Alertise is a web-based platform that helps not-for-profit organisations run smoothly and effectively.

Rob Harrison

Rob Harrison

2 March, 2021

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In plain English, strategic drift is the gradual fall from grace experienced by businesses who fail to recognise their customers’ needs have changed. Put another way; they keep doing what they’ve always done because it used to work, refusing to accept it isn’t working anymore.

Strategic drift happens for many reasons including management complacency, a bad culture and marketing myopia. One well-documented example is that of the British motorcycle industry. Management complacency due to previous success, a culture of merely believing they were better despite evidence to the contrary, and, crucially, a steadfast refusal to listen to their market all contributed to the industry’s downfall.

The story is told in great detail in the book “The Strange Death of the British Motorcycle Industry” by Steve Koerner.

list of global free data sourcesGoogle "list of global free data sources" or something similar

We Can Learn From Their Failures

Now, it’s easy to be critical of businesses or in the case of British motorcycles an entire industry, who have failed because of strategic drift, especially with the luxury of 20:20 hindsight. What’s important is to learn from the mistakes of those who have become less dominant, or worse, to protect our businesses today.

The excellent news for 21st-century organisations is that it’s never been easier to see the warning signs. Strategy management systems that do most of the heavy lifting and help executives decide & execute strategy are now mainstream.

Crucially, these systems give people the power to combine their strategic thinking with external economic insights, essential internal KPI’s and agile and collaborative implementation tools; it’s a killer combination.

3 Ways Your Organisation Can Avoid Strategic Drift

There are usually many factors that contribute to the failure of a business, above and beyond the already mentioned management complacency, culture and marketing myopia. In our view, there are three things most companies are not doing that they should be if they want to avoid potentially fatal strategic drift, and we’ve outlined them below.

1. Don’t Ignore External Data

There is a wealth of external data, readily and freely available, that can inform your strategic decision making and help you avoid strategic drift. For example, in the UK, the Office for National Statistics is responsible for “collecting, analysing and disseminating statistics about the UK’s economy, society and population”. The same goes for the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

As some people on social media often say, let that sink in. There are organisations who collect data, make sense of it then share it, for free. That’s data about the overall state of the economy, data about your markets and data about the actual people who buy what you’re selling — all for free.

Any company going through a strategic planning process should use data to inform their decisions. Whether it’s the painful, outdated and ineffectual annual process, many large businesses use, or the agile process most forward-thinking companies use, making use of data makes business sense and is an essential aspect of avoiding strategic drift.

To find external data to help your business, Google “list of global free data sources” or something similar. There will be data out there that will help you, and it will remove those “I reckon” moments from the strategic planning process. Furthermore, the use of external data can be beneficial for silencing those annoying “It worked in the past and will work in the future” people. You know, those guys who refuse to accept the world has changed.

2. Monitor Useful KPI’s With Time Series Charts

Most businesses are guilty of confusing Key Performance Indicators or KPI’s with Performance Indicators. Wait; what? Let me explain. Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean you should, and it doesn’t make it “key”. In a world where we gather data about everything, and where there are multiple tools such as Microsoft’s Power BI, it’s easy to get lost in beautiful dashboards with funky dials.

However, plenty of failed businesses will cry, “but we measured stuff, our dashboards were amazing.” The trouble is, sexy dashboards often seduce their users into a false sense of adequacy. In our opinion, robust, dependable time series charts are all that most businesses need to ensure they are not slipping into a strategic drift.

Time series charts illustrate performance over time and make it easy to see trends, and where strategic drift is concerned, it’s the trends that tell the story.

It’s no coincidence that time series charts are the tool of choice of the data providers mentioned above, such as the ONS. Time series charts inform in a way that’s easy to understand and in a way that helps with decision making and let’s face it, making decisions is what strategy is all about whether it’s strategic planning or recognising the early signs of strategic drift.

3. Lean In On Agile Company Wide Collaboration

If there’s one aspect of strategy that most companies mess up, it’s actioning their agreed strategic initiatives.

