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

Rob Harrison

Rob Harrison

As a CEO, how do you know the full story about your business's performance?

In this age of the Internet of Things, of Business Intelligence (BI), and Artificial Intelligence (AI), the information that's passed over to so many CEOs to illustrate the financial performance of their business is the standard accounting table. ‘Actuals v. Budget (and if they’re lucky, v. Last Year); for the Month and for the Year-to-Date.

The reason these tables are so commonly used is that they're the standard reports routinely churned out by accounting systems; but more significantly because it’s the way many people were taught to deliver the information - and they’re reluctant to change.

The standard accounting table isn't enoughthe standard accounting table isn't enough

Now there are three massive shortcomings with this approach - and if you're a CEO you've probably experienced one or all of these.

First, the tables only compare how the business has performed 1) in a particular month and 2) over the period since the start of the year.

Second, the tables only compare the results against a budget; a budget that was a guesstimate at best when it was created, and has since been rendered pretty much useless by external factors beyond the control of the business.

And finally, they don't really convey information about the impact external factors are having on the performance of your business or on the industry generally.

What if the data that’s used to generate those standard accounting tables could be pulled out of the accounting systems and used in a different way?

For example, how much more insightful would it be to display accounting data in charts showing a number of months of results against budget, if you must; and a rolling trend, to take out all the noise and seasonality? What if these charts gave you a clear and unequivocal picture of all the short, medium and long-term trends, in all parts of your business and at all levels? When working on strategic initiatives, information that helps businesses recognise when things have changed is a key factor in smarter and more timely strategic decision-making.

 

Revenue Chartcharting a more accurate picture

How The Accounting Table Becomes a Tool For Improved Decision-making

To better understand financial performance it makes sense to also consider external market data. By factoring external trends into your charts you'll be building a truly visual story around the impact they're having on your business and your industry (think external opportunities and threats). Again, fully informed businesses that are responsive and adaptable to what’s going on in the world make better strategic decisions.

Tap Into The Stats!

By external data, we're talking about information readily available from organisations like the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the UK Office of National Statistics. Accessing this data is critical to businesses who want to succeed. There's a phenomenal amount of constantly updated external strategic information provided free of charge by government bodies and industry associations.

A Better Conversation

All this would make for a far more intelligent conversation with your board. Internal data has its part to play but CEOs can benefit from spending less time comparing performances against a guestimated budget and concentrating their efforts in considering their organisation's performance against prevailing industry conditions.

When boards get involved in strategy (and they should), what invariably gets produced at the end of the process is a ton of strategic initiatives that CEOs agree to deliver.

Accountability for the delivery of strategic initiatives often involves using a lot of emails and endless meetings. These are the tools of the trade for many CEOs. Demonstrating to the board that the strategic initiatives are being delivered results in the production of monthly reports, usually in the form of tables that look something like this:

CEOs Need An Effective Tool To Help Them Deliver Strategysometimes a "traffic light" system highlights progress

Rather than go through all the detail and in order to help the board see the picture more clearly, a "traffic light" system is used to highlight the things that are going well (green), things that are not going so well (orange) and things that are not going well at all (red).

Now initially, there won't be much colour in the tables - perhaps a few greens as some quick wins occur. Inevitably, because it's bloody hard for CEOs to organise so many things these days using only emails and meetings, time passes and more and more orange and red appears in the tables. Of course, the detail behind this is down to things changing and when things change, strategic initiatives need to change; and that means deliverables too! Put simply, how can a table of different coloured rows be a true reflection of a constantly evolving situation?

Einstein has been attributed with saying, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"

Cross-functional teams collaboratingStrategic initiatives almost always involve functional and/or cross-functional teams collaborating

How Do Strategic Initiatives Become True Deliverables?

Working on strategic initiatives almost always involves functional and/or cross-functional teams collaborating, so in our view the first bit is easy. This collaboration can be achieved by investing in project management tools that help any kind of team work together in a meaningful way on their deliverables. Tools such as these are readily available.

