Our business strategy expertise gets national recognition

EMC’s expertise in the field of business planning and execution has been recognised by a major national newspaper.

CEO Nik Askaroff was invited to give his views on why strategies fail in a special Business Reporter supplement distributed with the Sunday Telegraph on 3 November.

He said: “It’s a real feather in our cap that we were asked to contribute to the newspaper’s annual report on Strategy Execution.

“Our multi-disciplined ‘mobile boardroom’ of senior finance, marketing, sales, IT and production professionals has spent 25 years helping companies to prepare and deliver elements of their strategic plans that fall outside of their own competences or where the amount of work involved is too much for the management team. So we are ideally placed to know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to writing and executing a successful business strategy.

“The Sunday Telegraph is read by more than 1.4 million people throughout the country so we were delighted to be included.”

Nik was one of five industry experts who debated the reasons why business strategies fail as part of the publication’s overall look at what makes an effective business strategy, how it can be best executed, and what senior executives can do to get the company pulling in the same direction.

In his article Nik argued that it was not usually strategies that fail, but people. “Even the best-laid plan will come unstuck if the right people aren’t in the right place at the right time to execute it,” he said.

He added: “A successful strategy will combine vision, culture, structure and resources. If any one of these is missing it could create internal frustration, a confused management and dysfunctional delivery.  The strategy needs to be supported by a detailed action plan with a clear allocation of responsibility and timetable for delivery.

“Involve your teams and ensure you have the right people and resources in place. Otherwise, get help. If the plan is clear and you have expert support around you, your chances of success are significantly increased.”