ESM+Strategy Reviews

Strategy Review Tool

Comments: The ESM + Strategy is helping us to deliver positive results to our clients in their strategy management efforts. The ESM functionalities make all the strategy design process to be dynamic and proactive.

Pros:

The ESM is pefectly aligned with the XPP methdology and makes the Strategy Review Process intuitive and easy to use for clients. Throughout all the ESM you have a very friendly environment that allows the users to get used to it easily.

Cons:

At the moment there is no dislikes with the ESM. It may improve some risk and process management features.

Leveraging ESM + Strategy for SMS Development

Comments: The value proposition of the tool consists of three things:
1. Transparency - Provides a holistic view of SMS work from which all stakeholders can glean insight and make decisions from.
2. Accountability - Instills discipline around the ownership and reporting of strategic objectives and initiatives.
3. Root-cause analysis - Gives leaders a lens into what forces drive the status of strategic objectives and corresponding metrics.

Pros:

1. Excellent support during setup and responsiveness regarding inquiries 2. Flexible enough to accommodate the nuances of our SMS. 3. Ease of navigation and intuitive layout makes software easy to learn.

Cons:

1. The Gantt chart view is not currently exportable, but I am aware that this is a function they are exploring.

New customer ESM 5.5 review

Comments: Recommend ESM to those who are resourced contrained but need and will use a web-based software to better their organizational performance effort.

Pros:

Easy to use, functionally represent the balanced scorecard methodology well. No learning required if you understand the BSC framework. Its affordable, scalable.

Cons:

Lacks a robust initiatives prioritization; and initiatives resource allocation, comparison and refinement process.

Accessible Solution for Organizing Management by Objective

Comments: Typically I use ESM to keep strategy execution efforts organized particularly when there is more than one Balanced Scorecard being used within the organization.

Pros:

ESM provides a easy-to-deploy software solution structured to support enterprise-wide Balanced Scorecard use (but could be used to support any management-by-objective framework). I like the fact that I can use the software to get a client supported with their strategy management journey quickly. (I also really appreciate that their pricing model is by scorecard and not by user, which supports organizations that understand the criticality of driving employee engagement with strategy.)

Cons:

I wish the more complex reporting features rendered perfectly-formatted exported reports.

ESM + Strategy software Ties it All Together Seamlessly

Comments: Going from just having a strategic plan binder with our 3-5 year plan in writing sitting on my desk to having an actual "living management tool" to use in moving our business forward with realistic ongoing business insight was ground breaking!! I had no idea how much more effective we all could be across our management team and through every level of employee touching our business processes. It was quickly obvious how powerful this software could be!

Pros:

The software is designed to bring all aspects of strategic plan execution, whether it is from the financial perspective, the customer perspective, the process perspective or the staff resources perspective. It ties them all together with an ongoing view of progress across initiatives that helps all management levels on our scheduled quarterly revivews. I am actually expecting this to be powerful enough to change company culture to one of tight accountability and high productivity!

Cons:

It forced us to really hone in on developing realistic goals that tie to key performance indicators that we can actually measure although we do have some manual data capture that we have to enter but that is because we need to automate some data mining in our shop. But the software allows for this manual input!

Used software for over 10 years

Comments: The ESM Team is fantastic to work with and the software continues to support our focused strategic planning and performance excellence culture.

Pros:

ESM supports HRDC with our strategic planning and review. We have Balanced Scorecards that we manage with leadership through ESM. We are able to drive our goal for a high performance culture in the organization. It is very sophisticated but also easy for us to use.

Cons:

We are very happy with the software so I'm thinking back about any issues we've have over the past 11 years of using ESM. We asked for better dashboards in 2018 and the ESM team launched new dashboard capabilities in 2019 and we love the new flexibility.

Great software to support strategy execution and tracking

Comments: It was great to work w/ the ESM team during the initial implementation where they were very effective at working with the executive leadership to capture and formulate specific details to build out the scorecard. Several workshops were held to get the team aligned and comfortable using ESM as the backdrop and means to review the progress on a monthly basis. I was also part of the admin training sessions and those were very informative and covered the necessary features to support the tool in-house.