Those responsible for delivering on strategic initiatives can often be unaware of the significance of their work to the success of the business. Managing each strategic initiative as a project assigned to an owner and a clearly defined team makes sense. The project will have clearly defined deliverables, easily accessible information and tasks to be completed.

Rather than planning everything up front and working on everything at the same time, this makes the delivery of strategic initiatives more of a continuous and agile process. New "projects" are added as they arise, and archived as each strategic initiative is completed.

In this way, the owner of each project can use the system to do the heavy lifting of the reporting and ensure that the story being told is a true depiction of where the business is heading and how it's getting there.

The important thing is to ensure the approach to delivering strategic initiatives is dynamic - agile and continuous rather than static. Inspect, adapt and refine each one as the business moves toward delivery.

In their white paper, Winning through Project Portfolio Management, the Project Management Institute stated that leaders need to take an organisation-wide view to allocate resources and time, make effective course corrections across their portfolio of projects, and from there, maximise value delivery.

In other words, if leaders don’t have visibility of strategically critical projects and KPI’s the likelihood of failure increases. It’s not a particularly complicated concept to grasp!

Differentiate strategic projects from operational projectsCare needs to be taken to differentiate strategic projects from operational projects

The report states that 94% of organisations who report a high level of maturity with respect to portfolio management believe it to have a positive and tangible impact on their success. That’s a compelling statistic, but what, in simple terms, does it mean?

At Alertise, we like plain English and keeping things simple. So in simple terms what they’re saying is, people who run businesses should be across the strategically important projects that will lead to the business succeeding. This includes having the tools to recognise when things have changed such that a project needs to pivot or be abandoned.

Clearly, to do this effectively it makes sense to also have access to external data that could be impacting on the business’s strategic objectives. To ignore this would lead to decisions being made without seeing the bigger picture.

For example, if a business viewed the decline of a product line as an internal problem they might assign resources to address it. However, a review of external data may illustrate that, in fact, their business was experiencing a much slower rate of decline than most others and the market in general and the effort put into turning things around were wasted.

Most leaders will recognise that strategically important projects are different from the day to day delivery of the services that generate revenues. This suggests that care needs to be taken to differentiate strategic projects from operational projects without compromising either.

For example, at an engineering company, there will be projects for the delivery of products and these projects will be delivering the essential revenues that keep the business viable. At the same time, strategic projects dealing with the business’s overall direction of travel will also need to be managed and resourced. The Project Management Institute paper highlights this.

When considering the implementation of strategic initiatives it’s important to have sight of the key components along with the right mindset.

Recognising the importance of these initiatives and their significance to the overall wellbeing of the business is an important first step. One way of guaranteeing this is to provide easily accessible information stating the organisation’s mission and direction of travel. It’s simply too easy and all too common for those delivering for a business to lack the knowledge and understanding of the significance of the work they are doing.

“You do realise the importance of this work you’re doing, right?”

Getting portfolio management right means those at the top need to embrace it and make sure the people reporting to them have a deep understanding of its importance. It also means making sure the tools to deliver it are in place.

This might be achieved by leveraging existing collaboration tools and methods or by investing in dedicated strategy execution software. The important thing, no matter what the choice, is to make sure the tools used for portfolio or initiative management and delivery are made simple and accessible.

A recent white paper written by Deloitte and published by the Project Management Institute stated that businesses who align projects with strategy yield better results in achieving business goals and objectives.

In simple terms, to get to where you want to be you need to align strategies with the initiatives that are going to deliver them. In a previous post, we spoke about how most strategies finish up gathering dust, and it’s this lack of connectivity between strategy and projects that creates this situation.

The report goes on to suggest there exists a lack of communication and collaboration between those who formulate strategies and those involved in executing them. This will not come as a surprise to many of you.

