The Strategy Gap: Leveraging Technology to Execute Winning Strategies [Hardcover]

Michael Coveney (Author), Brian Hartlen (Author), Dennis Ganster (Author), Dave King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 14, 2003

With shortened business cycles, increased competition, and rapidly changing technologies, companies need to be more nimble than ever. They must narrow the gap between strategy formulation and operation execution to guarantee success. The Strategy Gap will provide a framework that senior financial managers can use to ensure that their strategies are implemented successfully and that their corporations remain competitive. Filled with informative case studies and best practices for optimum financial processes, this valuable resource will help managers leverage information technology to successfully implement corporate strategies. This book also shows managers how to eliminate surprises in poorly managed or unforeseen activities, while applying new approaches to financial management for faster and more accurate business modeling. Expert advice from those who have used these strategies clearly explains how to integrate planning, budgeting, consolidation, and reporting into one cohesive management system.

Michael Coveney is senior director of strategy management and spearheads Comshare's successful best practices consultancy, helping enterprises improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their corporate performance management processes.

Brian Hartlen is Senior Vice President of Marketing for Comshare, Incorporated, a leading provider of software that helps companies implement and execute strategy.

Dave King, PhD, is Comshare's Senior Vice President of Product Development and Chief Technology Officer.

Dennis Ganster is Chairman, President and CEO of Comshare, Inc.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a well-argued foundation for managers who are all too aware of that short-term 'noise' that often gets in the way of their...strategic goals..." (Information Age, June 2003)

"...could just go down in history alongside books like Crossing the Chasm as a technology industry must read..." (Computer Business Review, August 2003)

From the Inside Flap

Worldwide, three out of four senior executives cite strategic planning as today’s most powerful tool for improving long-term performance. Yet the global corporate landscape is littered with the remnants of organizations that crafted "breakthrough" strategic plans–complete with missions, objectives, goals, and strategies–only to tumble headlong into the gulf between the creation of that plan and its actual implementation.

But what are the root causes behind that "strategic gap" between strategy formulation and execution? Why do so many well-intentioned strategic systems fail at bridging it? And most important, what are today’s most successful companies doing to circumnavigate that gap and, in some cases, use it to their advantage?

The Strategy Gap reveals a step-by-step process for effectively executing strategy by integrating best practices for corporate performance management (CPM) techniques with state-of-the-art information technologies. Written by senior officers at Comshare, Incorporated, one of today’s foremost global providers of software for implementing and executing effective corporate strategy, this premiere resource will help you to:

• Determine whether your organization’s strategy gaps are rooted in management, process, or technology issues–and move to resolve those issues
• Move beyond transaction processing systems to incorporate key managerial processes
• Integrate applications for better across-the-board utilization of company resources
• Understand and use not only financial data but also nonfinancial performance indicators to drive improvement
• Take proactive steps to both add value and communicate that value to financial markets and shareholders

As you read these words, scores of corporate decision-makers are combining up-to-date processes, methodologies, and systems to dramatically reduce the time spent shepherding strategic initiatives from creation to implementation. Discover what they are doing, how they are doing it, and what you must do to meet and even surpass their successes, in The Strategy Gap.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (February 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471214507
• ISBN-13: 978-0471214502
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,758,387 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars When the going gets tough..., April 28, 2005

By 

Dennis Howlett (Spain) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Strategy Gap: Leveraging Technology to Execute Winning Strategies (Hardcover)

Unlike other reviewers I found this book to represent an interesting insight into where companies need to go if they are to remain competitive. Coveney's analysis is both deep and full of solid anecdotal evidence of the kind that executives should see as representing a genuine reality. The author doesn't gloss over the inherent difficulties attached to bridging the strategy gap and therein lies its weakness. While the book makes solid suggestions about the next step forward, it could have done more to recognise the real issues required to execute against its ideas. In this sense, the notion of CPM, which at one time seemed like a truly great idea, is likely to be relegated to management theory rather than practice.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Aha! So thats what went wrong!, April 14, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Strategy Gap: Leveraging Technology to Execute Winning Strategies (Hardcover)

Have you ever wondered why, after having spent yet another grueling, general manager-mandated week of offsite strategic planning meetings, nothing has changed? The Strategy Gap delivers some real "Aha! So that's what went wrong!" insights I hadn't thought of before. The authors also propose a framework to help companies improve their performance management processes and technology systems and include real-life examples from companies who are putting these suggestions to work. This book is the start of a dialog that the executive team of every Iarge company should be having today. I found this book very useful and I think others will, too.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Strategy Gap, April 8, 2003

By 

"mempz1p" (Toledo, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Strategy Gap: Leveraging Technology to Execute Winning Strategies (Hardcover)

Companies have spent decades and millions to take costs out of manufacturing and time out of transaction processing. Now, the authors of "The Strategy Gap" illustrate how companies and their CFOs can take inefficiencies out of planning, budgeting, and reporting processes, and improve corporate management effectiveness in a turbulent economy. I like this book (and the online Appendix!) because it acknowledges the complexities of improving business performance management but provides stepping stones and tools for overcoming them a little at a time.