CRS Management Consulting

Our strategy consulting services

Strategy consulting

Our strategy consulting services

Read about our strategy workshops, strategic planning service offering, Balanced Scorecard service offering, and focussed strategy service offerings

Strategy workshops

"Powerful leadership alignment around a roadmap for the future."

Our strategy workshops workshops revolve around leadership alignment, strategic clarity, and how to translate strategy into operational terms.

We prefer to plan and structure our strategy workshops from an informed position enabled by a pre-assessment of the company and its environment.

This ensures that we as facilitators understand the core issues at hand and enable us to select the most appropriate tools and methodologies to be used in the workshop.

Our approach is to use discussion and debate to populate strategic planning models, which provides insight, answers and options.

Our workshops are outcome-driven, ending with decisions and next steps for strategy implementation.

For more information, see strategy workshops.

Strategic planning service offering

Our main strategy consulting service offering is strategic planning:

Corporate strategy, dealing with the role of the head office, choices about the range and resource allocation in the portfolio of business units, and the vision of the group as whole.

Business unit strategy, dealing with the vision, mission and competitive strategy of each.

Functional strategy in support of business unit strategy - manufacturing strategy, marketing strategy, human resources strategy, etc.

To determine strategy, we firstly help clients develop a thorough understanding of where they are and what they are facing in terms of internal strengths and weaknesses, and environmental threats and opportunities.

Secondly, we help clients obtain clarity about where and what they wish to be in terms of a articulated and clearly understood concept of the desired future of their organisations.

In doing so, we place a high emphasis on viable and defensible competitive strategy, and a feasible customer value proposition.

Lastly, we help clients to determine how to get there by translating the envisioned future into actionable and measurable operational terms.

We not only help clients to formulate strategy, but also to implement strategy through project management and utilising the Balanced Scorecard.

Balanced Scorecard service offering

"Use the Balanced Scorecard to map, implement and monitor strategy execution."

We use the Balanced Scorecard as an integral part of our strategic planning service offering.

However, many clients already have a well-developed and defined strategy, and merely require the Balanced Scorecard as a strategy mapping en strategy implementation methodology.

Our Balanced Scorecard service offering achieves just that.

We translate vision, mission and positioning into the strategic objectives, measures, targets and initiatives of the Balanced Scorecard.

We cascade the Balanced Scorecard through all levels in all the departments of the organisation.

We ensure that the client's Information Technology system timeously populate the Balanced Scorecard results.

We set up attractive and clear visual displays of Balanced Scorecard graphs and timelines in every organisational unit.

We implement a structured performance review process in every organisational unit around the visually displayed Balanced Scorecard targets and actual results.

Focussed strategy service offerings

We offer tailor-made strategy consulting focusing on specific business issues. These include:

Growth strategy.
Turnaround strategy.
Business transformation strategy.
Strategic repositioning strategy.
Reorganisation strategy.
New technology introduction strategy.
Innovation strategy.
Revenue enhancement strategy.
Cost reduction strategy.

Who should talk to us about strategy consulting?

"Is your company's strategy not working as desired?"

We found that the reasons for clients being unhappy with the results they get from their strategic planning are related to one or more of the following shortcomings:

Lofty vision and mission statements on office walls, but nobody knowing what it really means and how to execute it.

Strategy devised as a once a year workshop rather than a continual process,

Lack of buy-in and alignment from the leadership team.

The organisation not part of strategy formulation and implementation, with strategy confined to the board room and leadership team.

No envisaged future.

The mission not underpinned by market segmentation and targeting based on market attractiveness and competitive strength.

The mission not underpinned by a competitive strategy to position the company for competitive advantage.

Strategy not translated into operational terms - no goals, objectives, measures, targets and initiatives.

Strategy translated into operational terms but not balanced in terms of financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth - i.e. no Balanced Scorecard.

"Not getting results with your Balanced Scorecard?"

We also found that many clients tried to use the Balanced Scorecard but without results:

Using a Balanced Scorecard, but only for the organisational as whole only - not cascaded down all levels of the organisation and into every organisational unit.

Using a Balanced Scorecard, but objectives not linked in terms of a strategy map.

Using a Balanced Scorecard, but the Customer Perspective does not contain measures for customer satisfaction on the company's value proposition

Using a Balanced Scorecard, but the Learning and Growth Perspective not containing sections for human capital, information capital and organisational capital.

Using a Balanced Scorecard, but performance against actual is not properly collected, captured, processed, disseminated and displayed.

Using a Balanced Scorecard, but performance is not properly and regularly reviewed by organisational units.

If you suffer from any of the above strategic planning problems, contact CRS for a discussion about how our strategy consulting services can bring your company up to date with state of the art strategic planning.

Frequently asked questions about CRS strategy consulting

Do you sell packaged strategy to your clients?

No, in the sense that we investigate each individual client's unique situation and devise strategy tailor-made for a client's needs from first principles.

Yes, in the sense that in order to decrease time spent and cost to clients, our strategy consulting employs strategic tools, methodologies and rigorous processes employed many times before.

Do you help clients implement strategy?

Yes, that is why our strategy consulting helps clients to formulate strategy in implementation-friendly format.

To this end we use the Balanced Scorecard to operationalise strategy, and help clients how to best manage the performance review process.

What is your approach to strategy?

We believe that strategy rests on three pillars:

Knowing where you are and what you are facing

Understanding where you are now and what you are facing in the market-place involves a structured internal assessment and an assessment of the competitive environment.

Knowing where and what you wish to be

The envisaged future should be stated in terms of the company's vision and mission.

This should be underpinned by segmentation and targeting of market segments, positioning for competitive advantage, a customer value proposition, and gap analysis to decide between toning down on expectations and investment to increase competitiveness.

Knowing how to get there

For strategy to work, it must be translated into operational terms.

The Balanced Scorecard is presently the best way to translate strategy into objectives, measures, initiatives and targets, and to provide a mechanism for strategy implementation.

We believe in Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard as the best methodology to map, implement and track strategy.

It balances not only across different perspectives (financial, customer, internal, and learning and growth), but across time, with leading indicators and performance drivers vs. lagging indicators and outcome measures.

The Balanced Scorecard now also integrates Treacy & Wiersema's customer value proposition and Kim & Mauborgne's value innovation in the Customer Perspective.