Assuming you’ve reviewed the available external data, and it’s favourable, and you’ve looked at your own KPI’s and they, in turn, support your planned strategic initiatives then the remaining bear trap will almost certainly be the lack of a simple mechanism for implementing your plan and monitoring your progress.

As with KPI’s, there are plenty of sophisticated project management tools on the market rammed with all manner of intricate trickery designed to help you get things done. The reality is, this complexity can lead to confusion and inaction.

The way to implement a strategic initiative is to map out, in simple clearly understood language, a series of time-bound actions, or ToDo’s, that will deliver what’s required.

For example, you may have recognised the early signs of strategic drift by looking at a time series chart that showed how demand for a previously lucrative product line was in decline.

Reviewing external data, informed you that in fact, demand for a similar product to yours was increasing.

As an organisation who has adopted an agile approach to strategy, you recognise that waiting for the next annual strategy planning session, which might be many months away, is high risk. The external and internal data, in the form of time series charts, is telling you a clear story, so it’s time to act.

Using your strategic management tool of choice, you instigate an initiative to pivot and improve your product in line with your customers’ new requirements. To get this done, you need a series of actions, which might be:

a. Carry out market research to establish how your product will need to adapt.
b. Evaluate the required changes to make sure the numbers work.
c. Implement the changes to your production line.

And so on.

These actions are most likely cross-departmental, and so having a company-wide collaboration tool is essential, as is assigning them to a specific person with a definite delivery time.

In Conclusion

Avoiding strategic drift is about understanding your markets and the numbers that drive it. It’s also about having a clear sight of your own company’s performance and, importantly, having the tools and mechanisms for actioning initiatives that will stop the strategic drift that’s threatening your future prosperity.

It isn’t particularly sophisticated, but given the almost daily news headlines telling of how previously well-performing businesses, sometimes household names, have gone bust, it does warrant your close attention.

Any project your business undertakes that’s not aligned with your overall strategic objectives serves only to keep the lights on. Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, keeping the lights on is important.

But those projects are distinct from the projects that help you to grow and if growth is a priority, it usually is, it’s likely there will need to be tight integration between transactional projects and strategically important work.

Everyone should understand and know their company’s strategyEveryone should understand and know their company’s strategy

So, how are you aligning the projects you undertake, with your organisation’s strategic initiatives? Are you even doing that? Do you understand the difference?

Harvard Business School Professor, Michael Porter, asserts that the No.1 purpose of a strategy is alignment. Through alignment, a strategy helps people make good choices and reinforces the choices others make. He also states that everyone should understand and know their company’s strategy. Rather than being locked away and protected it should be widely shared and understood.

Without this broad company-wide understanding there will be inefficiencies and the potential for failure. There will also be frustrations within the organisation.

To illustrate what we mean, let’s take a look at a fictitious design agency, and let’s call them Blue Mountain Design.

Blue Mountain Design want to grow from being a small two-person business into a 40 strong team of creative professionals. They understand achieving this requires some great case studies about the value they’ve added to their client’s businesses. They believe that by doing this, they will secure the blue-chip clients they want.

As part of their strategy, they have stated that every project must tick the following boxes, the four rules of engagement.

  1. It must have the potential to make them famous
  2. It must be fun to work on
  3. It must be profitable
  4. It must move the agency forward

If that aspect of their strategy isn’t well understood across the company, if the information isn’t written down and easily accessible, there’s a big danger of projects being taken on that don’t align with the four rules.

So, it’s Monday morning and an opportunity comes in. It’s a web design project for a small business on a tight budget. It’s a project that’s worth perhaps £3000, not a trivial amount of money but not a lot either.

If the person taking the call doesn’t know about the four rules of engagement they may decide to take the project on, after all, it will generate some income and that’s a good thing, right?

But doing this will divert resources away from strategically aligned work to deliver something that isn’t aligned, in simple terms, it won’t help the agency get to where they want to be.

You can imagine the conversations.

  • "Why are we working on this pointless project?"
  • "It’s not pointless, it’s generating income"
  • "Does it follow our agreed strategic rules of engagement?"
  • "Our what?"
  • "The four rules that help us decide if a project is right for us"
  • "I know nothing of this, I thought we just wanted to get design projects and that’s what this is."