When you execute your training runs, you gain an advantage over those who don’tWhen you execute your training runs, you gain an advantage over those who don’t

Here’s a very simple example. For most people, if they decide to run a marathon they create a strategy involving diet and exercise. The strategy will include training runs and executing that strategy involves going running. Clearly, having the strategy alone isn’t going to ensure you get home in respectable time, only executing the training runs will do that, probably.

Now, I know this is a very basic and simplistic example, but you know what, lots of people throw caution to the wind and just rock up on the day of the race and hope for the best. Some of them complete it, lots of them fail and those who succeed usually pay a high price, sometimes very high!

Sticking with our example of a marathon there’s something else that happens when you execute your training runs, you gain an advantage over those who don’t, and it’s the same with business. Connecting your strategy with the initiatives that deliver it gives you a competitive advantage in just the same way following a fitness program better prepares you for race day.

A structured approach to the alignment of strategy and initiatives can bring many benefits to an organisation. Program managers can see where their work fits in with the work of others and where it is positioned within the overall development of the business. But it doesn’t stop there.

Business owners and those tasked with directing the business can monitor overall progress allowing them to understand what’s working and what isn’t. It also provides the vital information needed to know if or when to pivot.

So often the vital connection between where a company wants to be and the activities required to get it there is missing. The relationship between strategy and strategy implementation just doesn’t exist.

Strategy execution software has its part to play but there needs to exist a culture of collaboration and a recognition of the importance of connecting everything up, a set of protocols and a common language connecting strategy with execution.

Doing this in a way that’s simple with easy access to critical information leads to better decision making and a more continuous and agile approach to strategy execution. It helps organisations allocate their finite resources in the most effective way and flags issues so they can, in some cases, simply abandon an initiative in favour of something that’s more likely to yield a better result.

Running a business, large or small, is challenging. Despite a wealth of great information, which today is very easy to access, there’s still no sure fire route to success. Similar businesses in the same location going after the same markets can achieve very different results. But why?

The reasons are many and varied, but most businesses that succeed do so by design, not by accident. In short, they create and importantly use a strategic plan.

A good strategic plan details the markets in which a company operates or wants to go after, using external data to verify the market’s worth chasing, along with an investigation of what might get in the way or disrupt progress.

It also details the things that need to happen for the strategic plan to succeed, and this is where most strategic plans fail. It’s not that the ideas aren’t great, or at least good, it’s merely that no effort is put into creating the actions required to deliver them.

It’s rare for a book, article or blog post on the subject of strategic planning not to mention how most plans do little more than sit on a shelf and gather dust. All the great thought and enthusiasm that went into the process of creating the plan lost through inactivity.

An effective strategy needs to be responsive and adaptableResponsive and adaptable to what’s going on in the world

The situation is often made worse thanks to the complex spreadsheets supposedly illustrating how a business is progressing. They are rarely received with enthusiasm and usually make the recipients work far too hard when all they want is to understand how things are going.

It shouldn’t be this hard!

In our view, an excellent strategic plan has the following attributes.

  1. Buy in and a desire for action at the highest level.
  2. Verification against external data.
  3. Creation and ownership of the activities that will deliver the initiatives.
  4. Unambiguous and easy to consume KPI’s
  5. A willingness to pivot when the evidence to do so is strong.

Further to this, annual strategy meetings don’t cut it in the 21st century. Things change, things such as markets, technologies, governments and so on. An effective strategy needs to be responsive and adaptable to what’s going on in the world and importantly, continuous. In other words, no more painful annual strategic planning sessions.

To many people the idea of changing a strategy is anathema. To them, a plan needs to be agonised over, usually once a year, and doggedly delivered, no matter what. This approach to strategy is foolhardy and dangerous. It makes much more sense to monitor progress and external factors and modify plans accordingly, or even abandon them!

There are strategy deployment software systems that provide all the required tools to help you avoid making the classic mistakes. Using them could make the difference between the success or failure of your business and let’s face it, in today’s fast paced ever changing world we all need all the help we can get.