Pros:

The software has an intuitive interface and helps ease the process of setting up the initial scorecard and strategy map as well as maintaining the information going forward. There is considerable flexibility to adapt it to your organization's vocabulary and planning model.

Cons:

The hardest part of using the software was bringing new executive leaders up to speed on it after we had our initial workshops to get it in place. Not really a software issue, but more of a training and adoption issue. The ESM team was great about helping Ultivue bridge that gap.

Integrated Solution

Comments: The software lives up to its claim of bringing strategy to life by making it accessible throughout the organisation.

Pros:

The interface is sufficiently user friendly and is therefore easily learned. The reports are comprehensive and enable effective analysis of the data which makes for more meaningful strategy and performance review.

Cons:

Really nothing to dislike. Enhanced functionality is being explored.

Aligned my Board of Directors and Employees

Comments: Aligned the Board of Directors, brought the strategic plan to life, and engaged employees with how they support the strategy.

Pros:

User friendly, shows employees how they impact the strategy, helps set the agenda for Board Meetings, staff planning sessions and facilitates decision making and budget choices.

Cons:

Challenged the status quo and forced us to rethink how we run the business. Very effective with exposing gaps in our strategy.

Top Tier Firm and Excellent Product

Comments: Empowered our team to take hold of our strategy and get the job done. Offers us the insight to make smart decisions around our investments. We were able to use the tool and methodology to avoid unnecessary expenses for projects that weren't aligned to our strategy

Pros:

deep permission capabilities around user access, rapid scorecard design, great communication tool, rooted in Kaplan Norton best practices, great customer service team

Cons:

Doesn't do P&L financial planning (but didn't really buy it for that purpose), Want to be able to display multiple strategy maps at the same time in the same scorecard (right now you have to select from a drop down list as to which gets displayed)

ESM

Comments: Its a excellent tool all-in-all. I dont understand how companies can do without this types of data and be able to run their strategy.

Pros:

Its easy for everyone to instantly work with! It drives you execution!

Cons:

It is sometimes hard to go back to power points ones you tried to work with ESM you are stuck. It is that good.

ESM Version 6 Early Adopter

Comments: I work for an organization that has been using the scorecard for over a year and we were one of the first adopters of the latest version of Executive Strategy Manager. I've implemented the Balanced Scorecard at several companies and each leadership team has slight variations on their scorecard approach. ESM 6 is flexible enough to enable these unique approaches while staying true to the core concepts of Kaplan and Norton's Balanced Scorecard methodology. ESM's alignment with the strategy map/scorecard approach, paired with dynamic reporting tools and meeting management functionality make strategy execution much easier for our company. I'd really like to see a governance calendar integrated into the application, which would go a long way toward automating some of the preparation and reporting administration. The action item section could also be expanded to better support recording minutes and activities identified during strategy review meetings. I've tried to manage the scorecard offline or through shared project pages and it multiplies the effort involved enormously. I use ESM every day and I'd recommend it to any Balanced Scorecard organization looking for a web-based application to manage their strategy execution effort.

ESM Review

Comments: I am a strategic consultant and I bring ESM software to all of my clients. I do not recommend any other BSC software.

Pros:

The software is robust and user friendly.

Cons:

There are no cons. It is a complete system.

Managing Director

Comments: Allowed multi user interface for data collection and communication components allows participation and transparency of strategy performance

Pros:

1. Ease of use 2. Features that relate clearly to strategic planning and execution 3. Flexibility to adjust to external client data bases 4. Ability to edit terms/data fields names to correspond with client terminolgy

Cons:

All features were used and found to be useful and easy to understand and use.

ESM+Strategy a great investment

Comments: As a smaller company, we didn't want to invest in a more complex application. However, we have found that ESM+Strategy covers more needs than we at first thought. It is a very smart investment.

Pros:

It is so easy to use and supports an amazingly wide range of strategy needs

Cons:

No complaints about either the software or the service.

Effective tool, simple to use

Pros:

ESM provides one stop shopping for our balanced scorecard needs for both enterprise strategic plans and cascaded plans. The software is easy to use for objective and measure owners to report results, and to share with leadership.

