Faced with increased competition, fueled by trends such as globalization, the digital shift, Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence, and agility, organizations have no choice but to transform themselves continuously and at a faster pace. Such transformations generally include the formulation of a new or improved strategy, followed by the carrying out of a series of changes to the organization’s operating model to enable full execution of the strategy.
 

However, according to recent worldwide surveys conducted among thousands of senior executives around the world, the vast majority of organizations remain unhappy with their ability to transform themselves, irrespective of the adoption of the best practices. The challenge is in doing the right things in the right order, and quickly enough. To break out of this impasse and ensure their growth, organizations need to change the way they go about formulating, implementing, executing their strategy.

 

The frustration of witnessing too many organizations fail in their transformations motivated the ASATE Group to create its Organizational Transformation Framework. Its development started with an in-depth examination of the difficulties organizations face in their transformations, of which the main five are:

• The strategy of most organizations is poorly formulated.
• Executives fail to provide the leadership needed to make the strategy a success.
• The transformation and other initiatives required to make the strategy work are defined, prioritized and executed in a far from optimal manner.
• The long-term financial forecasting and yearly budgeting practices hinder the execution of the strategy and related initiatives.
• Strategy management activities are inadequate and poorly integrated.

“Following this, we spent nearly 10 years identifying, developing, testing, and perfecting the integrated set of methods, practices, and tools that make up the company’s framework,” says Bernard Gagnon, President and Cofounder, ASATE Group.

To best help its clients, ASATE Group combines consulting with research to further perfect its leading transformation framework. It considers the organization as a system that needs to be optimized as a whole for the execution of its strategy. The framework has three key elements designed to fill important gaps in previously available practices. The first element is the creation of an expanded strategic plan that includes a concrete description of the changes that will have to be made to the organization’s operating model and an optimized roadmap for carrying out these changes. The second element is the establishment and integration of all of the management activities and mechanisms necessary for the successful formulation, execution and regular update of the strategic plan. These activities, mechanisms, and the creation of the strategic plan, leverage the third element, ASATE Group’s world-leading business architecture approach. The company’s framework makes it possible to design, integrate and optimize all aspects of the transformation. It also helps avoid initiatives that contribute little to the execution of the strategy or that are conceived and performed in isolation. “When used together, the three elements of our framework enable organizations to transform themselves effectively, efficiently, and with agility to grow and improve their performance,” says Pierre Hadaya, Cofounder, ASATE Group.

Among its recent engagements, ASATE Group worked with a mid-sized company that asked for assistance in implementing a new ERP. Suspecting that such an initiative would not fix the root causes of their difficulties, ASATE Group convinced the management team that it should first conduct a review of their operating model and then help them formulate a new international growth strategy. ASATE Group is currently helping a major bank become more efficient in transforming itself. This includes the training of 145 of their managers and professionals in business architecture.

ASATE Group is also developing partnerships to offer its services internationally. The company is also discussing with several Enterprise Architecture tool developers so that they could support the company’s framework. By the second half of the year, ASATE Group will also introduce a certification program on its world-leading business architecture approach.