Strategy gap

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A strategy gap refers to the gap between the current performance of an organisation and its desired performance as expressed in its mission, objectives, goals and the strategy for achieving them. [1] Mckeown argues that a strategic gap may be transformed into a strategic stretch. [2]

Goal desired result or outcome

A goal is an idea of the future or desired result that a person or a group of people envisions, plans and commits to achieve. People endeavor to reach goals within a finite time by setting deadlines.

Often unseen, the strategy gap is a threat to the future performance—and even survival—of an organisation and is guaranteed to impact upon the efficiency and effectiveness of senior executives and their management teams. The strategy gap is considered to be real and exists within most organisations. [3] An article in Fortune magazine (June 1999 edition) stated that some 70% of CEOs' failures were the result of poor execution rather than poor strategies. [4]

There are various schools of thought on what causes the gap between vision and execution, and how the strategy gap might be avoided. In 2005, Paul R. Niven, a thought leader in performance management systems, pinpointed four sources for the gap between strategy and execution, namely lack of vision, people, management and resources. He argued that few understand the organisation's strategy and as most employees' pay is linked to short-term financial results, maximising short-term gains becomes the foremost priority which leads to less rational decision making. Management is spending little attention to the linkage between strategy and financial planning. Unless the strategic initiatives are properly funded and resourced, their failure is virtually assured. [5]

In the book The Strategy Gap: Leveraging Technology to Execute Winning, the authors argue that the main causes of the strategy gap could be grouped into three areas, each of which interacts with the others. These three areas are the way management acts to implement strategic initiatives (management induced gaps), traditional processes (for example, budgeting, forecasting, reporting) used to implement strategy (process induced gaps) and technology systems used to support those processes (technology induced gaps).

A business process or business method is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks by people or equipment which in a specific sequence produce a service or product for a particular customer or customers. Business processes occur at all organizational levels and may or may not be visible to the customers. A business process may often be visualized (modeled) as a flowchart of a sequence of activities with interleaving decision points or as a process matrix of a sequence of activities with relevance rules based on data in the process. The benefits of using business processes include improved customer satisfaction and improved agility for reacting to rapid market change. Process-oriented organizations break down the barriers of structural departments and try to avoid functional silos.

Forecasting is the process of making predictions of the future based on past and present data and most commonly by analysis of trends. A commonplace example might be estimation of some variable of interest at some specified future date. Prediction is a similar, but more general term. Both might refer to formal statistical methods employing time series, cross-sectional or longitudinal data, or alternatively to less formal judgmental methods. Usage can differ between areas of application: for example, in hydrology the terms "forecast" and "forecasting" are sometimes reserved for estimates of values at certain specific future times, while the term "prediction" is used for more general estimates, such as the number of times floods will occur over a long period.

Business reporting or enterprise reporting refers to both "the public reporting of operating and financial data by a business enterprise," and "the regular provision of information to decision-makers within an organization to support them in their work." It is a fundamental part of the larger movement towards improved business intelligence and knowledge management. Implementation often involves extract, transform, and load (ETL) procedures in coordination with a data warehouse and then using one or more reporting tools. Reports can be distributed in print form, via email or accessed via a corporate intranet.

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Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. It may also extend to control mechanisms for guiding the implementation of the strategy. Strategic planning became prominent in corporations during the 1960s and remains an important aspect of strategic management. It is executed by strategic planners or strategists, who involve many parties and research sources in their analysis of the organization and its relationship to the environment in which it competes.

In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's top management on behalf of owners, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates.

Marketing strategy is a long-term, forward-looking approach to planning with the fundamental goal of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Strategic planning involves an analysis of the company's strategic initial situation prior to the formulation, evaluation and selection of market-oriented competitive position that contributes to the company's goals and marketing objectives.

Business performance management is a set of performance management and analytic processes that enables the management of an organization's performance to achieve one or more pre-selected goals. Synonyms for "business performance management" include "corporate performance management (CPM)" and "enterprise performance management".

Information management (IM) concerns a cycle of organizational activity: the acquisition of information from one or more sources, the custodianship and the distribution of that information to those who need it, and its ultimate disposition through archiving or deletion.

The balanced scorecard is a strategy performance management tool – a semi-standard structured report, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions.

Information and technology (IT) governance is a subset discipline of corporate governance, focused on information and technology (IT) and its performance and risk management. The interest in IT governance is due to the ongoing need within organizations to focus value creation efforts on an organization's strategic objectives and to better manage the performance of those responsible for creating this value in the best interest of all stakeholders. It has evolved from The Principles of Scientific Management, Total Quality Management and ISO 9001 Quality management system.

