Elevation Insights ™ | Strategic Planning & War Games

© Elevation Insights™ 2012-2014. All Rights Reserved.A Chirala Holdings™ Subsidiary & partner of Crescendus™ 1© Elevation Insights™ 2012-2014. All Rights Reserved.A Chirala Holdings™ Subsidiary & partner of Crescendus™

Elevation Insights™

Strategic Planning & War GamesBriefing materials/playbook

© Elevation Insights™ 2012-2014. All Rights Reserved.A Chirala Holdings™ Subsidiary & partner of Crescendus™ 2

Strategic Planning & War GamesPre-emptive Stress Tests to ensure Long Term Survival

Mandate initiated by:This Mandate is generally requested by any of the following senior management personnel within a company:Board of DirectorsCEOCFOVP MarketingVP Sales & Services

Executive Level Mandate

Internal Company Mandate Description:I want the senior management team to explore a series of stress tests that model some of the challenges we are facing indiverse areas such as macroeconomic demand slowdown, disruptive innovations launched by our competitors, intensecompetitive pricing and market share pressures due to commoditization of our products, customer loyalty erosion, slowlocal/global expansion, supply chain disruptions and upcoming regulations that could severely hurt our business.

The team should develop a series of war games to see how our company performs under the above severe stressconditions and offer recommendations to respond to them. We need to include these war games within our quarterlyplanning sessions. Generate the war games rules and briefing playbook so that we can discuss the materials during thenext executive meeting.


Internal Team Meeting (scheduled by Executives within your company)

• Director, Marketing• Director, R&D• Director, Engineering• Director, Business Development• Director, Sales• Director, Strategy• Director, Operations & Supply Chain• Strategic Sales Team Leaders• Managers (Marketing, R&D, Engineering,

Business Development, Sales, Strategy,Operations)

• Chief/Key Scientists and Engineers• Legal Counsel• Finance Controller• Long term customers (selectively used for

external input, and carefully handled by VPSales or VP Marketing)

• CEO• VP Marketing• VP Sales and Services

• CFO• CTO

CIO• VP Strategy• VP R&D• VP Engineering• VP Product Development & Innovation• VP Legal & Compliance• VP Operations/Manufacturing• VP Human Resources• VP Business or Corporate Development• Business Unit Leaders• Country Leaders

The task requested by the Executive Team is highly strategic and will impact a wide range of business units & internalprocesses. As a result, collaboration & joint buy-in from senior management leaders will be key from the early stage ofproject deliberations.

Note- The composition of teams and titles varies by company, depending upon it’s size, offerings, markets & specificcompetitive situation. As the scope of the project expands, additional team members may be required.

Internal Team Involved(Core)

Supporting Team Members(as needed)

Team Leaders


Tasks discussed within Internal Team Meetings (by Core Attendees)

WAR GAME SCENARIODEFINITIONS

1. In-depth discussions regarding scope and definitions of various war gamescenarios, including reviewing old strategic planning documents

2. Generating a shortlist of war game scenarios:1. Mix between clearly defined/narrow scenarios and those that have far

reaching consequences to every aspect of the business2. Present day & future industry landscapes/scenarios

1. Wide range of market and competitor information types:• Macroeconomic indicators, global/country specific projections, R&D,

strategy, product development, innovation, business development,investor relations, manufacturing, supply chain, sales & marketing,intellectual property, regulatory, human resources

INFORMATION COLLECTION& DUE DILIGENCE

METRICS FOR ANALYSIS &RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Creating a single, unified information evaluation template document that willfeed into the final briefing materials/playbook for conducting war games

2. Populating the template document with global information sources andranking information by confidence levels

3. Identifying key developments and making recommendations for inclusionwithin the war game briefing materials/playbook

EXECUTION ISSUES& NEXT STEPS

1. Constant template document updates (e.g. new information from variousglobal sources) to keep the template document current

2. Preparing the war games playbook and presentation slides for internalexecutives

3. New revisions to playbook based on ongoing feedback from monthly executivemeetings

Key Tasks


Information Needs required to complete your “Next Steps”

Information Requirements• Build user requirements for a unified war games assessment template document, that will be used to

prepare the final war games briefing material/playbook

• Populate the assessment template document with complex information pertaining to the various wargame scenarios, and frequently update it with the latest information

