Strategies

Strategies are careful plans or methods that keep focus on the goals and achieve the expected outcome. Strategies need to be defined and followed to help maintain the focus, effectiveness and efficiencies of the organization.

A strategy should be general enough to allow creative solutions yet stringent enough to achieve the expected outcome.

Developing strategies are part of devising or employing plans or stratagems toward a goal.

Strategies, plans, goals and taskings all fit together like a puzzle. With all the pieces in place, everything works like clockwork. While mechanical things are now easy to have work properly, using information to it's fullest extent is still an evolutionary business practice.

There are many means to achieve desired results but using the most efficient and effective means can be daunting and requires considerable knowledge, in a variety of professional fields, ensuring the best results.

The broader the knowledge level of those developing solutions for your strategies, the more likely you will be satisfied with the results.

 

Strategies and Solutions

Strategies are a little more complex than solutions and solutions are the means of achieving a strategy. Central to strategies is understanding who the customer is, where they are located and who they are. Without these basic fundamentals any strategy is already taking the wrong road to ineffective solutions.

While there are numerous solutions to challenges, there is not one solution that fits all situations. And not one of these solutions would be worth the time to develop if they were not built based on meeting strategic purposes.

Many develop solutions and sell them as being effective or efficient, but the best solutions are both effective and efficient. It does little good to have something that is effective if it uses too many resources or if a solution is based primarily on efficiency it may contradict the effectiveness of the solution.

And while computer technologies may have brought us many great tools, there are tried and true methods that simply are more capable of achieving the desired results effectively and efficiently.

We can help you with developing your strategies and solutions. In many cases the solutions end up involving an internet or intranet site. While other solutions have used some time honored and well tested solutions. Here are a few examples.

Case 1 –

A small business with several locations and nearly eighty employees managed their facilities and equipment inventory using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. With over five thousand line items, maintaining an accurate accountability was a full time job. Every time the home office verified inventories it would take days and valuable manpower to validate the inventory.

Solution

We developed a database that provided consistent nomenclatures, simplified tracking and sorting of the data. The final result made it easier for site managers to add or update records and provided the facilities manger with near real time inventory information.

The database provided standardized reports that everyone could understand, were consistent, and allowed for the exporting of information into summary documents and detailed reports that could be used in a variety of applications.

Case 2 –

A small organization started holding events and rented their spaces for their own events. Equipment management, setup up for each event, venue reservations and real time availability of individual reservations were all major concerns.

Using traditional methods were manpower intensive and locked reusable information into proprietary software requiring information to be duplicated in several software programs.

On occasions scheduling conflicts required a great amount of communications to make sure everything was taken care of for each event.

Even then some individuals complained that they had made reservations when the controlling organization didn't’t have any records. The individuals thought that it was the main facilities fault instead of the organization holding the event, contributing to a less than desirable reputation.

Solution –

We developed the strategy for combing three technologies to streamline and improve their processes. The solution revolved around an event management software program using Microsoft Visio and a database. These programs coupled with internet access for customers, planners, and tentative attendees made events easy to manage, provided real time status to the planners and mangers, and allowed the tentative attendees to make their reservations including selecting seats or tables.

Facilities, equipment and furniture were drawn in Microsoft Visio. The Visio files were linked with a database and all information was made available over the internet.
Using dynamic web pages enabled schedulers to see what venues were available and when.

Case 3

A new business sought to expand their customer base and believed a web site was the solution. They needed a means to communicate with their prospective costumers.

The business provides a unique service to a targeted audience and had a list of supporters. The target audience was not economically reachable by traditional means and after educating the new business owner that a web site was not the sole solution he sought; we developed several strategies on building his business.

Solution –

The solution was to create a web presence so that his services could be found by anyone seeking such services, the creation of a brochure, posters, and strategies for contacting possible new clients.

Streamlining and targeting his messages were both necessary for the development of the web site and creation of the brochure.

Using his current list of past clients we set out strategies for him to communicate with past customers, contact new potential clients, and ask for referrals. Feedback and request from the web site started to provide new possible customers to contact.

The brochure provides a quick and concise summary about his services and how to contact him. Not only are the brochures mailed to possible customers but are also handed out to individuals at seminars he conducts.

The posters are posted in the venue where he will speak helping more people to find out about his speaking engagement and provides the internet address for the web site.

Understanding that not all could attend one of his seminars, two CDs were created containing the information he provides. One is a workbook that can stand on its own or be used in conjunction with the video CD.

Case 4

An organization with nearly 70 employees providing education, counseling and referral services in several different locations knew they needed to improve their reporting processes to the main office and their contracting representative. Their contract requires a large amount of information to be collected, maintained and forwarded to the contracting organization.

The organization used various methods for collecting data on the users of their services. Data was collected by nearly a dozen standardized forms each of which asked for some of the same information from form to form.  Additionally they used a mix of sign-in list, check-list and matrixes at individual work stations all of which varied from site to site.

Solution –

Develop the strategies and plans for a database management system, integrate the database into a web based intranet site.

The database eliminated the redundancy of information having to be entered and significantly eliminated mistakes in the process. Once reusable information was entered, it only had be called up for reuse and reduced the dozen forms to a few application forms.

Established reports could be produced in a matter of minutes compared to the manual compilation of information that was taking place before, while significantly improving the reliability of the information.