Changing an organization doesn't happen overnight, or in the same way throughout the organization. ARM is designed so that it can be rolled out with the capabilities your organization needs and your people can handle. The system can evolve as fast as your organization requires.
YOU MANAGE MANY DIFFERENT PLAYERS AND AGENDAS
ARM helps you manage different types of organizational units including departments, divisions, branches, project teams and third parties. The number of units and their reporting relationships can be configured by you to reflect organizational changes and mergers. It also supports the tracking of versions of the corporate structure.
Each organizational unit has its assigned responsibilities in planning, decision making, resource allocation, resource provision, actions, budgeting, and performance etc. ARM allows you to assign these responsibilities to the units and provide them with the software support for planning, monitoring and tracking their accountabilities.
DETERMINE, MONITOR AND MANAGE FOR THE RESULTS YOU WANT
Alacrity Results Management helps you manage performance measures in both financial and non-financial areas. You can develop customer, internal process and learning measures. These measures can relate to one another, either through clearly defined equations or stated as hypotheses which can be verified and refined.
The basket of performance measures is developed and adopted in the planning process by individual units. You can choose to consolidate the quantifiable measures to obtain an organizational number. Qualitative measures can also be managed. You will be able to monitor these measures to determine your strategic and operational successes.
ARM also provides a way to manage these measures. There are approval processes, reporting, analyses and alerts which help you to adjust your course of action. The software provides a tangible way to communicate your objectives to other managers and to help them align their plans and actions to the corporate goals.
In other words, Alacrity Results Management will help you implement your strategies using the principle of the Balanced Scorecard. It will help you make your strategies operational and manageable.
TRACK DECISIONS EASILY
The decisions that managers make fall into the areas of Where do we want to be (objectives)? How do we get here (strategies/tactics)? What are the steps (action plan)? and What are the financial and other performance consequences (operating/financial plans or budgets)? Whether it is business, marketing, sales, IT, or project planning, a similar process of situation analysis and decision making applies.
With ARM you can create a planning, accountability and assessment process for the decisions your organization needs to improve. You can define the analyses and topics that need to be addressed as well as the process of analysis. You can address topics from external factors, customer analysis, key accounts, competitive forces, past sales, marketing and financial results, to operational information. It is also possible to attach an information mart (or database) to the planning and priority setting process so that a common set of data is provided to support the decision making process. These analyses are usually done in the Assessment component.
Based on the Assessment, users develop objectives and strategies and link their decisions to those of others in the organization. This is done in the Direction component. Strategies support objectives and may also drive or support other strategies. This linkage of objectives and strategies can be applied to a variety of processes such as IT, operations, sales, marketing, financial, and project planning.
Strategies lead to action steps or projects. The Actions and Resources component helps you define action/project time frame, responsibilities, resource requirements and budgets.
Actions lead to performance and financial consequences either at the revenue or the expense side. Additional non-financial measures such as increase in competencies, market share, operational quality or performance measures can be tracked to identify implementation success. These are all identified in Results Management which addresses the Financial or Operating Plan. You can compare top-down and bottom-up projections, consolidate results, compare plan versus actual, review variance comments, and compare different versions of plans.
Publishing and approval processes are built into the software. The process can be simple or expanded to accommodate more complex gate point systems to decide if projects should proceed.
IMPROVE PROJECT RESOURCE ALLOCATION
Many business improvement initiatives today are addressed through multi-functional team projects. A common challenge is too many projects and not enough resources. ARM helps you with this problem in two ways.
Alacrity Results Management can be used to develop and evaluate project concepts to make sure they fit your corporate objectives and strategies before you invest heavily in the project. A gating process can be used for selection using evaluation criteria such as strategic direction, resource availability, quality of execution and financial returns. This process will help you demonstrate the value of the project, be it externally (e.g. new products) or internally (e.g. IT) focused. This helps you manage and track the flow of projects accepted into the "pipeline".
ARM helps you allocate limited resources to the important projects in a timely manner. It tracks resources from different business units allocated to the portfolio of projects. ARM uses the concept of contracts to indicate the commitment between resource providers and resource requesters to track resource usage. Commitments between units or third parties (suppliers, contractors and customers) can also include transfer pricing on contracts, or actual contracts with outside parties. Resource classifications can be as simple or as complex as your organization requires. They can have many different attributes such as competencies or skills, location, technology, etc. Projection of resource requirements (e.g. by skills and time frame) can also be developed to anticipate training or hiring needs.