Process-based management is a management approach that views a business as a collection of processes, managed to achieve a desired result. The processes are managed and improved by organisation in purpose of achieving their vision, mission and core value. A clear correlation between processes and the vision supports the company to plan strategies, build a business structure and use sufficient resources that are required to achieve success in the long run.

Technology strategy is the overall plan which consists of objectives, principles and tactics relating to use of technologies within a particular organization. Such strategies primarily focus on the technologies themselves and in some cases the people who directly manage those technologies. The strategy can be implied from the organization's behaviors towards technology decisions, and may be written down in a document. The strategy includes the formal vision that guide the acquisition, allocation, and management of IT resources so it can help fulfill the organizational objectives.

Strategic thinking is defined as a mental or thinking process applied by an individual in the context of achieving success in a game or other endeavor. As a cognitive activity, it produces thought.

IT portfolio management is the application of systematic management to the investments, projects and activities of enterprise Information Technology (IT) departments. Examples of IT portfolios would be planned initiatives, projects, and ongoing IT services. The promise of IT portfolio management is the quantification of previously informal IT efforts, enabling measurement and objective evaluation of investment scenarios.

A digital strategy is a form of strategic management and a business answer or response to a digital question, often best addressed as part of an overall business strategy. A digital strategy is often characterized by the application of new technologies to existing business activity and/or a focus on the enablement of new digital capabilities to their business. As is the case with its business strategy parent, a digital strategy can be formulated and implemented through a variety of different approaches. Formulation often includes the process of specifying an organization's vision, goals, opportunities and related activities in order to maximize the business benefits of digital initiatives to an organization. These can range from an enterprise focus, which considers the broader opportunities and risks digital can create and often includes customer intelligence, collaboration, new product/market exploration, sales and service optimization, enterprise technology architectures and processes, innovation and governance; to more marketing and customer-focused efforts such as web sites, mobile, eCommerce, social, site and search engine optimization, and advertising.

Business-IT alignment is a dynamic state in which a business organization is able to use information technology (IT) to achieve business objectives - typically improved financial performance or marketplace competitiveness. Some definitions focus more on outcomes than means ; for example,

alignment is the capacity to demonstrate a positive relationship between information technologies and the accepted financial measures of performance.

Change management is a collective term for all approaches to prepare and support individuals, teams, and organizations in making organizational change. The most common change drivers include: technological evolution, process reviews, crisis, and consumer habit changes; pressure from new business entrants, acquisitions, mergers, and organizational restructuring. It includes methods that redirect or redefine the use of resources, business process, budget allocations, or other modes of operation that significantly change a company or organization. Organizational change management (OCM) considers the full organization and what needs to change, while change management may be used solely to refer to how people and teams are affected by such organizational transition. It deals with many different disciplines, from behavioral and social sciences to information technology and business solutions.

A chief strategy officer (CSO), or chief strategist, is an executive responsible for assisting the chief executive officer (CEO) with developing, communicating, executing, and sustaining corporate strategic initiatives. Some companies give the title Chief Business Officer to its senior executives who are holding the top strategy role.

Enterprise Architecture Assessment Framework

The Enterprise Architecture Assessment Framework (EAAF) is created by the US Federal government Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to allow federal agencies to assess and report their enterprise architecture activity and maturity, and to advance the use of enterprise architecture in the federal government.

Strategy implementation is a term used to describe the activities within an workplace or organisation to manage the activities associated with the delivery of a strategic plan.

Turnaround management is a process dedicated to corporate renewal. It uses analysis and planning to save troubled companies and returns them to solvency, and to identify the reasons for failing performance in the market, and rectify them. Turnaround management involves management review, root failure causes analysis, and SWOT analysis to determine why the company is failing. Once gdg analysis is completed, a long term strategic plan and restructuring plan are created. These plans may or may not involve a bankruptcy filing. Once approved, turnaround professionals begin to implement the plan, continually reviewing its progress and make changes to the plan as needed to ensure the company returns to solvency.

Enterprise performance management (EPM) is a field of business performance management which considers the visibility of operations in a closed-loop model across all facets of the enterprise. Specific to financial activities in the office of the chief financial officer, EPM also supports financial planning and analysis (FP&A).

Benefits Realization Management (BRM) is one of the many ways of managing how time and resources are invested into making desirable changes.

References

  1. Efriam Turban, Ramesh Sharda, Jay E. Aronson and David King. (2008), Business Intelligence – A Managerial Approach
  2. Max Mckeown (2012), The Strategy Book
  3. Michael Coveney, Dennis Ganster, Brian Hartlen (2003), The Strategy Gap: Leveraging Technology to Execute Winning
  4. Ram Charan and Geoffrey Colvin, "Why CEO's fail", Fortune, June 1999
  5. Paul R. Niven. (April 2005), Balanced Scorecard Diagnostics: Maintaining Maximum Performance