THE STRATEGIC EDGE IN ACTION

The process falls into five stages and the end result is an efficient, effective process. It starts with a detailed analysis by seasoned executives and leads to the development of an internal strategic plan that serves as a roadmap for the direction of the business. It is a self-contained process that delivers practical results not typically derived from traditional methods.

1. Intake

This involves a one-to-one meeting with the CEO to enable Edge to understand the company’s existing goals, strategy, positioning and challenges. At this meeting Edge will also identify the information it will need and agree a timetable for fieldwork. Most of this data can be obtained from within the organization without burdening senior management. The time spent by your team is limited to essentials, ensuring that the Strategic Edge process does not interfere with the effective running of the company.


2. Feedback

Following the Intake meeting, Edge will produce a document summarizing the information gleaned from the CEO. As well as a factual summary, this document will contain observations and ideas for discussion, and will form the basis for a follow up meeting with the CEO to challenge assumptions, brainstorm ideas and gain a better understanding of the company’s culture and its goals.


3. Analysis

The on-site work starts with a series of one to one meetings with the company’s management team covering products, services, customers and competitors. The best place to get information about your marketplace, however, is from your customers and prospects, and a wealth of information resides in the junior levels of most organizations.

Once the first level analysis is complete, Edge then conducts a series of meetings with all employees that have contact with customers or suppliers. These people are interacting with the marketplace every day but management may not be getting feedback because few organizations are set up to collect this kind of data.


4. Information Gathering Systems

Once the employee meetings are over, Edge will use what it has learned to set up systems so that you are regularly collecting the data that resides in your organization. This includes formal mechanisms for every employee that has direct customer or prospect contact to tell you what they are hearing. These mechanisms are streamlined, easy to run and should ideally be incentivised. The information collected will be both tactical (problems encountered, comments about your company) and strategic (competitor analysis, wish lists, plans) and should be widely distributed.

This process turns your people into an effective research team that is not only doing their jobs but also reporting feedback so that you have a solid information base to help you continue to focus on strategic issues.


5. Implementation

Based upon the information received, a draft strategic plan is produced for discussion with the CEO, after which the final plan is produced. The strategic element should be reviewed monthly at a meeting of those representative of the collection sources, and actions should then be assigned to research competitors, analyze new products and put together scenarios for new business lines. Edge will attend these meetings quarterly for twelve months following the completion of the strategic plan.