• Complex information requirements (Industry, Self, Competitors) include:1. Macroeconomic Indicators & Projections: Global, Country, State, Metropolitan

areas, Cities (if applicable)2. R&D, Product Development & Innovation: Product portfolio, roadmaps, gaps, new

product launches, country specific innovation strategies, product recalls, regulatoryviolations, publications, conference proceedings, R&D and technology highlights

3. Business Development: Recent deals, partnerships, licensing, M&A, JV, strategicalliances, sample contracts

4. Sales & Marketing: Key accounts, go-to-market strategy, channel management,communication strategies, opinion leaders, pricing data (if available), mid/long termstrategy, industry developments, industry group participation, lobbyists

5. Financials & Investor Relations: Debt, accounts receivables, financing, statements,analyst presentations, Q&A, investor conferences, cost reduction/expansion

6. Intellectual Property & Legal: IP filings, IP expirations, litigation7. Regulatory: list of filings by country, approvals, rejections, violations8. International Expansion: key countries, country specific strategies, products,

partners, new launches9. Human Resources: areas of hiring, personnel changes, compensation practice, layoffs10. Manufacturing & Supply Chain: global manufacturing sites, strategy, supply chain

partners

• Detailed analysis of diverse sets of information weighted by confidence levels• Preparing presentation slides & war games playbook for executive meetings

COMPLEXBusiness andtechnology SOURCESWITH FREQUENTUPDATING NEEDS


Execution Options: Internal “do-it-alone” Approach vs. External Help

Internal Approach

10 >100PrimaryInformationCategories

PotentialInformationSub-Types & Updates

Note- Actual data figures can vary greatly, depending upon industry space.

X

Strain on Resources• 20 plus senior management & their teammembers will need to spend extensiveamounts of time, in addition to their regularduties.• Real Costs incurred.• Information gathering, analysis & reportingchallenges add additional pressures,lowering productivity.

Frequent Information UpdatesRequired

External Help: Elevation Insights™Elevation Insights™ can assist you with the following efforts:• Help define the scope of the various war game scenarios• Perform the comprehensive task of collecting and analyzing global information requirements• Prepare executive level presentation slides and war games playbook (with all the relevant briefing materials)• Maintain the on-going information intelligence and insights requirements (well after you have finished your initial war

games and strategic planning session)

We also encourage you to check our related business and technology services from Crescendus™.

Access to global technology & commercial intelligence


Decision Time: Let your internal ROI guide you!

Time Cost Decision•Internal Meetings

•Initial strategy discussions•Setting up of internal program office &work streams•Follow-up strategy discussions•Information gathering•Information review & analysis•Conference calls•Data analysis & reporting•Series of follow-up discussions to reviewwar games scenario data and analysis• Decision meetings to go overrecommendations• Call to Action set of meetings &preparation materials• Updating above materials with newinformation & re-do above decisionmaking process.

• Internal Email Chains/Calls• Regular Duties Impact

• Overtime to focus on regular duties• Productivity & potential revenue impacton existing responsibilities• Stress on your current team•Potential attrition of top performers

•On-Going Maintenance• To keep information intelligence current& update data analysis & reporting

•Key Parameters

• Total number of meetings• Total time spent on attendingmeetings and completing meetingtasks (incl. email time, conferencecalls, presentation reports, targetdocuments, information costs)• Total number ofattendees/meeting along withcomposition (e.g. VP, Director,Managers)• Calculate total cost based on totaltime and fully loaded cost figuresby various attendees, for all thetasks involved in completing theproject.

Use Fully Loaded Cost Figures:Manager level: $100-125/hourDirector level: $150-200/hourVP level: $250-350/hourNote:Placing a cost figure on all yourinternal activities will highlight thetrue cost of completing a task. Thisis often ignored within internalcompany settings while dealing withsalaried employees.

Situation 1If your internal total costs,senior managementavailability bandwidth, andtimelines are acceptable toyour company, then it isprudent to complete theproject internally withoutany external help. A keyassumption here is that yourcompany has all the rightskill-sets to complete theproject.

Situation 2If the right skill-sets areunavailable within yourcompany or the timelinesand total internal costs arenot acceptable, thenwe recommend seekingexternal help.


If your company is currently facing some of the challenges mentioned in thispresentation, we encourage you to contact us.Telephone:1-(865)-332-0942Email:[email protected]:www.elevationinsights.com

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Elevation Insights ™ | Strategic Planning & War Games