With the release of ASE v7.2, ActiveStrategy has greatly improved Briefing Book functionality and measure creation and display, and has added a new online learning capability.

ASE’s Briefing Books facilitate business reviews by focusing discussion around a specific set of measures and improvement projects. They have become vastly more flexible in terms of layout and content in v7.2. In addition to the existing measures, initiatives, charts, and comments that users could previously link to Briefing Book pages, v7.2 lets users link global charts, objectives, processes, and program groups, and also include external links, attached documents, pictures, and other references (such as links to Six Sigma and process dashboards, stoplight charts, visual maps, and even other Briefing Books). The new interface also lets users customize the layout of their Briefing Books with a drag-and-drop utility, allowing them to add, remove, and sort chapters and pages, and manage the number of panes per page to specifically match their needs. Click here to see an image of a Briefing Book page with a three-pane layout.

To ensure that users are continually up-to-speed and as proficient as possible, on-demand training has been integrated directly into the product via a new ActiveStrategy University (ASU) tab. The ASU Reference area, which is free for all ASE v7.2 users, contains training support materials geared toward users and ASE administrators. It includes how-to videos and instruction sheets created from ASU FAQs and also houses ASE training exercises and quick reference guides. The ASU Classroom area, which is a separate area available by subscription, contains software courses that teach system functionality and best practices, as well as methodology courses that teach Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Execution principles to prepare users to create, implement, and cascade scorecards and conduct effective business reviews.

ASE v7.2 features many enhancements to the way measures are handled and viewed. Re-calculation of measure data based on historical periods is now a one-click process. Measure owners can now easily select whether or not parent measures are calculated from child measures (in the case where parent measure data should be manually entered and not overwritten by the summation of child measures). Changes to the measure creation wizard make data entry and review more straightforward and help prevent mistakes. Finally, measure detail pages feature a new layout that includes an expanded performance history table, allowing users to view performance data by period, as well as targets, variance, and warning levels all on one screen.

With the release of ASE v7.0, ActiveStrategy has completely overhauled two important areas of the software: Personal Goal Management and Stoplight Charts, while adding a powerful new feature called “Visual Maps,” which allows users to create and easily manipulate interactive visual performance pictures. There is also a new “Bulk User Upload” feature that allows users to quickly and efficiently update multiple performance measures, which was previously managed only through software Administrators. These enhancements will make it easier for everyone – from executives to individual employees – to have complete visibility into strategic performance.

ASE’s Personal Goal Management (PGM) functionality enables organizations to tie employee-level goals and objectives to the corporate strategy, and to track both organizational and individual employee performance within one software application.

The improved PGM module in ASE v7.0:

• allows users to own an unlimited number of personal scorecards, which can now be created and tracked by any frequency, while retaining access to appraisal reports from previous years
• allows administrators to establish scorecard templates, company-wide public goals, and scorecard themes (similar to “perspectives” on typical corporate or organizational scorecards), that allow for grouping of individual goals
• allows individual employees to create his or her own personal goals and link them to their PGM scorecards

Stoplight Charts

Stoplight Charts are one of the many ways ASE presents performance information to executives and managers. They are especially helpful for organizations that need to look at and compare measures across multiple divisions, units, or geographical areas. These charts display an individual stoplight indicator (green, yellow, and red) for each measure within each division, unit, or area within a single matrix format. This allows managers or executives to quickly determine if there are performance outliers, systemic problems, or opportunities for one area to learn from another.

In ASE v7.0, Stoplight Charts:

• are simplified and more intuitive so that any user can easily create them
• allow not only measures, but also initiatives to be viewed for at-a-glance performance monitoring of project budget and timing status
• allow administrators to create templates and series that can be made available to all users within the organization
• present more details to users, including the measure owner’s name, a description, and additional quantitative information. Users simply hover over each “cell” within the chart to view more these additional details.

Visual Maps