Now, this is a really simple and somewhat contrived example of how a lack of alignment and communication can hinder a business’s development. But it’s more than likely that it’s representative of what’s actually happening out in the wild.

The need for a simple strategy execution tool is obvious, as it helps businesses avoid these situations. It puts strategy front of house and removes the usual smoke and mirrors that surround it. It creates a shared collaborative environment that makes strategy real and relevant.

At Alertise we’ve put a huge amount of time and effort into understanding the process of rolling out a strategy. Our SaaS tool helps our clients make sure their strategy is well understood across their organisation as well as providing a suite of tools that make strategy deployment agile and continuous.

If you’d like to see how Alertise can help you manage and execute your strategy, get in touch.

Taking in a consultant to help you create your organisation’s strategy is a common, well, strategy. However, there’s a real danger you’re not getting the best value from them.

A good consultant will make sure your strategy is robust and aligned with your mission and vision. They will test your ideas against the markets and your competitors and in general, add a great deal of value to your business. However, if you don’t cover the basics yourself, you’ll only be paying them to state the obvious. They will parachute in, agitate and leave.

Most businesses are in such a parlous state; they make it easy for consultants to look good.

"Could I take a look at your CRM?" – "Our what?"

"Can you show me your KPI charts?" – "KP what?"

"What project management tool are you using to manage your strategic initiatives?" – "Eh…."

"Where did you find the data to support your assumptions?" – "Support them?"

OK, I’m being facetious, most businesses are not like the examples above, but they are relying on consultants to help them cover the basics. They are making it all too easy for them to under deliver and cause more chaos than they solve.

To get the most from a consultant, to make them earn their salt, you should cover off the basics. You should know where your business is heading, and importantly, you should be able to justify that decision by demonstrating that you’ve looked at the markets and considered your market’s disruptors.

You should also have easy access to your KPI’s, and that doesn’t mean having a copy of an impenetrable spreadsheet rammed with numbers and multiple worksheets, it means having simple time series charts, tables and graphs.

Avoid strategic myopia suffered by many businessesAvoid strategic myopia suffered by many businesses

Vitally, it would be best if you had a viable mechanism for managing the strategic initiatives that will, all things being equal, drive your business forward. Having this in place will also serve you well if, as you work through your strategy execution, things turn out to be less than equal. Having the right tools in place will help you to pivot at the right time.

Traditionally, consultants give you a plan and leave you to it. As they walk out of the door, leaving their invoice on your desk, it’s possible the program they’ve created is already under attack from changes in your markets or the world at large.

Using this model makes no sense, and you can get way more value from your consultant by getting them to help you deliver your continuous agile approach to strategy.

We’re not suggesting the strategy consulting model is dead, far from it. Hiring someone with an external point of view helps to avoid strategic myopia suffered by many businesses. What we are saying is don’t use consultants to solve the fundamental problems, they are way too expensive for this.

Instead, introduce your consultant to your well thought out and justified strategy. One that’s supported by both internal and external KPI’s and is being delivered using an agile, continuous methodology. If you do this, they will almost certainly add real value to the process and not merely dump you with a big bill and a word document.

If you’d like to see the software we’ve developed to help businesses with their strategy execution give us a call or fill in the form at the bottom of this page to request a demo. Our growing list of happy clients are nailing their strategy, how about nailing yours.

In many businesses the delivery team have got an ERP system, the sales team have got a CRM system and the marketing team have got Marketing Automation tools. These systems are mostly Software as a Service or SaaS-based. It seems everyone but the CEO is getting SaaSy.

Businesses don't pivot when they shouldBusinesses don't pivot when they should

So where's the tool for the board and the busy executives reporting to it? Where's the tool for the people responsible for keeping the business viable and relevant?

It's never been easy for executives. They've usually got a foot in two camps, delivery and strategy, and for the most part, they're run off their feet.

For them, it's all about reports, meetings and emails. It's about understanding how the different parts of the business are performing, often using incomplete, inaccurate, and out-of-date information.

Trying to work out how strategic projects are progressing, not to mention trying to keep an eye on what's going on externally, is challenging. All of these things are vital to the success of the business and getting it wrong could seriously impact the organisation's performance.