YOU MANAGE BETTER WHEN RESULTS, DECISIONS, RESOURCES AND PLAYERS ARE CLEARLY LINKED
In ARM, objectives, strategies, actions, financial results and other performance measures are linked in a cascading manner. Strategies support objectives; actions support strategies; performance measures are the results of actions. These elements can also be linked vertically and horizontally across units. As a result, management always has a clear idea of how performance measures are driven by the decisions and actions of the organization. Each unit knows how it can contribute to the success of the organization. The implementation of business strategy is not only clearly defined but can also be easily monitored, managed and improved.
The bi-directional linkages in the ARM system are achievable only with object-oriented technology. This capability gives managers a powerful tool to look at decisions from multiple perspectives. For example, management can review the actions planned to support a corporate strategy, can identify the dollars related to a corporate initiative, can determine how units are supporting corporate objectives, etc. Resources in the business can be reviewed in many ways, e.g. by unit, by status, by commitments made and by state of fulfillment.
ARM’S TECHNOLOGY ALIGNS WITH YOUR NEEDS
Organizations who use ARM recognize the importance of meeting the challenges of their changing environment. They want management systems which keep pace with their improvement in knowledge, processes and organization structure. They want the flexibility to adopt the management system at their pace in different parts of the organization and with the ability to address issues pertinent to those functional units or teams. However, they also want a consistent approach in process and technology.
Based on two decades of consulting and software experience, Alacrity Results Management is developed based on the concept of component-ware to meet the demands of our customers. We provide a series of software components that we wire together to give you a custom system for off-the-shelf prices. Components are the most effective approach to providing a robust and flexible framework that can change as fast as your business changes. Most software is inflexible and has not been designed to anticipate rapid evolution of your needs. The design of ARM assumes that your requirements are continually changing and that reducing the total life cycle cost of your software is a critical issue.
There are four key components which are used in combination to configure the management system you need. They are:
- Results
- Actions and Resources
- Direction
- Assessment
A MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR THE RESULTS YOU WANT
Alacrity Results Management can support management practices in a variety of areas. It can be used by individual departments, sales branches and teams, or implemented corporate wide. The following are some examples of usage.
How Alacrity Results Management Helps You Achieve the Results You Want
Improved Financial Results
Enable the tracing of "whys" from financial results to customer, process and learning performance measures
Improve resource allocation for and monitoring of important business initiatives and projects
Reduce planning effort and improve results orientation
Success in Strategic Implementation
Monitor financial, customer, process and learning measures
Measures are incorporated in the planning system and linked to strategies and objectives
Measures can also be tracked in projects and action plans and any gating processes
Linkage of objectives to strategies within and between units
Process and methodology for rapid plan development focusing on key issues
Linkage of analysis to business plans to action plan to budgets
Getting Value from IT
Process to help select projects based on strategic, financial, resource availability and other criteria
Linkage of IT results to Balanced Scorecard
Portfolio analysis of IT projects
High level management oriented information for monitoring projects
Resource management to ensure effectiveness
More Marketing Oriented
Marketing oriented analysis and performance measures can be included in the planning process for any unit
Market and customer information can be easily incorporated into analysis
Key Account Management
Bottom-up results planning and budgeting can be based on key customer accounts
Top-down and bottom-up forecasting comparison
Results planning distributed to the level of unit you want
Results easily consolidated
Analysis can be incorporated as part of the planning process
Reduced Planning Time, Increased Effectiveness
Focused methodology for individual planning unit needs
Provides knowledge, information and framework to make planning easy and productive
Linkage of analysis to objectives to strategies to actions to budget ensures coherent thinking
Easy tracing of plan versus actual
Results oriented where desired results can include financial, customer, process and learning measures.
