Deliverables SymPlant methodology to implement Symphony methods and tools in SMEs The Symplant methodology has been designed in the objective of transferring the Symphony methods and tools to the entrepreneurs and managers of the target companies mainly networked and knowledge based SMEs. This methodology integrates: - training modules - consulting tools and methods - a self assessment tool It covers the different products of the Symphony project: SymStrategy, SymCockpit and SymResources, and also the general concepts that have been developed. The Symplant methodology can generate by itself a business in the field of: - training managers and general managers to the new concepts of Symphony - be the methodological part of Symphony products introduction - training the intermediary support companies (consultants, chamber of commerce, professional associations ) SymStrategy methodology for strategy development for SMEs In fast-moving markets, the customer (usually the managing director of an SME) has to make strategic decisions more often than in relatively stable industries. These decisions are usually taken in an individual, peace-meal process, in which the managing director (who is also often the owner) decides on his own and with the advice given by the management team. Taking strategic decisions depends on various factors (e.g. management experience etc.). In SMEs, however, taking wrong decisions can quickly put an end to a company. Due to the SMEs limited resources, investment decisions for a specific option often imply a significant reduction of budget for other investments. Strategic decisions therefore need to be grounded in reasonable assumptions, taking into account the external environment as well as a firm's internal conditions. To date, the managerial decision process has several deficits that do not correspond with today's management requirements, that is increasingly complex (e.g. more and more networked, based on humans and their capabilities, ) and requires a conscious consideration. The essential problem for SME is that they rarely spend time on strategic issues, they are permanently under time pressure and tend to neglect the activities needed to come up with quick decisions (e.g. collect relevant information, determine success factors, etc.) Many managers therefore get help from external parties to support the managers until he can take a decision. SymStrategy, a methodology for strategy development within SMEs addresses the afore mentioned problems and therefore offers a framework that takes all the relevant information and transforms it into a meaningful picture of the business, strengthens the importance of the strategic decision-making process into something that is done on a regular basis as well as aligns the management team and if well implemented and communicated, the whole organization. The value for the user of SymStrategy is evident. It leads to better decisions, speeds up the decision-making process, makes decisions traceable and easy to monitor, makes decisions easy to communicate and finally makes decisions easy to implement. From a market point of view, the following can be mentioned: due to the countless number of SME, it is hard to tell how big the market is in terms of number of companies that need consultancy in this area. However, one can roughly estimate the potential from the number of consultancies that exist offering similar services. In Germany alone, there are approx. 30.000 companies and individuals offering consulting services (Switzerland approx. 3000), doing just about everything from IT, HR, Change Management etc. and - of course - also strategic management. The consulting market has grown excessively during the last years. Due to the different types of consulting, the growth rate can hardly be generalized but the market still seems to grow or to stagnate on a relatively high level. Market segmentation for the SymStrategy can be done in different ways. The target group has been defined at the very beginning of the project: High-Tech and Service-oriented SMEs, start-ups or modular units of bigger companies. In addition, the segmentations is determined by the size of the organization, its adherence to an information and knowledge intensive industry, its life-cycle stage, the life-cycle stage of the market and the integration into networks. The appropriate market segment is, where these areas overlap. The dissemination and exploitation of SymStrategy will take place through three major streams: 1. SymStrategy consulting services: The pure methodology of SymStrategy requires an appropriate service. Therefore, a service in terms of workshops offered to the customers will be provided: the usage of the whole suite of SymStrategy Methods for a complete strategy roundup and setting of strategic direction (2 days in the 'light' version for smaller companies, up to one week for 'full' version in bigger companies), alternatively the usage of one specific SymStrategy part (e.g. assessment of a specific pre-defined situation) for a customer (1-2 days). 2. SymStrategy open source community: In order to distribute and disseminate the SymStrategy methodology as wide as possible, an open source community will be launched in the beginning of March 2005. An appropriate IT platform will support this activity in order to provide the results for free download as well as to allow getting feedback from the users in order to improve and optimise the current status of the product. 3. SymStrategy education and training: The findings and experiences along the SymStrategy development and application process will be transferred through universities, multipliers and other organisations (e.g. teaching students, etc.) as well as dedicated training courses and seminars for industrial practitioners. SymCockpit methodology & software for business performance management The SymCockpit is based on a performance measurement concept that requires the consideration of two dimensions. On the one hand, a company's performance is determined by the capacity to put in place the actions provided in the strategy roadmap. The actions have got attributes such as e.g. responsible organisational unit, start and end dates and budgets, comparable to a basic project management application. On the other hand, the organisation's future performance is also determined by the capacity to respond to new challenges in knowledge-based, dynamic industries. With the help of the 'Agility Measure', the individual need for agility for an organisation can be determined. Accordingly, a company sets the level of performance it wants to reach in certain predefined areas. It is free to choose from a validated list of standard indicators, but can also add individual ones. By conceiving the SymCockpit this way, a SME can use a dynamic, action-oriented strategic performance measurement and a more static, capacity-oriented performance measurement at the same time. This procedure allows a balanced view on organisational performance, also by integrating indicators for tangible as well as for intangibles assets. Main function specification SymCockpit is a performance measurement tool, which also includes among others a module sup-porting the strategic initiation processes based on a profound analysis. SymResources methodology & software to align strategy and intangible resources No department, no company can go alone. For big industries and ambitious start-up companies, collaborative networking has become central to competitive success in dynamic markets. More than ever, relevant competences for gaining or growing businesses lie outside the boundaries of a department or the firm. In this emerging world of collaborative value creation, the capacity to develop and mobilise organisation, people and knowledge becomes