06 | the first step of China Taiwan landing: enterprise strategy decomposition and current situation research (Discovery)

In the last lecture, I introduced to you the overview and source of our China Taiwan construction methodology . Let's start with this , I will take you through the four stages of planning and construction of the central platform , Introduce the objectives of each stage and some common tools and practices .

Okay , Let's start from the first stage Discovery Start , That is to say, we should first establish an “ Comprehensive view ”.

Then why do you do this first ？ One more word here , Actually D4 The first two parts of Discovery and Define Close , It is a process of divergence and convergence at the enterprise level . Our company has a name for this process , called Portfolio Discovery, Referred to as PD. In practice ,PD It's a 4～8 Week's brainstorming Workshop , The figure below shows you a complete PD Workshop roadmap , To help you understand .

For the overall planning of the middle stage , That is to say, whether to build a central platform 、 What kind of middle stage should be built 、 Who builds first and who builds later , We are now also through PD Such a process to evaluate and judge . Then you may have questions , Why? PD Such a method , It can help us make the planning judgment of the middle office ？ Here we will briefly explain .

Why PD Such a way to plan the middle stage ？

Portfolio Discovery Translated into Chinese is portfolio planning , Application in an enterprise is equivalent to product line planning . To put it bluntly , That is, if I am from a company CIO, This year, I have 1 At the disposal of hundreds of millions IT The budget , What I care about most is in the next period of time （ May be 1 year , It could be 3~5 year ）, For the purpose of enterprise development ,

• How much do I need to spend on digital construction ？
• How to spend the money ？ How to distribute ？ Which systems to add , Is it purchase or self research ？ Which systems to kill ？ Which systems are optimized ？ Which systems continue to be maintained ？ Which systems remain unchanged ？
• Do you want to build a middle platform ？
• ……

You see , To put it bluntly, it is still the question of how to spend the most money , In essence, it is also a matter of resource allocation , How to find the best portfolio with limited resources , Or how to spend your money where it should be .

Building a Zhongtai is just one of the potential options , One of the potential solutions , That is, based on the strategy and current situation of the enterprise , We need to add a middle platform layer to the application architecture to solve the problems encountered by the enterprise at present .

Is this solution suitable for enterprises , It still needs investigation and judgment . therefore , If we take the middle stage as a definite direction from the beginning , It will inevitably limit our vision , It may be better to miss than the middle stage 、 It's simpler 、 A more effective solution , Or over design too early , In a scenario where there is no need for a middle stage , Carry out the construction of the middle platform with great fanfare , harass the people and waste money .

Should the enterprise allocate part of the money and resources for the construction of the middle office ？ What is the value for the company to add such a new architecture level as Zhongtai ？ When is the best time to do ？ How about priorities ？ This is what PD Main concerns and questions to be answered .

In order to avoid patting the head ,Discovery As PD The first half of , The main purpose is to do sufficient divergence and research , That is to use various tools and means to help us fully understand the industry trends 、 Competitors 、 The company's strategic decomposition, bottom-up status quo research and other information and environment , For the next stage Define Convergence of , That is, for the new business architecture of the enterprise 、 Application Architecture 、 Design of technical architecture and even organizational architecture , Provide sufficient information support and basis .

On the whole ,Discovery It can also be simply divided into from outside to inside 、 Top down and bottom-up processes in three different directions .

From the outside to the inside ： Industry and competitor analysis

The so-called "know yourself, know your enemy, and win every battle" , Before learning more about yourself , We need to open our eyes a little , Look at the general trend of the industry and what competitors are doing .

I remember that teacher liangning once got a column 《 Product thinking 30 speak 》 It was mentioned in “ spot - Line - Noodles - body ” The theory of . If the middle stage itself is just a point , It may just be the product of a certain stage of enterprise development , It is neither the beginning nor the end . therefore , We should look at the issue of Zhongtai from the main line of the development process of an enterprise , Look at this point . Where does it come from ？ Why does it show up ？ Where will they go ？ Even think about what the next stage of the middle stage will be ？ Will be replaced by ？ I am observing the process of building a middle office in an enterprise , Including the formation and development of the whole Zhongtai trend .