4 January, 2017

Security

Alertise Security Overview

Data-Centres

Your data is stored in data-centres that have multiple layers of security using a variety of technological and physical measures - we use data-centres that are certified to the International Standard for Information Security Management, ISO 27001.

Data Transmission

Your data is transmitted using HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) / Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption - we use industry leading 2048 bit RSA encryption.

Firewalls

We use industry leading firewall technology. Amongst other things, we protect against brute force attacks, malware and viruses, and from File, Code, and SQL injection. Our security system is monitored 24/7, is pro-actively managed, and is reviewed and updated as new threats emerge.

Your Data

You own your data. You decide what data you upload to Alertise and you can remove any of your data at any time. We will permanently delete all your data within one month if your account is cancelled or terminated.

Back-ups

Your data is backed up on a daily and weekly basis.

Your Users

You manage your Users of Alertise. You can add Users, remove Users, and you can change the privilege levels of your Users.

Passwords

Each of your Users has a username and a password. Alertise has a minimum password requirement that causes your Users to use strong passwords. Repeated use of incorrect passwords triggers a lock-out of a User’s account.

Confidentiality

Only specific members of our team can access your data, and usually only do so with your permission for support purposes.

Further information

For further information, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

15 January, 2016

Terms of Service

Alertise Terms of Service

These Terms ('Terms') are the standard terms and conditions for use of Alertise ('Service'). The Terms are an agreement between the users of the Service ('You') and Alertise Pty Ltd.

Alertise Pty Limited ('We') reserve the right to modify the Terms.

General

You are responsible for maintaining the security of your usernames and passwords.

You are responsible for the data and information ('Content') that you upload to The Service. You may not upload Content that:

  • is defamatory, obscene, indecent, hateful, discriminatory or inflammatory, or otherwise objectionable,
  • you do not have the right to, that infringes any patent, trade mark, trade secret, copyright, privacy, or other rights of any party.

You are responsible for your use of the Service. You may not use the Service:

  • to do anything that is illegal or that violates any applicable local, state, national or international law,
  • in a way that causes or may cause it damage, or harms its useability.

You understand that we:

  • transmit, store, index, and back up your Content,
  • use third party suppliers.

Intellectual Property

We claim no Intellectual Property rights over the Content that you upload to the Service. All the Content that you upload is and remains yours.

We own the copyright for the 'look and feel' of Alertise.

Service

The Service is provided to you on an 'as is' and 'as available' basis.

We reserve the right to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, all or any part of the Service.

Fees

Our Fees are charged monthly in advance.

You will be charged at the start of the next billing cycle if you upgrade or downgrade your level of Service. There is no pro-rating of Fees when you downgrade or cancel your account between billing cycles.

Fees are exclusive of any taxes, levies and duties.

We reserve the right to change the Fees by notice to you at least one month in advance.

Cancellation and Termination

You can cancel your account for any reason at any time by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Likewise, we reserve the right to cancel or suspend your account for any reason at any time, but before we do, we will provide you with reasonable notice depending upon the circumstances.

You will not be able to use the Service if your account is cancelled, suspended or terminated.

All your Content will be permanently deleted from the Service within one month of cancellation or termination of your account.

Limitation of Liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability which cannot be excluded or limited by the applicable law.

We do not warrant or represent that the Service will meet your requirements. We do not warrant or represent that the Service will be secure and be available.

We (including our directors, officers, and employees) shall not be liable to you for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or any other damages, arising in contract, tort, or otherwise, including without limitation, any loss of profits, revenue, savings, contracts, business, goodwill, data, information, real or anticipated, for any reason, relating to your use or inability to use the Service.

Your use of the Service is at your own risk. You can choose to use or not use the Service. Our maximum liability to you shall be value of one month of our Fees. The Fees reflect this allocation of risk.

Governing law

This agreement is governed by the laws of the State of Western Australia.