In the worst case scenario, not having visibility of strategic projects and the state of external markets means businesses don't pivot when they should, instead they stick to a strategy that's now potentially on course for failure.

Contrast this with the Sales & Marketing team. The SaaS tools they use, such as Salesforce or Hubspot, make their life so much easier. That doesn't suggest these teams have it easy, they don't, Sales & Marketing is a blood bath just now, but they are not challenged when it comes to overall visibility of their part of the business.

Most savvy Sales executives could tell you at any one time exactly how many leads they are servicing, how each of their revenue pipelines is looking, what their conversion rates have been and the activities that are performing effectively. It's all there in their CRM system.

And what of the Accounts department. When someone asks for a report are they sent scurrying around hacking spreadsheets and ledgers? Nope, they simply log in to their accounts SaaS package and run off a report. It's all there at the click of a button. Well, mostly.

So it makes sense that the board and the execs reporting to them should have an app that helps them understand how the business is performing in all areas and at all levels, a tool that helps them deliver and measure the progress of their projects, something to help them coordinate their meetings and keep them informed about what's going on externally.

Just like the rest of the business, where SaaS is now the norm, the executives need a tool to help them:

  • Have a clear overview of their Markets, Disruptors & Strategies
  • Have a simple dashboard of KPI's
  • Have a way of monitoring their strategic projects
  • Have a way of managing meetings to improve their effectiveness

At Alertise we're on a journey to create a SaaS tool that helps those responsible for running businesses do their job more effectively. Just like Salesforce and Hubspot set out to help the Sales & Marketing teams, we set out to help business leaders.

We're on a journey, but we're already getting great feedback from the people who've adopted our software. If you'd like to see what we've created simply request a demo using the form at the bottom of this page. Or perhaps you're too busy...

There's an old saying that goes something like, "How do you eat an elephant", answer, "One bite at a time". Perhaps the modern equivalent might be "One byte at a time".

Despite the slightly troubling notion that anyone would be so mean as to contemplate eating an elephant, it does conjure the right image for those faced with a seemingly impossible task.

When it comes to implementing their strategy, many businesses are hanging on to the old notion that they need to eat that elephant in one sitting. I'll stop with elephant analogies now.

Each sprint achieves something shippable and has a beginning and an endEach sprint achieves something shippable and has a beginning and an end

This approach makes getting traction and executing a strategy difficult. There's always something else to do, something with a clear beginning and end that will achieve something 'tomorrow' as opposed to 12 months.

If this is you, then you're still hanging on to the remnants of an old way of executing strategy. By 'the old way' we mean, the top-down management method of trying to plan everything up front, and then trying to hold everyone accountable to execute your plans over an extended period.

If that ever worked is debatable, that it works during times of significant change is laughable. Today most businesses need a way of working that breaks their strategy into chunks and lets them respond to the environment in which they operate.

So, what's the better way?

Be Agile!

Agile project management is the opposite of the traditional method of managing projects.

Agile project management involves teams planning and executing projects in short phases where cross-functional teams prepare and implement each step one at a time.

Large projects get broken into smaller projects to the extent that they each become a deliverable 'thing'. In terms of software development, a branch of engineering that pioneered agile methodologies, it might look something like this.

Project 1 – Create login screens, allow people to log in and log out. Bingo, we have an app, let marketing know we're good to go.

Well, not quite. There's probably not a huge market for an app that allows users to log in then log out.

Incidentally, in agile parlance, it's common for these mini projects to be known as sprints. Each sprint achieves something shippable and has a beginning and an end. Here's what it looks like with a bit more meat on the bones.

  1. You identify a project or sprint (something you want achieving, e.g. open a new store, implement a new computer system).
  2. Give the project an owner.
  3. The owner selects the cross-functional team to implement the project plan.
  4. The team delivers the project.
  5. The owner reports back on the progress of the project.

It's common for some aspects of a sprint to get moved to another sprint, so the overall objective gets done even if some of the rats and mice are set aside for the next sprint.

Things can get more complicated when you've got a ton of strategic projects underway, alongside a ton of operational plans and other initiatives, but that's where collaboration tools come to the rescue.

