Enterprise Decision making

James Grealis,

Senior Director, Operations

2nd Oct 2008.

Some Quotations

• “Half the worry in the world is caused by people trying to make decisions before they have sufficient knowledge on which to base a decision.” (Dean Hawkes)

• “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” (P. Drucker)

• In my life whenever I make a decision, I make it and forget about it. (H. Truman)

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Symantec’s Localisation model

• Localisation is a separate group– Own Budget– Central group, covering products and services– Includes i18n & L10n under same area

• Symantec is Acquisition Driven– Frequent new candidates for I18n and L10n investment– An M&S strategy plan of engagement from day one

• Budget management is a critical part of solution– Close relations opens doors for extra funding

• Close links to the Sales Organizations– A history of delivering on promises to Sales

• Close links to the Dev Groups– Historical record of working together

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Symantec’s usual type of requests

• Existing product offering,

– Add a new language request

– localise content (Regional Content Group)

• New Product,

– Add a new language

– Add content

• Decision to drop some existing products

– Free up some room in the budget

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No real need to build an overly complex decision making process.

Decisions need to be made

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What Symantec Use

• Decision is based on a “Business Case“ request

– Country office work with local Localisation Group to complete a simple Business case document.

• Outline request

• State the factors in support of the request

• Clarify what exactly is being requested

• State the costs of implementation (direct or indirect costs)

• Calculate the ROI

• Check if funds are available to support the Business case

– Execute if funds available

– Pitch for funds if required

– Park the proposal if necessary

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Day to day reality we work with

• Usually there is a fixed budget to work from

– A sizable part which goes to covering fixed costs

• There is usually an existing product offering to maintain

• There is a roadmap of products for next 6 to 12 months

• Content is a growing factor

• There are acquisitions to add into the spending plans

At the end of the day

the size of budget to allocate to new projects can be relatively small.

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Business Case

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The Business Case document forms a simple but formal step to legitimise and sanity check the request. It goes through a few levels of signoff.

Measuring the ROI

• It’s important that you counter balance the model by measuring the ROI on a quarter or half year basis.

– Keep visibility on your “Poor performers”

– Maintain a record of investment/de-investment decisions

– “Keeping an eye on the shop” – good management practice

• The ROI tracking can be simple enough, but needs to be consistent over time.

– Revenue for last 4 Qtr’s

– Current best known Vendor costs

– Loading for internal costs

– ROI

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Measuring the ROI

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What detail you measure

is not so important, as long as it’s consistent over time.

Alternative Execution Options

• Traditional Pay and play model– You pay for Vendor & other costs and you release the language offering

– Controls over budgets & execution, Track ROI’’s

• Royalty Agreements– Symantec used these in the early days, can lead to complex

arrangements and to disputes in future times.

• Licence Agreements– You let a 3rd party pay the costs and own the product revenue, in return

for a licence fee. Or A 3rd party takes on some of the work and you sell the final product

• Community Collaboration– New, at pilot phase, limited on use, limitless on reach

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The holistic picture

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“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some decision making models

• Pareto principle the idea that by doing 20% of work you can generate 80% of the advantage of doing the entire job.

• Force Field Analysis useful technique for looking at all the forces for and against a decision. It’s a specialized method of weighing pros and cons.

• Cost Benefit Analysis add up the value of the benefits of a course of action, and subtract the costs associated with it.

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source: www.mindtools.com