1. Build your story: By the time you get around to presenting a plan, you will know the subject inside and out. The people you are sharing the plan with will likely have no context or understanding, so methodically build your story. Too many people jump around between the details, big picture, strategy, execution…It becomes a confusing mess. Tip: If you are delivering the plan as a presentation and need a slide with lots of bullet points, you might as well stop talking, everyone will read the slide and ignore you. Either give people time to read the bullets before speaking, or (sparingly) use animation to build the list and unfold … Read More
Tools + People = Alignment (And Happy Marketers)
Streamlining People, Processes and Tools in your Digital Marketing By Kyle Parsons and Greg Bear One of the most common frustrations we hear from digital marketers is the long road between the conception of a new tactic and launch. After expending effort crafting a piece of content geared toward a specific goal or campaign, they’ll have to wait weeks or even months as a piece moves through various hands, teams, departments, and approvals before it’s finally published and on the website. Publishing content on the web should be incredibly easy to streamline. The Bear Group team helps build websites–on CMS or eCommerce platforms–that make the publication and content management aspect … Read More
Getting Software Implementation Right – Sustaining
If you have had the fortitude to endure this series on software implementation, you are rewarded with a short final installment. In prior posts we covered preparing the implementation, selling the implementation, and doing the implementation work. This post covers how to move a customer out of the implementation process and into a healthy sustaining relationship with your company. Graduate If you have ever been on an implementation team you know that it is sometimes nearly impossible to get a customer to stop calling you when they need help. You did a great job making them feel comfortable, well supported and welcome as a new customer…Maybe too good of a job?? … Read More
Heroes Don’t Scale
A clear view of your business as a system provides the foundation to scale without killing your people or systems in the process. This is delivered through proven methods of system thinking and the international standard of BPMN 2.0. A clear view of the people, process, and technology that make up the system emerges to provide the clarity to obtain and maintain operational excellence. People are your most valuable resource. Supporting your people with documented processes arms them with the confidence to consistently deliver, make the right decisions and measure performance. Clear process removes the stress and inefficiency of creating process on the fly and establishes a foundation for consistent … Read More
Getting Software Implementation Right – Implement
This is the fourth post in the series about Getting Software Implementation Right. We have covered why implementation matters, preparation, and selling. This post picks up after the kick off meeting has occurred, and we are digging into the implementation work. Kickoff recap It was mentioned as a Pro Tip in the last post, but I am going bring it up again because it is SO important. If you are going onsite for the project kick off, bring your implementation team along and require the client to commit to having their team available all day for several days following the kick off meeting. Yep…require the team to be available. If … Read More
Optimize Your Product Investment
An informed organization has the power to take the right actions supporting strategy. Clear shared processes is a great way to build an informed organization. Have you ever seen a great product fail to live up to its potential because it drifted away from its true vision? Have you ever seen a good product fail in the marketplace when small adjustments could have made the difference? If the product development process is aligned with strategy, those responsible can move fast and get the product to market. Whatever the strategy, having a shared understanding of the process allows product development to move fast and meet strategic expectations. As a new product … Read More
Enabling Growth Through Business Architecture: Digitize
This post is the fourth and final in a series on enabling growth through business architecture. In the first article we covered how and why to understand your business capabilities. In the second article, I shared about the importance of establishing metrics and controls to understand and manage work. The third post was all about inexpensive and practical ways to train people involved in doing the brute force work necessary to scale, but has yet to be automated. This article caps the series off with digitization of workflows. Digitization is the automation of existing manual or paper based processes, by digitizing the information. Even the most technology oriented companies face … Read More
Enabling Growth Through Business Architecture: Training
This post is the third in a series on dealing with growth through business architecture. In the first article we covered how and why to understand your business capabilities. In the second article, I shared about the importance of establishing metrics and controls. In this post we will make a pivot to discuss how you keep supporting growth while your organization works to digitize and automate for limitless scalability. By now you have an understanding of the capabilities, major functions, and the supporting processes. Beyond that, you now also have metrics to track historical performance and projection information that indicates where the scaling issues will be most severe. These scalability … Read More
Enabling Growth Through Business Architecture: Establish Metrics & Controls
This is the second post in a series about enabling growth through business architecture and we will cover the importance of establishing metrics and controls. In the first article, we covered the understanding capabilities, so follow that link if you want to start from the beginning. The management adage “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” is critical to organizations that are at the cusp of hyper growth, and setting metrics and controls early keeps you grounded when making business decisions. Now that you have a good understanding of capabilities, functions and processes along with the performance characteristics, you have been able to establish the hot spots within the organization. … Read More
The Strategic Importance of Implementation
Sales provide the essential financial fuel to keep the business going, but after the sale is when the important and often difficult, work of implementation begins. In future posts we will cover some of the mechanics of how to get implementation right, but this post we will start with the strategic importance of why getting implementation right matters. 1. Your customers need implementation to work. The customer has made a strategic decision that the benefits of your product outweigh the benefits of the current situation plus the pain of change. They know not all of their employees will welcome the change and may have even staked their career on this … Read More