Cascade Strategy

The Cascade program aligned strongly with the needs of our business. We needed a tool to help us manage our business strategy across 20 different functional departments. We chose Cascade as the concept of cascading goals matched the way our business performed strategic planning. The system allows each of the areas to manage their own strategic plan, whilst enabling visibility and accountability of alignment with the high level business strategy. The transparency of the system is one of it's biggest benefits. At the click of a button you are able to assess the health of the organisation according to its strategic objectives and associated goals. It is very user friendly and easy to customise. In a matter of minutes, anyone can set up team dashboards to use in meetings or as a general communication tool. The snapshot reports are great for sharing with others outside of the system and provide an up to date gantt chart of project status. I would highly recommend this tool to anyone.

Occasionally you will stumble across features that don't exist in the system which would be useful. The chat function allows you to communicate directly with the Cascade team and get a real time response to any issues you might have or any ideas for improvement. This is really great for efficiency, as you can just continue working through any challenges with the help of the Cascade team. They take the feedback on-board, and we have already experienced a number of system optimisations which have been rolled out as a result of our company's suggestions. It is empowering for the team to have that kind of influence on the software, and really aids in employee engagement.

Cascade is an eye-opener for managing strategy. It's easy to get started and to map strategic plans within the tool. But once getting into it, the number of options to customize and integrate other sources seems almost limitless.

Before using Cascade, there was just no way to keep every relevant strategy component in one place. That often led to a lack of effectiveness and difficulties in bringing everyone on board. With Cascade, all teams globally know what role they play within the company, which actions to take, and which KPI to achieve for the strategy to succeed.

There is no downside. Cascade is easy to use and has more functionalities than I could have imagined.

The user interface is intuitive and allows for the creation instant, real-time outputs that can be used to assess/track/discuss business strategy without creating standalone PowerPoint slides.
The tool allows for business strategy to be discussed and embraced by the organization, creating clear alignment of goals to strategic pillars and thus allowed for the broader business discuss, interrogate and contribute to the strategic direction rather than having it handed down.

The tool isn't something that can be used half-heartedly. To realize the benefit, it needs to be embraced by the entire organization where possible. This isn't a criticism of the tool itself, more an observation that it needs the buy-in of the organization to make it effective.