IAN VANSTONE
VP Market Insights/Futures
In our last blog, we let members of the C-Suite know that your company strategy and some of your personal ambitions are being killed by your inability to integrate systems effectively.
In this blog, we’ll highlight the link between a successful strategy and your ability to integrate – and show how integration can be a major hindrance or a major enabler of strategic execution.
When embarking on a new organisational strategy, things typically start well. You set a clear vision. You define great objectives and great measures and are ready to track progress. You engage the key roles and communicate the strategy clearly to the whole organisation and continue to communicate it to ensure it lands and remains relevant with your people.
Where things tend to go wrong is in strategy execution. So, “What’s integration got to do with strategy execution?” you say. Well, let’s look at that step by step.
- Strategy execution requires technology change. Strategic change now has a significant technology component. Often, strategic technology changes are explicit in the strategy itself. Where technology changes are not explicit in the strategy, technology is still an implicit enabler of your organisation and its strategy.
- Technology change requires integration. Organisations now understand that all modern-day technology must be integrated. For example, a single mobile app for a large organisation typically relies on integrating tens to hundreds (yes, hundreds!) of platforms, systems, databases, etc. So, if you are making technology changes, you are also making integration changes. And strategic technology change typically involves increasing both the volume and value of integrations.
- Poor integration leads to failure. Integration is so fundamental to technology change that if your organisation lacks the ability to integrate effectively at speed and scale, your organisation will experience failed projects and/or unmet product objectives. Such failures tie a huge anchor to strategic execution and therefore result in strategic failure.
By the time your strategy progress reviews detect integration issues, it may be too late to save your strategy. Poorly integrated systems also risk leaving you with a technology architecture that negatively impacts current and future customer experiences, business initiatives, and technology changes.
Next in this blog series, we’ll discuss:
- What’s causing your strategy failure, by looking at root cause integration issues so that you understand where things are going wrong, right now.
- The impacts of strategic failure, noting how your customers, your staff, your reputation, and your bottom line are feeling the pain.
- How to get your integration and your strategy back on track by fixing root causes and turning integration into a strategic enabler.
If you suspect your organisation’s integration capability is not acting as an enabler of your strategy, just ask one of your team to reach out. We’re ready to help.