Is a thread enough ？ Is not enough , We need to go up another dimension , Look at other lines in the same industry , That is, what other enterprises in the same industry are doing ？ What are the strategies ？ What is the focus of digital construction ？ Are you building a middle platform at the same time ？ What is the goal of the construction ？ How does it work ？

But the thing to note here is , Analysis does not necessarily mean direct reference , Everyone else is building a Zhongtai, so we should build a Zhongtai , This idea is not advisable , Because even in the same industry , But because of the enterprise vision strategy 、 Business model 、 Customer groups, etc , Every enterprise is different .

Finally, I have to jump out , From a higher dimension “ body ”, To examine the industry in which the enterprise is located , Or from other industries , Learn from others . There are generally two benefits to doing so ：

• First, if there are good concepts or methods in other aspects , We can learn from it , Help your own enterprises get the first chance in your own industry . The concept of Zhongtai originated in the Internet industry , At present, it is being used for reference by various industries .

• Another benefit , If you find a better face 、 Better industries , It can realize the leap forward of enterprises across industries , May have seized the opportunity to take another fast lane . Come back , At present, many enterprises are engaged in middle stage construction , The purpose is to identify the core competence of the enterprise , Precipitation to the middle stage , And take this as a springboard and support , Carry out business innovation and exploration , Want to jump to another new and more developed track .

The benefits of so much industry research and competitor analysis , Then how to do it specifically ？ In fact, there are many mature methods in the industry , You can use it directly , For example, common ： The five force model ,SWOT, Business model canvas , Competitor product line analysis , Competitive situation analysis matrix, etc .

From top to bottom ： Enterprise strategy decomposition

if PD The most important output is the blueprint and road map of digital construction , that PD The input of is the vision and strategy at the enterprise level .

We talked a lot about the vision before , It should be easy to understand , That is to say, what you want the enterprise to look like or achieve in a certain period of time , For example, in the case of geek real estate , The vision may be 2022 In, the company realized the transformation of business from heavy assets to light assets , More specifically, for example, the proportion of service businesses in total revenue should reach 70% above .

One more word here , We have also seen many enterprises without a clear corporate vision , Started a large-scale 、 Large scale construction of the middle office . It's like a fleet without a clear destination , Just go to sea rashly , It is likely to drift with the tide , Finally lost in the ocean , A bankrupt . So if this is the case for an enterprise , You must fill in this part first .

Here , Let's assume that before we start planning the middle stage , The enterprise already has a clear vision and strategy PD The input of .

Let's look at the word strategy , We may feel vague and empty when we understand it . stay 《 On grand strategy 》 This book mentions ：“ So called strategy , Is how to achieve the balance between goals and capabilities , And make appropriate adjustments according to environmental changes ”.

Here is the strategic balance triangle that we often use , It can help you understand the relatively empty concept of strategy .

Balance the triangle through this strategy , We simply do some mathematical transformations , You can explain “ Enterprise strategy decomposition ” What is it . The following derivation process , It may burn your brain , If you can't understand it for a while, you can read it several times , I believe it will be very helpful for you to understand the word strategy .

good , We began to . Balance the triangle according to strategy , When the vision and objectives of the enterprise have been determined ：

• Enterprise strategy can be simply understood as ： combination The enterprise itself And the environment in which they live , What measures should be taken , In order to achieve the desired vision and objectives of the enterprise ？
• The decomposition of enterprise strategy can be simplified into ： combination Each department of the enterprise itself And the environment in which they live , What measures should be taken , In order to achieve the desired vision and objectives of the enterprise ？

good , The derivation is complete . For the decomposition of enterprise strategy , There are also many tools and practices in the industry , for example BMGovernance Designed enterprise strategy analysis model, etc . But in order to cope with the changing market environment , stay PD What we use in this project is Lean value tree （Lean Value Tree） Tools to help break down the strategic vision .

Lean value tree is a kind of value effect oriented , Used to analyze and communicate the business vision 、 Strategy and investment tools . Its core is to build from the vision 、 Top down alignment of goals to investment initiatives , Therefore, a layer by layer decomposition tree structure is adopted , As follows ：

This process , It is what I call the top-down strategic decomposition process . And a certain middle stage , It may just be a specific measure finally deduced , Upward still can be traced back to the relevance and value of the enterprise vision and objectives , Match and correspond to the vision and objectives of the enterprise .