Cons:

It takes a bit of time for system administrators to become fluent with the software. ESM staff has been very helpful in training our team in the system.

EMS is the most intuitive and user-friendly managerial tool for the Balanced Scorecard.

Comments: I am one of two the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) representative at the University of Arkansas for Medical Science (UAMS) in which I manage 24 BSCs. When I say I manage 24 BSC, I mean that I am the administrator of 24 BSCs, I taught 24 managers the philosophy and application of the BSC, and I assisted Danny, one of your consultants, in training the usage of ESM. The navigation of EMS is so easy that I was able to learn the ins and outs of the tool within one week before having to train many managers at UAMS. I have actual had more than 15 training session over the usage of ESM, and I have plenty more to come. Today, we have more than 30 users of EMS at UAMS whom I have taught how to use the program. Although our BSC will not be operational till October 2015, we have already experienced the transformational impact of the tool.

Executive Strategy Manager - an easy way to track KPIs and monitor strategic goals

Comments: The ESM is a very useful tool for managing our organization's key performance indicator data, so that we can easily monitor how we are progressing towards our strategic goals. The ESM is a "cloud" solution, so there is no IT support required to manage the software. Once the scorecards, KPIs, and dashboards are setup, the system is very intuitive and easy to use for the individuals that enter the data and the analyses. The system does require a dedicated administrator, particularly during the initial setup and training phases, and if "structural" changes need to be made to your scorecards, KPIs and metrics. Overall, the system is easy to use and the customer service that Palladium provides is excellent. The ESM is utilized in our operations and strategy meetings on a routine basis.

software to increase the productivity of your team

Comments: We used it as a test to try if an incentive strategy worked with our collaborators, however we decided to use other free software that offer us the same.

Pros:

The best thing about this software is that it allows you to create your KPIs from the same database that can enhance decision-making in your business. It can even be filled in real time to be able to make adjustments with your team of the strategy they are carrying out. additionally they can also see their progress so it becomes challenging and inventive

Cons:

Having a systems team that can do the filling work in real time can make your job easier. in case you cannot have this, the tool becomes little useful because the information. shown will not be found on live

Great solution built by strategy experts

Comments: Pros: Eliminates PPT as source of presentation. This tool has saved a ton of paper and headaches caused from version control issues. Allows for easy linking/displaying of elements. Agency solution for cascading throughout the organization. Customizable fields is a plus. Robust charting and data grid is easy to learn since it functions just like Excel. Cons: The amount of time it takes to refresh a screen is inefficient, but part of this issue is due to our internal environment.

Eight years of Using the ESM

Comments: Pros: a defined methodology that allowed consistent reporting across the Enterprise; Ability to track performance in multiple areas of the organization; provides a discipline for staff input to their performance. Cons: The upgrade to 6.0 provided some improvements, but seemed to be more difficult to execute the charts/reports we were accustomed to producing. Needed to devise some workarounds to get the look and feel we wanted. The experience of working with the Palladium staff was excellent. Even at odd hours of the night or a weekend they usually got back to you right away if there was a question or something wasn't working correctly.

Amazing Strategy Execution Enabler

Comments: Awesome product for strategy execution & monitoring and control

Pros:

Increases the organization's chances of achieving all the benefits of Kaplan & Norton's methodology - Alignment, Communication, Accountability, Realtime strategy monitoring and control, Initiative management, Other benefits are its Ease of Use, Flexibility, Scalability, Ease of integrating to existing data sources and email systems such as outlook, BI functionality, amongst others.

Cons:

Quite pricy for the emerging markets.

Our Auditors gave the system a big tick!

Comments: We've just had our new auditors do their work for the year and ESM and our planning framework came in for very favorable comment which is great! We love the new interface. The system is very easy to use and is doing a superb job of helping us to keep on track.

Pros:

Easy to use, scalable

Balanced Scorecard

Comments: It allowed us to turn our five year business strategy into sustainable actions!

Pros:

The software was easy to use and allowed us to turn strategy into actions.

Cons:

Overall it was very intuitive - not much not to like.

ESM Review

Pros:

This software is very easy to use and has everything needed for strategic planning and execution

Cons:

There have been no cons thus far while using this software