Improved Project Results With Limited Resources
Assistance in selecting projects with evaluation rating and gating process. Selection can be based on a number of factors from strategic fit, financial returns to resource availability and risks
Resource commitments between users and providing units are made explicit through "contracts". Transfer pricing can be incorporated if needed
Resource match based on criteria such as skills, experience, productivity, career goal and availability
Projection of resource requirements by criteria
Improved Time to Market and Hit Rate
Gating process for project selection to reduce risks and improve knowledge up-front
Process to improve definition early and increase marketing orientation
Multi-functional team process for better and coordinated decision making
ALACRITY RESULTS MANAGEMENT — YOUR NEW RIGHT ARM
Being "results-oriented" is not sufficient for breakthrough performance. The prerequisite for getting what you want is to determine where you want to go and the path for getting there. In other words, only managers who plan, can get the results they need. Alacrity Results Management helps managers to plan effectively. It also helps you with the other ingredients needed to achieve breakthrough performance — learning and improvement. It helps you with timely information for adjusting your course of action. It also helps you understand why you succeed or fail and helps you adjust your hypothesis for a new round of decisions and actions. ARM supports the practice of PLAN-DO-IMPROVE which is fundamental to getting the results you want.
ASSESSING YOUR NEEDS AND GETTING STARTED
Alacrity Inc. is a full-service solution provider. We provide complete management and technology needs analysis and implementation service. Alacrity Results Management can be implemented in pieces and provides a robust and flexible solution.
Although the product is configured to your needs, you do not need to develop your processes and specifications from ground zero. Our consulting and systems experience enables us to have prototype processes and systems which you can modify and develop into specifications appropriate for your organization. We also have extensive experience with the process of introducing new software supported management systems into organizations and can help you develop introductory plans and migration paths. We can help you plan and introduce your management system.
ALACRITY RESULTS MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
ARM is a client-server, multi-platform, object-oriented component application to help managers focus on results, manage key decision making, implement successfully, and allocate resources. Twelve years of software development experience have gone into ARM. The system’s architecture is modular and designed to anticipate your changing needs. It can scale to manage multi-national organizations.
Alacrity Inc. provides a full range of services to support the software, including strategic facilitation, needs analysis, programming, implementation, user training, and out-sourced support.
Key capabilities of the Alacrity Results Management include the following:
Balanced Scorecard approach to strategic implementation that allows linkage of decisions to actions to outcome. Outcomes in the financial, customer, process and learning areas can be linked. Hypotheses can be stated, monitored and verified.
Cascading objectives, strategies, actions and performance measures. The decisions are linked to results. The decisions and results between units can also be linked and consolidated if appropriate.
Flexible step by step planning process that can be configured to suit strategic, business, marketing, sales, information technology, project and other planning processes.
Project monitoring at management level, focusing upon key milestone achievements and overall resource allocation issues. More detailed project planning is normally handled with project management packages. Projects are linked with strategies allowing management to review progress of strategic implementation.
Resource management to support project implementation. Resource characteristics can include knowledge, experience, skills, equipment constraints or time constraints. You can assign resources and project future requirements.
Help facilities to support users on business issues as well as software usage. Additional help in the form of useful information can be addressed by the process, including optional links to existing or new databases, e.g. marketing data warehouses, plan repositories, market research, performance information and other unit plans.
Superb navigation tools for tracking relationships in an organization and revealing how strategies are supported by actions, how actions affect resource constraints, how actions lead to performance. Relationships can be tracked in any direction e.g. from performance to actions to local level strategies to high level strategies.
Approval process, versioning, audit and log trails. Ability to handle matrixed, project oriented, temporary, merging, virtual or external organizations. Links to G/Ls and other database sources. Exports to spreadsheet.
Version 5 of Alacrity Results Management is available on most popular operating systems, including the Windows family, OS/2, Macintosh and UNIX. ARM is usually run as a client-server application on Windows NT or HP, IBM or Sun UNIX servers.
As component-ware, ARM can be extended easily and quickly to include new features or linked with existing information sources and systems.
If you would like to find out how you can benefit from the state of the art in results management, planning, resource allocation, budgeting, project tracking and performance or accountability tracking, please contact:
Alistair Davidson, Chairman, Mary Chung, President, or Harvey Gellman, Executive Vice-President, at:
Alacrity Inc.
50 Wellington Street East, Suite 301, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5E 1C8
Phone: +1-416-362-5099. Fax: +1-416-362-0133.
E-mail: alacrity@alacrity.com Web sites: www.alacrity.com and www.tigerpearls.com
Alacrity and horse logo is a registered trademark and Alacrity Results Management is a trademark of Alacrity Inc. in Canada and the US and a trademark in other jurisdictions. Copyright Alacrity Inc. 1996-7. All rights reserved.
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