MAJOR RETAILER EXAMPLES
ENTERPRISE CHALLENGE: Client shifted from bottom up to top down strategy execution. This required significantly increased business and IT alignment, financial / investment planning tied to targeted outcomes, while at the same time building trust and transparency between business and IT.
POS UPDATE CHALLENGE. Choosing a new POS system for a large retailer is more than a business and technology decisionIt defines your brand, it can infuriate your staff, it creates up-sale & cross sale opportunities. It can impress if it is tightly integrated with information assets. It is a decision with conflicting messages to what is relatively most important..
SOLUTION: S2E provided the objective method to capture all targeted outcomes, integrate and prioritize them in an objective way that provided the foundation for a thoughtful decision.
STORE MANAGER CHALLENGE: The international retailer’s leadership fiefdoms couldn’t agree why Store Managers had low efficiency, poor customer service surveys and high staff turn-over.
SOLUTION: S2E was used to create an enterprise view absent of organization, of the targeted outcomes required to significantly improve store manager effectiveness. Competing voices were heard, and a common solution / roadmap created, competing outcomes prioritized, enabling technologies adopted.
FOCUSED VIEW CHALLENGE: The SVP of Marketing, reviewing the S2E model for the company chose one outcome of 400 and said “tell me about this one”, with concern on his face.
SOLUTION: The S2E model provided Line of Sight between the Outcomes the Executive cared about down to the initiatives necessary to achieve it. Along the path, he saw an outcome led by a leader, whose judgement to him often seemed too optimistic. Visualization created for this executive the equivalent of a ‘Flashing Red Light’.
HEALTHCARE & GOVERNMENT EXAMPLES
GOVERNMENT/ NEGOTIATION CHALLENGE: A large government was negotiating ownership and management of most resources and oversight from federal, back to them. It was effectively a multi-billion dollar negotiation. The diversity of vocal / powerful stakeholders made it extremely complex and sensitive. It was challenge played out in the headlines and TV.
SOLUTION: S2E created a shared roadmap to both achieve their goals and manage an extremely diverse set of not always cooperative public stakeholders and lobbyists.
NATIONAL HEALTHCARE PROVIDER CHALLENGE: The business unit with control over IT Assets desired to increase internal customer satisfaction with and service levels. They wanted to increase their ability to service their customer’s customers while reducing costs.
SOLUTION: S2E was used to capture the team’s individual ideas for how to provide their services as a set of common outcomes. The team pointed at improved moral and the best team meetings they’d had after S2E facilitated workshops. They found a common vision and respect for independent views.
NATIONAL HEALTHCARE PROVIDER CHALLENGE 2: Arrival of new IT leadership opened the opportunity for more bold initiatives. It was a large complex and politically risky for a senior leader to present the bold move that would cross almost all organizational boundaries.
SOLUTION: S2E pulled all the threads together in a non organizational outcomes construct. The Storyline feature helped change a technology / business opportunity, into a well crafted story, that could be shared at various levels of detail. The management team found a new way to reach leaders.
UTILITIES & ENERGY EXAMPLES
ENERGY FIRM – OIL & GAS CHALLENGE: Client had to increase refinery performance by 25% within 5 year or face an uncertain future. Current strategy execution methods were not sufficient to create that level of improvement with confidence.
SOLUTION: Using S2E the client’s executive approved the S2E roadmap and required major capital improvement investments . This major facility is highly successful and thousands of workers kept their jobs
H2 CONSORTIUM / DEPT OF ENERGY CHALLENGE: The Energy industry wanted to set up the national infrastructure for a future of Hydrogen vehicles. It would require long term complex collaboration and research breakthroughs in hydrogen production and local availability. The consortium was failing to generate a single plan and needed collaboration.
SOLUTION: S2E was called to rescue a failing collaboration. A common model of dependent outcomes with individual outcomes and accountabilities created their multi-year roadmap.
TECH INNOVATOR – KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT (Kx) CHALLENGE: The Research Dept. created solutions to problems that might not be used for a decade or more. They knew that context about decisions placed in Kx would loose context over time. They needed Kx innovations.
SOLUTION: S2E was used to capture the complexity of research, information assets, confidentiality, info assets and created the case and roadmap for a new Kx solution.
MAJOR UTILITY – MAP THE FUTURE CHALLENGE: The client had vision for the future to address significant legacy challenges, costs, and uncertainties within its infrastructure. The complexity integrating innovation investments with legacy and compliance requirements was overwhelming. Safety & environment concerns were top of mind.
SOLUTION: The chief architect saw the value of S2E to bring structure and transparency and to show the dependencies and priorities of all the moving pieces.
TRAVEL & TRANSPORTATION EXAMPLES
PORT “BET THE BUSINESS” CHALLENGE: Competing Ports using Technology, were taking market share. The client had to increase productivity significantly and gain labor support to use automation.
SOLUTION: Using S2E’s methods, the client was able to craft a new operations model that addressed all the organization and labor complexities. It modeled a way to increase the number of ‘lifts per hour’ to be able gain needed agreements and regain its competitive performance.
TRANSPORTATION – PAYROLL CHALLENGE: The Client had Labor Payrolls that often failed to be accurate or timely. This problem was known to peers of the firm’s president.
SOLUTION: S2E’s outcomes method, very quickly identified the problem and in such a graphical form, that the President approved the solution without further investigation. Application of the most basic steps of the S2E’s method, starting simple, then progressing as needed, was all that was required.
AUTOMOTIVE – RETENTION CHALLENGE: Customer Retention was falling. As an early stage company, it was devastating to the company and especially its investors.
SOLUTION: S2E helped the companies leadership understand what was going wrong, what target outcomes were missing, or assumed to be on track. The company was low on resources and S2E showed which outcomes were relatively more important. S2E exposed which silo’s of effort leading to failure in achieving the targeted outcome.
HIGH TECH/ FINANCIAL SERVICES EXAMPLES
HIGH TECH – INCREASE SALES CHALLENGE: The Client, a leader in Business Intelligence and business performance s/w had the objective to increase sales by $1B to $3B in an extremely short period of time.
SOLUTION: S2E was used to identify how to create all the right targeted outcomes, capabilities, accountabilities, their relative importance, and much more. S2E exposed many shared accountabilities, insufficient efforts. The increase in sales had a major impact on an acquisition
FINANCIAL SERVICES – IMPROVE SLA CHALLENGE: This highly recognized global credit and payments firm, relies on a global network for transactions. A Consulting firms’ business case for investments to increase required Network Availability Services levels was too complex to understand and so no investments were committed.
SOLUTION: S2E quickly showed the target outcomes, dependencies and needed investments. The results were understood from business impact to exceptionally complex technology investments. It lead to investment agreement.
NETWORK PRODUCT PRODUCER – MORE FROM LESS CHALLENGE: The engineering department was challenged year over year to produce more with less. Architecture constraints put engineering leaders in what seemed a no win position. Multiple engineering executives had left in frustration.
SOLUTION: S2E demonstrated that identifying higher level outcomes, and those, deemed ‘outside of our control’ actually empowered them to understand and share their issues in an Enterprise context, therefore enlisting others in the solution.
START-UP – OPPORTUNITIES CHALLENGE: Start-ups have many opportunities and not enough resources. It’s easy to loose track of what is most important, when everything is new and much is at stake.
SOLUTION: S2E helped this start up, its team and potential investors capture and structure all the competing target outcomes, initiatives into their dependencies, relative importance, ownership, status and risk. It provided transparency to all, and a common language to discuss opportunities, barriers and progress.