Bottom up ： Current situation investigation and analysis

If the decomposition of enterprise strategy is understood as a top-down analysis and derivation process of enterprise vision , Is it OK to directly follow the specific implementation of the derived measures ？

It is often not enough , Because every enterprise has been fighting in the market for a long time , Can survive and develop to the present , There will be various problems and limitations . If you leave the status quo , Ignore these problems and limitations , Will certainly face great resistance and risk .

So we should not only decompose the enterprise strategy from top to bottom , So as to help us think about whether it is necessary for China and Taiwan or other measures . It is also necessary to fully conduct bottom-up status quo research , To help us understand the current situation and history . On the one hand, fully respect all the problems encountered in the past , Collect and summarize pain points ; On the other hand, it also requires us to jump out of the limitations of the past , Start from the business again , Starting from users , To re explore new technologies 、 Some new possibilities under the new architecture .

There are many common tools and practices here , for example High level interview 、 Stakeholder map 、 Organizational structure analysis 、 Strategic design thinking 、 Sort out the current situation of business architecture 、 User journey 、 Service Blueprint 、 Domain-driven design 、 Sorting out the current situation of the application system 、 Sort out the current situation of technical architecture wait .

Full and multi-dimensional current situation investigation and analysis , Not only can we have a better understanding of the business 、 application 、 technology 、 data 、 Organization status , That is, to have a comprehensive and clear understanding of the current situation of enterprise architecture , You can also conduct interviews and research , Add context to the timeline , Including what happened in the past ？ Why is the status quo like this ？ What do you want in the future ？ Why? ？

But here's a problem you may need to pay attention to , That is the scope and depth of combing . Don't forget that what we are doing now is to sort out the enterprise level architecture , The width and scope may be far beyond our imagination . If the depth is not well controlled , You will find that you are still in a small field and business line for a long time .

So faced with such problems and risks , I suggest you ：

• First, complete the top-down decomposition of enterprise strategy , Then carry out bottom-up status quo research . Because after the strategic decomposition , We've been looking at the company's industry 、 Business 、 vision 、 There is already some understanding of the strategy , There will be an overall control when conducting research , It is easier to grasp the granularity and depth .

• Be prepared , The content that can be completed in advance through reading materials and small-scale research .

• Make a detailed plan , The scope and granularity of carding can be deduced according to the total time of current situation investigation . If time is enough , It can take two days to sort out the business architecture of a business line , In this way, you can go deeper . But if only half a day , Then the particle size can be coarsened properly , Ensure a global business view first .

• It is suggested that at the beginning , It can be coarser , Don't get caught up in details too early , However, how to control granularity really requires a deep understanding of the company's strategy and business , It is also the place where you see Kung Fu most . When judgment is bad , You can be a little rougher first , If there is still time , You can also do another round of research and carry out another level down .

Such current situation investigation work , For a medium-sized enterprise with fourorfive different business lines , Our actual implementation probably needs 2～4 A week or so , Of course, it depends on the customer . After completing the research work , We have a comprehensive understanding of the current situation of all aspects of the enterprise , And also collected a large number of pain points and problems in each business line , In this way, we have a vision for the future architecture .

When doing bottom-up business line research , The tools we use are not traditional business process diagrams , But with the idea of design thinking , Use The user journey is combined with the service blueprint On going , The specific content will be in 08 speak , When introducing the design process of a business platform, I will introduce it to you .

To sum up

thus , We will analyze the industry from outside to inside 、 Competitor research , Top down decomposition of enterprise strategy , As well as the bottom-up survey of various dimensions of the enterprise based on the status quo , Fully divergent , Collect enough information .

Whole PD The process of （ Including the next lecture Define The process ） We all do it in the form of workshops , Brainstorm with relevant roles 、 Fully discuss , Produce the final result , The whole process is very light and efficient .

And it's done PD The first half of the Discovery after , The next step is to collect the raw material information , Analyze and integrate information , Convergence to form a specific middle platform construction plan , That is to say PD The second half of ,Define The process of , I will introduce you to... In the next lecture .

Finally, I'll leave you a few questions to think about ：

• What is the vision of your business ？ What is strategy ？ To your department , What are the measures ？

• Does your company really need to build a Zhongtai ？ Whether it can match the enterprise vision ？