Align with your Corporate Strategy
Learn how your project supports your company goals
At the beginning of an innovation project, you might need to make a convincing case for your sponsors and show how the project will benefit the whole organisation. This method shows you how to create Strategy Map, which will help your team understand and document how your project contributes to the company’s overall goals and direction. We recommend you to follow through the steps with your business and IT leads.
Goal`
Articulate how project goals contribute to company goals
Participants
Enterprise Architect, Department leads (Business and IT leads)
Time Needed
60-90 minutes
Phase
Explore
Before You Start
- Research about your company’s vision and strategy
- Review your company vision and strategy documents. This can be collected via the Corporate Strategy Department, internal or external whitepapers about ongoing or planned projects and initiatives, and externally available information like the annual report or CEO interviews.
- Review SAP’s strategy and roadmap for your industry
- Discover how SAP technologies can support your strategy in the short and long term. Visit the webpage related to your industry to find whitepapers and roadmap information about SAP products. Go to SAP Industry Website.
Materials You Will Need
Template for Download
For Virtual Collaboration
Steps
Write down your company’s vision statement
Check your company’s vision document and extract a statement that summarizes its essence. Write down the vision statement on the provided template.
See the Completed Example
Articulate your company’s strategic direction based on the vision and drivers
Summarize business drivers that motivate your organization to define its direction and goals, i.e., as changing customer and market behavior, disrupters. Write down the company’s mission.
You can find examples of business drivers in SAP’s industry-specific white papers.
Break down mission into strategic goals, and objectives
List the strategic goals of the company that supports its mission. Then write down the objectives that support the strategic goals. Objectives are specific, measurable, attainable, realizable, and time-bound (S.M.A.R.T.) formulations of a strategic goal.
A strategic goal provides a description and examples of fast and effective deployment of capital for business initiatives and research & development projects to support growth as well as adaptivity and innovation being sources of competitive advantage. Use business language and avoid naming specific products at this phase to keep the exploration healthy.
Map projects and initiatives to the goals and their objectives
Take each of the strategic goals and write down the projects and initiatives that support the goals and its objectives. At this stage, think about which of the identified strategic goals can be supported by your project. This helps your team articulate the value of your project to your sponsors and stakeholders.
Use business language and avoid naming specific products at this phase to keep the exploration healthy.
You’re done for now! Keep the strategy map a living reference.
Throughout the project, refer to the Strategy Map often to ensure you are supporting your company’s strategic direction. Add people who are responsible for the strategic goals and the projects as it progresses. Keep it a living document to guide you through the end of the project. Follow the next methods in the Recommended Path to continue setting up your innovation project.