Enterprise Performance Management Done Right: An Operating System for Your Organization

Chapter 8

Strategy: Aligned to the Right Outcomes

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

—Winston Churchill

So far we've covered how the management operating system helps validate organizational strategy by testing the objectives through a series of financial and operational what-if models (Chapter 5), which are fed by facts uncovered from actual and variance data (Chapter 4). More often than not, that turns out to be a “snapshot” or health-check type of exercise, done once during the corporate strategic planning cycle, or done quarterly to true-up the objectives. However, EPM helps make this strategy alignment an ongoing process. It can help organizations be more flexible and responsive in strategy setting, strategy execution, and the overall business model. This chapter will explore the strategy components of the management operating system and exactly how EPM helps align the entire organization to the “right” outcomes.

The Language of Strategy

It's useful to take a minute and differentiate some of the components that make up a company strategy:

• Mission. The purpose of the organization
• Vision. An aspirational, conceptual future state of the organization
• Values. Overall organizational priorities that are aligned with the mission and vision
• Goals. Measurable end results that support the mission and vision and are compatible with the values. Goals are usually longer term, and have a specific time-frame, for example “three to five years.”