Enterprise Decision making
James Grealis,
Senior Director, Operations
2nd Oct 2008.
Some Quotations
• “Half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision.” (Dean Hawkes)
• “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” (P. Drucker)
• In my life whenever I make a decision, I make it and forget about it. (H. Truman)
2
Symantec’s Localisation model
• Localisation is a separate group– Own Budget– Central group, covering products and services– Includes i18n & L10n under same area
• Symantec is Acquisition Driven– Frequent new candidates for I18n and L10n investment– An M&S strategy plan of engagement from day one
• Budget management is a critical part of solution– Close relations opens doors for extra funding
• Close links to the Sales Organizations– A history of delivering on promises to Sales
• Close links to the Dev Groups– Historical record of working together
3
Symantec’s usual type of requests
• Existing product offering,
– Add a new language request
– localise content (Regional Content Group)
• New Product,
– Add a new language
– Add content
• Decision to drop some existing products
– Free up some room in the budget
4
No real need to build an overly complex decision making process.
Decisions need to be made
5
What Symantec Use
• Decision is based on a “Business Case“ request
– Country office work with local Localisation Group to complete a simple Business case document.
• Outline request
• State the factors in support of the request
• Clarify what exactly is being requested
• State the costs of implementation (direct or indirect costs)
• Calculate the ROI
• Check if funds are available to support the Business case
– Execute if funds available
– Pitch for funds if required
– Park the proposal if necessary
6
Day to day reality we work with
• Usually there is a fixed budget to work from
– A sizable part which goes to covering fixed costs
• There is usually an existing product offering to maintain
• There is a roadmap of products for next 6 to 12 months
• Content is a growing factor
• There are acquisitions to add into the spending plans
At the end of the day
the size of budget to allocate to new projects can be relatively small.
7
Business Case
8
The Business Case document forms a simple but formal step to legitimise and sanity check the request. It goes through a few levels of signoff.
Measuring the ROI
• It’s important that you counter balance the model by measuring the ROI on a quarter or half year basis.
– Keep visibility on your “Poor performers”
– Maintain a record of investment/de-investment decisions
– “Keeping an eye on the shop” – good management practice
• The ROI tracking can be simple enough, but needs to be consistent over time.
– Revenue for last 4 Qtr’s
– Current best known Vendor costs
– Loading for internal costs
– ROI
9
Measuring the ROI
10
What detail you measure
is not so important, as long as it’s consistent over time.
Alternative Execution Options
• Traditional Pay and play model– You pay for Vendor & other costs and you release the language offering
– Controls over budgets & execution, Track ROI’’s
• Royalty Agreements– Symantec used these in the early days, can lead to complex
arrangements and to disputes in future times.
• Licence Agreements– You let a 3rd party pay the costs and own the product revenue, in return
for a licence fee. Or A 3rd party takes on some of the work and you sell the final product
• Community Collaboration– New, at pilot phase, limited on use, limitless on reach
11
The holistic picture
12
“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Some decision making models
• Pareto principle the idea that by doing 20% of work you can generate 80% of the advantage of doing the entire job.
• Force Field Analysis useful technique for looking at all the forces for and against a decision. It’s a specialized method of weighing pros and cons.
• Cost Benefit Analysis add up the value of the benefits of a course of action, and subtract the costs associated with it.
14
source: www.mindtools.com