It's a lot easier to coordinate and report on tons of projects – both strategic and operational – with platforms like these. Furthermore, with these platforms, it's easy as to add new Projects to your strategy as they arise, and to archive them when they've completed.

An agile approach makes the execution of your strategy a continuous and easily managed process. It makes rolling it out much less daunting.

One of the most critical tasks for any organisations leadership team is to get some clarity around their vision, their perfect world outcome. Once established, this has to be shared across the entire organisation in simple easily digestible, often inspirational, language. However, it's not unusual for this exercise to tax even the sharpest minds.

In our view, the simplest and best way to create your organisation's vision is to follow these three steps.

  1. Identify what you want to change
  2. Identify what you want the change to be
  3. Find the right words to communicate it

So, for example, your Vision may be:

A world without slavery
The thing to be changed is slavery; the change is to abolish it.

People with disability have equal opportunity for employment
The thing to be changed are disabled people's employment opportunities; the change is making them equal.

ACME Co. is a global company
The thing to be changed is the company's geographical reach; the change is to make the reach global.

Hone your Vision statement such that it doesn't need flowery languageHone your Vision statement such that it doesn't need flowery language

Recently we did some work with a digital marketing agency in the UK. During the session, we struggled to figure out their vision of where the business wanted to be. Like many small businesses their current "vision" was little more than "meet payroll and stay viable". Sound familiar?

As the session went on, we all realised that growing the agency relied on working with the right clients, clients that valued what the agency did for them. Sure they had some clients where the relationship was purely transactional, but the most lucrative clients were the ones who place real value on what the agency brought to the table.

In the end, and this is a work in progress, we all agreed on "To be valued by every client we have". First, they recognised they wanted to stop living hand to mouth; this is the thing they wanted to change. To make that change they understood they needed to make sure their client base was made up of organisations who value the relationship they have with them.

The inspirational part was merely the statement that they wanted to be valued by every client they have, not just some or most of them.

Choosing the right inspirational words can be hard because both empathy and creativity are needed. Here's another real-world example.

The new CEO of the oldest LPG company in Australia, who employed more than 1,000 people, recognised the company had lost its mojo. For whatever reason, the organisation was feeling beaten up by its major competitors and needed to make some big decisions to improve its strategic position.

Of vital importance was the creation and communication of the leadership teams Vision, because success relied on the whole organisation being onboard and motivated.

Many people in the organisation had given their whole career to the company. They were understandably unhappy about where the company was. So the CEO crafted the Vision, "We're going to return ACME Corp to its rightful place as the #1 LPG company in Australia".

The thing they wanted to change was the company's position; the change was making the company No. 1.

The vision was inspirational in itself and only needed simple language to communicate it, and the lesson here is to hone your Vision statement such that it doesn't need flowery language.

As you roll out and execute your strategy, it's vital that both your Mission and Vision get communicated across your organisation. Making them powerful yet straightforward is a great approach and helps with their adoption. If you don't believe us, check out these examples.

I'll start by clarifying one thing. Some organisations use the word Mission, others Purpose. Whatever word you prefer, it describes your reason for being. In this article, we're going to use the word Mission.

No matter how small or new a business might be, they should have a mission statementNo matter how small or new a business might be, they should have a mission statement.

Just like creating your company's Vision Statement, something we cover in the post called "How To Create Your Vision Statement In Three Easy Steps" some organisations find it hard to write down their Mission Statement in simple, unambiguous language.

However, it's easy to get clarity on your business' Mission if you follow this simple three-step process.

  1. Identify your most important stakeholder
  2. Establish what this stakeholder expects from you
  3. If required, add some context

To illustrate how this works, here are two examples from some of the world's best-known businesses:

BHP Billiton

The Mission of BHP Billiton, one of the largest mining companies in the world, is ‘To create long-term shareholder value through the discovery, acquisition, development and marketing of natural resources'.

They've identified their most important stakeholder as their shareholders, and they've established their shareholders want them to create long-term value. In their case, the context is just that they will deliver on their mission through the discovery, acquisition, development and marketing of natural resources. Simple.