15 January, 2016

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Alertise is committed to protecting the privacy of our website users. In this policy we set how we will deal with your personal details.

Any information collected and stored, including cookies will be of the following kind:

  • Your visits and use of our website.
  • Information provided for the use of registering and/or subscribing to our website service.
  • Information provided for the business purposes, quotes, analysis etc.
  • Newsletters.

Website Visits

We may collect information about your visits to our website such as IP address, location, browser type, referral source, length of visit and number of page views. This information may be used to improve our website's usability and for marketing purposes.

Cookies are used on this website. A cookie is a text file sent by a web server to a web browser and stored in the browser. The file is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page form the server. This enables the web server to identify and track the web browser.

We may send a cookie which may be stored by your browser on your computer's hard drive. The information we obtain from the cookie could be used to improve the website's usability and for marketing purposes. We may also use that information to recognise your computer when you visit our website, and to personalise our website for you.

Browsers usually will allow you to refuse cookies but this could have a negative impact on the usability of many websites.

Using Your Personal Data

Personal data submitted on this website could be used for the purposes specified in this privacy policy or in any relevant parts of the website.

In addition to the uses already identified we may use your personal information to:

  • Improve your browsing experience by personalising the website.
  • Send information (other than marketing communications) which might be of interest to you by post or email.
  • Provide other companies with statistical information about our users; however, this information will not be used to identify an individual user.

We will not provide any personal information to a third party unless you have given your permission.

Other Disclosures

In addition to disclosures already discussed we may need to disclose the following information:

  • Where a country's legal system requires us to disclose your personal information.
  • In connection with any legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings.
  • In order to establish, exercise or defend our legal rights. (including providing information to others for the purposes of fraud prevention and reducing credit risk)
  • Except as provided in this privacy policy, we will not provide your information to third parties.

International Data Transfers

Information that we collect may be stored and processed in and transferred between any of the countries in which we operate in order to enable us to use the information in accordance with this privacy policy.

If you are in the European Union, information which you provide may be transferred to countries which do not have data protection laws equivalent to those in force in the European Union. You expressly agree to such transfers.

Security of Your Personal Data

We will take reasonable precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information. Of course, data transmission over the internet is inherently insecure, and we cannot guarantee the security of data sent over the internet.

We will store all the personal information you provide on our secure servers. All electronic transactions you make to or receive from us will be encrypted.

Policy Amendments

We may occasionally update this privacy policy by posting a new version on our website. It is in your interest to check this page regularly to ensure you are comfortable with any changes made.

Third Party Websites

Our website contains links to other websites. We are not responsible for the privacy policies of any third party websites.

Cookies

Some of the services we use such as Google Analytics, Clicky Analytics and addThis set cookies to allow us to gather anonymous data about your usage of our website.

Your Rights

You may instruct us to provide you with any personal information we hold about you. Provision of such information may be subject to the payment of a fee (currently fixed at $20.00 AUS).

You can request us not to use any of your personal details; you will usually ask in advance whether you agree to our use of your personal data.

These terms and conditions, together with our privacy policy constitute the entire agreement between you and us in relation to your use of our website, and supersede all previous agreements in respect of your use of this website.

5 June, 2015

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Collaborate Seamlessly With Your Team And Make Your Plans A Reality  

Cloud-based easy access to your strategic plan, projects and KPI's.

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Get A Clear View Of Your Organisation And The World Around You

To succeed you need to know what's going on inside and outside your organisation, Alertise makes that happen.

Collaborate with ease

Working with your team is a breeze with Alertise and you can access all your projects, messages and todos from a single sign on.

Learn More

Connect the strategy to action

Strategic plans succeed when they're connected to actions. Alertise makes that connection and turns your plan into reality.

Learn More

Watch your organisation grow

With Alertise the numbers that matter are only ever a click away. All your KPIs in one place, with you in control.

Learn More

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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