Our Strategic Consulting Business

Strategic Visions, our strategic consulting business, aims to unlock organisational value via a blended approach of management, consulting, facilitation and technology.

Systems Selection and Product Evaluation

The replacement of systems that contribute to the smooth running of your organisation can be a daunting and costly affair. Strategic Visions understands your concerns. With over 12 years experience in assisting organisations to source and implement HR, Financial and Student Management systems to meet organisational needs, we can assist in defining the requirements of such a system and/or assist in the evaluation of considered products.

Benefits Realisation

One of the areas that we are passionate about is Benefits Realisation. Large ERP implementations are budgeted for and agreed on the basis of a sound business case. How sad then that once the implementation starts, this is often never referred to again! At Visions we assist organisations with interventions which assist in answering the difficult questions around expenditure and business value in terms of IT projects. Research has shown that many of these projects fail as a result of insufficient attention being given to Change Management

Whether your organisation is a large listed entity, a smaller privately owned business, a major parastatal or even a local or provincial government body, Strategic Visions can assist you in realising the benefits of your implementation.

HR Systems Consulting

Organisations need to ensure that they extract maximum value from their HR systems investment in today’s complex and ever changing world of work. This means effectively managing information that goes beyond the mere HR transactional and assists the HR function to be a valued Strategic player in the Board room.

HR systems have the capability to assist to achieve this objective but often organisations need help in understanding what is available, what is the value vs the complexity and importantly, how to manage the changing roles that this necessitates at all levels.

Self service applications facilitate employees and line managers taking responsibility for transactional HR data. Data that was previously the exclusive domain of HR is now opened up to the organisation. This allows the HR function time to analyse information to promote initiatives aimed at improving staff retention, increasing performance and contributing to organisational success rather than be administratively responsible for data.

Strategic Visions can assist organisations with this level of detail.

Change Management

“Both willingness and ability to change must be present for change to succeed. Willingness without ability leads to frequent change initiatives that fail to realize their promise, resulting in organisational fatigue, frustration and cynicism. Ability to change without the willingness to do so leads to passive resistance and malicious compliance.” (Mahoney, Gartner Research 2001).

It is widely accepted that large-scale change initiatives present great opportunities, but that they also pose significant implementation risks. Many of these risks are ‘people related’ risks that need to be properly managed and mitigated to ensure successful implementation and transformation of the business.

Research has shown that human responses to change are largely cyclical and predictable. When communities of people are required to adjust to changing conditions, a level of discomfort and pain is always present. To some degree, this downside of change is inevitable. Even when the change initiative’s ultimate impact is positive, those affected by it often resist the change due to widespread expectations of discomfort combined with an instinctive fear of the unknown.

Management interventions are therefore necessary for the success of projects of this nature.

On the basis of this we have crafted a blue print for Change as it relates to the implementation of systems which impact the entire organisation.

Our approach is to provide Senior Change Management consultants who work together with our customer’s Change Management team.

The change management approach is then tailored to support and underpin the key project milestones and to address both the willingness and the ability of the organisation to embrace the change. Our Consultants assist in the early stages of the project to refine the blue print to cater for these particular circumstances. Thereafter the customer’s team takes ownership.

During the implementation our consultants provide guidance and support based on the customer’s requirements.

This has proved to be a cost effective method of managing Change as well as putting ownership where it belongs – with the customer.

Project Management

Managing large IT project implementations can be daunting. At Visions we use Prince 2 or PMI certified Project Managers to assist us in keeping our projects on time and within budget. We have developed our own methodology for the implementation of IT systems and where necessary, this is tailored to fit in with any customer specific methodology.

From the management of complete ERP implementations to smaller projects and customised solutions, we make sure that proper and adequate planning takes place, to ensure the successful implementation of all projects.

Our experienced Project Managers can assist you in managing any IT intervention.