Walmart

Walmart's Mission is ‘To save people money so they can live better'.

They've identified their most important stakeholder as the people who use their stores, which is pretty evident for a supermarket, and they know these people expect to save money when they shop there. In their case, the context of doing this is so their customers can live better, presumably because they have more money to spend on other aspects of their life.

A mistake smaller businesses make is they think Mission Statements are only for the big boys such as those in the examples above. This is not the case. No matter how small or new a business might be, they should have a mission statement.

Having a mission statement gives clarity to the whole organisation about why they get out of bed in the morning, and this is vital in the context of, for example, an organisations strategy execution.

Being clear about the problems your business solves and for whom ensures other aspects of your business slot into place — for example, creating buyer personas or ideal customer profiles, an activity that's vital for business growth.

Here at Alertise, we got clear about our Mission very early on. We recognised our most important stakeholder is the CEO, and we established they wanted us to help them run their business. In our case, the context referred to today's complex, fast-changing world.

Using this information we arrived at "Help CEOs manage their business in today's complex fast changing world" as our Mission Statement.

Using the three steps described in this article will help you create your Mission Statement. However, don't worry if you find yourself fine-tuning it over the coming months, this is not unusual. Like any form of the written word, it can take time to refine until you find the perfect and succinct end product.

Strategies fail for many reasons. One of the main ones is those tasked with strategy implementation, and specifically, the application of strategically essential initiatives, get tied up with the day to day running of the business.

Project implementation in strategic management is proven to be an area where, for most businesses, there’s significant room for improvement. One of our previous posts, The Relationships Between Strategy Development and Strategy Implementation, goes into this in more detail.

But if strategically important initiatives get overlooked in favour of operational projects your business will stagnate, or worse, it won’t survive. In simple terms, leaders who don’t spend time working on their companies preferring instead to work in them are not doing anyone any favours.

Commonly, strategic plans and their associated initiatives become removed from the growth and prosperity of the organisations they aim to help. They become disconnected, seen as something ethereal. It’s almost as if those who should be putting significant effort into growing the business into the future prefer to do things that generate invoices today. Sound familiar?

It could be that the sheer volume of work the strategic planning process generates overwhelms those tasked with its delivery. It’s understandable, and if like me you’re a procrastinator there’s solace in doing something billable.

Sweat the small stuffSweat the small stuff

Something that exacerbates the situation is the lack of consideration given to strategy implementation during the strategic planning process. Typically even the grandest of plans are achieved through the execution of lots of small tasks. Advocates of agile methodologies, like us, swear by this approach. Thinking about that during the planning process is going to be helpful and keep things real.

It’s no wonder strategy documents all too often sit on bookshelves and in drawers. Without the right tools, implementing strategies is hard, and there’s always a chance of failure.

So how should busy executives avoid the trap of the day to day running of their businesses impeding the implementation of their carefully crafted strategic plan? Well, it’s not simple but following these rules can help.

Make sure you and your team are committed to the strategic plan. By this, I mean 100% buy-in and not just being high on the planning session.

Communicate the plan across the organisation and not just in the board room. Strategic plans rely on company-wide adoption. Sure, the program will mean different things to different people, but everyone should have an appreciation of the part they’re playing.

Make delivering the plan part of your day, every day, and arm yourself with a toolkit that’s going to make it easier.

Sweat the small stuff. By that I mean monitor the projects that are key to the delivery of your strategy, and again, this becomes easier if you’ve got the right tools at your fingertips.

Monitor critical KPI's. With the right dashboard, this isn’t hard, and it’s going to keep you motivated, especially as you see those time series charts head in the right direction. Most credible strategy implementation tools will make monitoring KPI's easy.

Monitor the external environment in which you’re operating to make sure you’re making progress. Those internal KPI's might show sales of a product have increased 20%, good job, but what if there’s a market trend that suggests you should have grown them 30%? Not so good a job.

Conversely, if sales are decreasing is that internal failings or external factors that are causing it? You’ll only know if you’re making use of the excellent, and free, external data sets that are available to you.

