Selecting the right technology for

each area and standardizing on it delivers visibility, interoperability, productivity, and agility. The

right technology can also serve as a bridge for collaboration and collaboration is critical.


Tip #3 Select the right business process

management suite.

Without the right Business Process Management (BPM) software, you will never

achieve the gains in efciency, productivity, or visibility that you desire. BPM software

also allows you to become more exible and agile while at the same time gaining

greater control over your processes. Here are a few critical capabilities to look for ina BPM suite:

Ability to support the entire process life-cycle, including process design,

automation, integration, monitoring, analysis, and simulation.

Ability to fully support both human-centric and system-centric processes on an

enterprise scale.

Ability to integrate with a diverse set of systems, platforms, and services.

An interface and methodology that is intuitive and easy for business and IT users of

all types.

Proven results and a track record of rapid deployment and exibility to adapt to

change.


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Collaboration both within and across silos

is necessary to close the gaps, but this

is often a challenge due to disconnects

between business users and IT and a lack

of a common and shared understanding ofobjectives, needs, and results. Technology

that appeals to both business users and IT

can act as a bridge for communication. See

the Tip #4 callout box for ideas on achieving

collaboration across roles.

In an ideal world the technologies you select for strategy, analysis and execution should

interoperate well, share data and services without the need for complex integration, and facilitate

collaboration across the enterprise.

SummaryIsolated efforts related to dening enterprise strategy and architecture, analyzing and optimizing

business processes, and executing on day-to-day operations will fall short of success if the three

areas do not align. Closing the gaps between strategy, analysis and execution is feasible, but

technology and collaboration are critical factors.

You can accelerate success by choosing a single technology platform that addresses all three


Tip #4 Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate.

Communication across the three silos is important, as is communication between

business users and IT. Here are a few ways you can foster collaboration across

roles:

Create a heterogeneous working group comprised of representatives from various

departments; include both business and IT constituents.

Reward people for actions that result in process excellence and have a positive

impact across the enterprise.

Leverage technology as a bridge for collaboration software that appeals to both

business users and IT can help foster a shared understanding and accelerate

project success.


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critical disciplines and is designed to meet the needs of both business and IT stakeholders.

Until recently, this common technology platform did not exist from a single vendor. But in August

2007, Metastorm, a leader in Business Process Management (BPM), acquired Proforma

Corporation, a leader in Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Business Process Analysis (BPA).

The combined platform Metastorm Enterprise can help you establish a unied enterprise

model which can be leveraged to inspire collaboration, guide improvement and innovation,

and enable the alignment of strategy, analysis and execution for optimal business performance

throughout the enterprise. The result is never before achieved visibility into the impact of

decisions at all levels, the opportunities available to the organization as a whole, and the ability

to accelerate the execution of decisions and actions with less risk and increased condence of

success.

But whether you choose individual technologies from multiple vendors, a subset of Metastorms

offerings, or the entire Metastorm Enterprise platform, remember to mind the gaps betweenstrategy, analysis, and execution and then focus on closing them.

About Metastorm

With a focus on enterprise visibility, optimization, and agility, Metastorm offers market-leading

solutions for Enterprise Architecture (EA), Business Process Analysis & Modeling (BPA)

and Business Process Management (BPM). As an integrated product portfolio, Metastorm

Enterprise allows organizations to maximize business results by unifying strategy, analysis

and execution. Metastorm is the only solution provider to bring together these critical disciplines

on a single software platform to enable an understanding of enterprise architecture and strategy,

accurate impact and opportunity assessment, effective process execution, and accelerated valuerealization for organizations worldwide. For more information on powering strategic advantage

with Metastorm Enterprise, visit www.metastorm.com.

1-877-321-META (6382) +44 (0) 208-971-1500 www.metastorm.com

Copyright 2007, Metastorm Inc. All rights reserved. Enterprise Process Advantage,

Metastorm BPM, Metastorm DNA, Metastorm Enterprise and Process Pod are either

registered trademarks or trademarks of Metastorm Inc. Other product, service and company

names mentioned herein are for identication purposes only and may be trademarks of their

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