Technology for Strategy Management

The process for strategy management has not changed much in recent decades. Typically, organizations do some sort of situation assessment, followed by a step to develop and select options, followed by a deployment or implementation phase, and finally monitoring.

These steps are fundamentally the same for all organizations that undertake a deliberate strategy management process, whether large or small, public, private or nonprofit, new or well established. However, organizations themselves and how people in them work have changed dramatically in the past few years due to rapid technology shifts and the associated changes in work-styles.

As a result, software tools to enable the strategy management process have been maturing as cloud-based computing and collaboration solutions become increasingly available as an alternative to traditional approaches. These past approaches, while still relevant for smaller and less dynamic organizations, rely on manual and sporadic activities that are inadequate for addressing the challenges facing most modern organizations.

Leaders of the strategy management process need to be aware of the emergence of these new tools and how they could impact their own process. Those who understand their organization’s strategic management capabilities and adopt the best available technology-enabled alternatives will improve performance in strategy implementation and gain advantages over laggards who don’t.