the cornerstone for effective resource management. SymResources targets those needs. The software-supported methodology facilitates the (re-) design process of collaborative organisations as well as the development of jobs and competences. The modular and integratable approach between organisation, jobs and individual competences makes SymResources a unique platform for managing mobility of intangible resources. It addresses bigger as well as networked smaller organisations and provides particularly high customer values in situations of market instability, growth and leveraging, restructuring and new business development. Whenever your business is a strongly service and competence based and mobility of your people is crucial, SymResources is a breakthrough answer. The ASP platform is accessible through the web; you don't need local software installation. This is the cheapest and fastest way to become user of SymResources. Bigger organisations may prefer a software licence to run on their dedicated server. Both options are available. SymResources is much more than a tool. It is a validated management methodology which differences from established approaches generally routed on the hypothesis of stable environment. Statics is replaced by dynamics, rigidity by adaptivity and skills by a holistic cognitive competence approach. Training, consulting, coaching and any other forms of services offered to potential customers will be supplied by highly qualified and experienced partners, actually mainly CEGOS (F) and CCSO (CH). The network of service organisations will be enlarged and further internationalised. In order to assure long-term sustainability of SymResources, the Symphony project consortium agreed to transfer the related intellectual property rights (IPR) to Harmony Solutions SA. This happened in November 2004 by the signature of the Exploitation Agreement. Harmony Solutions SA (CH) is acting focal company of the international SymResources commercialisation network. It maintains and further develops the software platform. ICARE (CH), ITIA-TTS (I) and GIC (D) further continue to support software development managed by Harmony Solutions SA. Regarding the service/consultancy part, CEGOS (F) and CCSO (CH) will constitute a core-team committed to set the basis for broad awareness building in industry, science / education and professional consultancy; for testing and validating the SymResources approach in new fields of applications as well as for knowledge exchange and training. The collaboration between those partners and Harmony Solution SA is formalised in the partnership contract. The roadmap for international commercialisation of the SymResources platform is structured in three stages: For 2005, the platform will be further stabilised and optimised. In this stage, a limited number of commercial partners will use and exploit one single ASP system, which will be continually modified and improved. In a second stage, additional distribution partners - all of them providing high added values to their customers in form of services - will be recruited and trained. Thus, the system will be leveraged to an increasing number of beneficiary companies. At this stage, end-user companies will start to use SymResources on a regular basis for their organisational and human resource development. At this stage, SymResources will be stabilised and available in several languages as ASP or as license running on the clients' server. Finally, a professional sales organisation will be set up for international commercialisation of SymResources. This is planned to start in 2007. EXPLOITATION NETWORK In a workshop with participants from CEGOS and CCSO, several exploitation options for SymResources were discussed. It came out, that the most promising way for developing exploitation / application competences and for international penetration of SymResources would be a collaborative network, facilitated under the responsibility of Harmony Solutions SA. The partnership contract between Harmony Solutions SA and CEGOS is based on this philosophy. Regarding the value generation process, particularly three aspects were clarified: 1. The customer (organizations or persons) prefers a holistic approach based on the Symphony integrated methodology. At the final event in Paris, entrepreneurs from the industrial validation team stressed out the importance of this holistic view. Many other practical cases underline this Symphony inherent USP, which distinguishes its approach from many other existing management methodologies. The exploitation network will further develop this USP. Consequently, the exploitation network won't develop a functional organization based on disconnected specialists in strategy, organization, competences and other domains. The training and accreditation process of SymResources VARs will take care of this fact. 2. The offering to the customer should be highly modular and flexible. Some of the customers are happy with coaching, others will internalise the SymResources methodology to their organization, and some of them will become autonomous users of SymResources. The network of SymResources partners should become responsive to those highly flexible and adaptive offerings. 3. The competence profile for managing the key value processes, see figure below, will differ from process to process. A special attention of the exploitation partners will be given to the development of such competence profiles and to the establishment of related training support. FINANCIALS Business and revenue model: This business model describes, as a system, how the critical elements / stakeholders of a business process fit and work together. This business model focuses primarily on the down-streaming process that means the activities associated with selling process. HS offers its services through an international network of professional consultancies in the area of organizational and competence development. In a first stage, the consultancies use the SymResources methodologies and ASP platform as an integrated part of their business services. In this stage, revenues will come from these "Value Added Retailers" (VARs). In a second stage, some of their customer companies (Customers) will internalise those services and directly access and use the ASP platform. In that stage, revenues will be generated from the customers of the VAR-partners of HS. There are basically two different SW licensing business models in mid-term: 1. ASP model: SymResources is offered to its VARs and Customers as an ASP solution, supported by the central host server of HS. The revenue model consists of annual license fees based on two dimensions: number of clusters and number of users. The official pricing model will be defined in 2005, based on practical experience gained during the market test phase. The two first contracts between HS and the two VAR organizations CEGOS and CCSO are established. Negotiations with additional partners are ongoing. 2. License model (site license): In such a model, SymResources is installed on a dedicated host server of a VAR or a Customer. Revenues will be generated in form of up-front and annual license payment. Such a license model will be postponed up to the stage where the SymResources platform is perfectly optimised and stabilized. Otherwise, maintenance and improvement costs would become too high. Consultancy groups and human resource departments focused on organisational dynamics and competences development. Personal competence coaches dedicated to client working in a multi employment and/or jobs. Responsible people for designing training and further training courses focused on industrial competences requirements Searching for OpenAIRE data... There was an error trying to search data from OpenAIRE No results available
