SAP Strategy Management started life as a tool for strategically managing key processes, such as:
- Establishing the myriad tasks required to document first
- Aligning an organization around a strategy
- Ensuring initiatives are in place and properly resourced
- Achieving performance targets associated with objectives
- Overseeing and managing progress on initiatives
While the above sounds fairly simple, it’s a lot harder in practice without the right tools. SAP Strategy Management, certified by Kaplan and Norton for enabling the balanced scorecard methodology, helps you do all this and much more:
For example, collaboration, the ability to add and respond to comments associated with an objective, KPI, or initiative, allows you to build an easily accessible commentary on an issue requiring discussion. Take a hi-tech manufacturer that’s having issues with a supplier – this might appear as a dark-red (bad performance) KPI on product warranty returns. With SAP Strategy Management, you can drill into the KPI details to identify the root cause, such as some suppliers shipping a lot of unreliable components. Comments allow you to discuss the issue within the direct context of the KPI. The ability to capture this vital analysis and access it with a single click from within the related KPI is powerful stuff – and not your typical business intelligence (BI) feature.
More than Meets the Eye
If you ignore the name and just look at the product capabilities, there are plenty of other really compelling use cases for SAP Strategy Management beyond the standard “manage corporate strategy message”. One that I’m particularly keen on is post-merger integration projects – all the activities and work streams necessary to integrate an acquisition once it’s approved.
About 40 percent of companies regularly conduct merger-and-acquisition activities, which involve a variety of moving parts:
- Departments from both companies, including corporate finance, IT, HR, lines of business, and even partner organizations in some cases
- Business objectives and KPIs
- Multiple work streams
- Collaboration and proactive handling of issues (think alerts) and sharing documents
- Regular progress reports
Once the acquisition is done, you then need to compare performance (did the acquisition live up to expectations) – this is handled by the side-by-side scorecard comparison view in SAP Strategy Management. You also have to manage the activities of the acquired company, which can easily be inserted into your overall organization using SAP Strategy Management contexts.
Frankly, it’s hard to think of a better application for this use case and many others like it.
Post Merger Integration: I’m Sorry, What Software Did You Say I Could Use?,
RSS Feed
July 8th, 2012 at 5:49 pm
I agree with Malcolm. Many of the organizations try to use Balance Score Card – but it is done uniquely by each business function. Few packages give the roll-up capabilities for the entire company like SAP’s Strategy Management.
Also SAP Strategy Management is very helpful in M&A related activities. During pre-merger period, lot of work would be done by the multiple teams of both companies, and SAP Strategy Management can help the teams to organize their work and ensure they are all working towards common set of strategies during the merger process. Thanks.