So, in short, make your strategy implementation part of your day, communicate with the people delivering it, monitor progress and react to what you see, be prepared to pivot when it’s obvious something isn’t working and, most important of all, use a strategy tool that takes away some of the pain.

What information are you using to make the most important decisions about your business?

If you’re like most organizations, it’s likely you’ll be using a lot of internal data, i.e. information about your financials, your customers, your operations, and your people. Maybe you use software that helps you access this information quickly and easily.

Alongside this internal data, you’ll be accessing external data in a less formal and structured way; using your business network and media sources to stay up to date and informed about factors with the potential to impact your business – new competitors, new technologies, new government legislation and so on.

It’s highly likely that once a year, you’ll gather up as much information as you can (given limited time and resources) in order to take your organisation through a strategic planning process.

Watch Where You’re Going!

To us, this is akin to driving a car, spending most of your time looking at its dashboard (speed, revs, temp, fuel, etc) and hardly ever looking out of the windows to see whether you’re going in the right direction; whether you’re going at the right speed; and most importantly, whether there’s a danger you’re going to hit something ahead.

No wonder there’s so much inefficiency and stagnation in business today.

We believe all businesses can tap into the strategically useful external data that’s easily and freely available online. This is demographic, socioeconomic and even scientific research information that just about any industry can use. It’s collated and distributed by organizations such as the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the UK Office of National Statistics (ONS), the UK Met Office and the US government website data.gov and others. Each offers excellent and wide-ranging sources of up to date facts, figures and statistics that businesses can use to make better strategic decisions related to current and forecasted demand for their products and services.

Harnessing and exploiting external data allows businesses to delve deeper into the stories within. Let’s see how just one particular type of data can be put to good use. If you were a residential homebuilder in Western Australia, wouldn’t you like to know about the size (value) of the market? Whether it’s increasing or decreasing - and where you’re at in the cycle:

WA Value of Residential Building Work Done - New HousesWA Value of Residential Building Work Done - New Houses

Here’s another example using this same residential homebuilder. Wouldn’t you like to know your market share (by dividing your revenues by the size of the market), and over time to see whether your gaining market share or losing, to benchmark your sales performance? More than that, wouldn’t you like a good indicator of what the size of the market will be in the future? Housing Approvals are a lead indicator of housing construction activity by about 6-9 months:

WA New Housing Building ApprovalsWA New Housing Building Approvals

This information is very useful for both benchmarking your performance and for enabling you to make informed decisions about the allocation of resources – which markets to move into or invest more in, and which markets to exit or invest less in.

External data sources must form part of the bedrock of your strategy – how else are you going to be the company that moves swiftly and decisively to identify and capitalize on new or unmet areas of demand or opportunities for growth? How else will you move quickly to avoid, circumvent or recover from disruptive or potentially disruptive events? In short, successful strategic decision-making doesn’t happen in a silo, nor does it happen using only the internal data that companies have access to.

For an agile strategy you must ensure your organization has access to and can effectively use all the information available.

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You'll Be In Good Company

Southern Districts Support
Uniting
Intelife
Food Bank
Ishar
Westcare
Good Sammy Enterprises

Before we had Alertise, implementing our strategic plan and monitoring our organisational performance against the plan was cumbersome. Now, with this unifying cloud-based platform reporting that used to take days or weeks, now takes minutes.

Andrea Creado, CEO of Ishar

A strategic plan can fail without associated actions and easy access to KPI's. Tools such as Excel are OK but ultimately clunky. Alertise is a centralised repository where everything we need to roll out and monitor our strategy is in one place and accessible from anywhere, by everybody including our board.

Fran Ferreira, CFO of Foodbank WA

Before Alertise, running Intelife felt like flying at night, in the clouds with no instruments. Within three weeks of implementing the platform, I had the information I needed to improve the organisation and within 2 months we were transforming it.

Steve Edgar, CEO of Intelife Group

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Alertise Blog

In plain English, strategic drift is the gradual fall from grace experienced by businesses who fail to recognise…

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Any project your business undertakes that’s not aligned with your overall strategic objectives serves only to keep the…

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Michael Porter describes a business strategy as something that: 1. Creates a unique and valuable position2. Guides what not…

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