вторник, 23 июля 2024 г.

The Top 22 AI Tools for Marketers

 



AI is a hot topic amongst marketers in 2024 — and for good reason. According to our State of AI report, 95% of respondents say that using AI tools for marketing helps them spend less time on manual tasks and more time on the most important parts of their role.

Luckily, even if you are unfamiliar with AI, it’s never too late to familiarize yourself with the many AI tools for marketers.

As a content marketer, I’m personally grateful for the many ways AI tools have simplified my tedious, time-consuming tasks like outlining content creation, researching SEO, email marketing, and more.

Still, not every AI tool is created equal, which is why I’ve scoured the internet to create this list of the best 22 AI tools marketers should use to make their lives easier.

The Benefits of Using AI in Marketing

OpenAI’s ChatGPT took the world by storm in November 2022 and had millions of users within weeks.

After the huge splash from the release of ChatGPT, there is little doubt that AI is impacting marketing jobs already. Research from the University of Pennsylvania estimates that “19% of workers may see at least 50% of their tasks impacted."

The key word in that statement, though, is impacted.

In my experience, this means that marketers who learn to leverage AI-powered tools will see better results from their campaigns and diversify their skills.

I already use AI tools in my workflow. That doesn’t mean AI is writing my articles (this piece is 100% human!).

However, drafting routine emails, improving the quality of images, turning long posts into social copy, and researching new topics often involve an AI assist.

Beyond that, we’ve had teammates who use AI to help them leverage skillsets they don’t already have. I asked HubSpot’s Kaitlin Milliken for an example.

“We had a huge project where we changed images on pages from .png to .webp files on thousands of web pages. I knew this would take forever to do manually, so I leveraged AI to help me create a Python script that could run the conversion,” says Milliken, who is a senior program manager at the company.

I don’t even know how to code in Python!”

Today’s AI tools still have a huge growth potential. Still, those already available can significantly reduce the time it takes to complete tasks and reduce the lift for completing complex tasks, all while running 24/7 with no downtime.

22 AI Tools for Marketing You Should Know About

I’ve often found that most marketers understand the content generation capabilities of AI.

However, they're unfamiliar with other tasks it can simplify and automate for them. I love using AI for content creation, but I never found content writing that boring to begin with.

Marketing tasks that I personally find more mundane are creating emails and email templates, repurposing content, taking customer service requests, and making press releases.

So, I set out to identify AI tools that could help with more than just content marketing but rather the nitty gritty of my everyday life as a marketer.

So, without further ado, here is the list I compiled of AI marketing tools that cover just about every “boring” marketing task you could imagine.

1. HubSpot


  • Price: Free
  • Best for: Creating content
  • What it does: Hubspot’s AI Assistant is a suite of AI-powered features that help you plan, create, and share remarkable content quickly.

Creating content isn’t easy, and creating content that supports an entire organization can be extremely time-consuming.

Our AI Assistant makes content creation simpler. It integrates with all of your HubSpot tools to generate and share quality content.

I like to use HubSpot’s AI Assistants tool to write blog posts, marketing emails, landing pages, and more, along with conversation intelligence — all without needing to switch between different tools.

Maybe I’m biased, but HubSpot’s AI Assistant is my top pick for a content-generation AI tool on this list. It’s free, it’s quick, and it requires little to no training.

What I love: HubSpot’s AI Assistants can help you create SEO-optimized content, from blog ideas enhanced with SEO data to generating SEO-optimized outlines, content, and meta descriptions.

2. Campaign Assistant


  • Price: Free
  • Best for: Creating engaging copy
  • What it does: Generates engaging landing pages, marketing emails, and ad copy for Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

My favorite feature of Campaign Assistant is its ability to provide a brief description of a campaign goal, target audience, and desired tone.

Campaign Assistant can also swiftly generate captivating copy for a variety of marketing assets, so you can scale your marketing campaigns more efficiently.

The seamless integration with HubSpot ensures that with just a click, a new landing page or marketing email is instantly set up in your account, embedded with the AI-crafted copy, which speeds up your process even further.

What I love: You can use Campaign Assistant to generate engaging copy in your preferred language.

2. Jasper.ai

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  • Price: Plans start at $40 per month.
  • Best for: Content creation and ideation
  • What it does: Jasper.ai’s platform is capable of just about everything you’d hope a good writing assistant should do, short of going on a coffee run.

Jasper.ai’s easy-to-use interface can help you generate ideas, craft first drafts, and edit final posts. Their available templates cover social, PPC, blogging, and more.

What I love: I love that Jasper.ai takes over the boring task of reviewing writing for tone and intention. It does take practice to insert prompts that get the result you’re looking for, but Jasper.ai is an excellent tool for conquering the blank page.

Remember: As with so many of the other AI content tools on the market, Jasper is based on GPT-3. Its ability to write naturally will only improve with time.

3. Howler AI


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  • Price: $8,000 per month
  • Best for: Targeted campaigns for press releases
  • What it does: Sifts through a database of journalists to find those that fit your industry and niche based on what they’ve written or published about before.

Is there any marketing task that is more tedious than trying to identify a journal to send press releases to? On top of that, journalists’ inboxes are stuffed with pitches, so you’ll likely need a lot of follow-up communication.

I like that Howler.AI increases the chances that your email won’t end up in the trash by optimizing it to a specific journal. Likewise, a hyper-targeted approach can ensure you align with the journalists’ existing audience.

For all these reasons and more, Howler.AI is my top pick for an AI tool to address press releases and their follow-up emails.

It’s pretty pricey, but if you’re in an industry that deals heavily with press releases, this tool can save you an enormous amount of time.

What I love: Howler AI can help you write and perfect your pitch to help you generate interest.

4. Bardeen.ai

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  • Price: Free forever plan; Professional plan starts at $10/month.
  • Best for: AI marketing automation
  • What it does: Bardeen helps streamline your workflow with AI, whether you need to keep your CRM clean and updated, personalize outreach campaigns, or synchronize data across various tools your internal team uses.

Bardeen is an AI automation tool that optimizes workflows. With Bardeen.ai, automation is now as simple as texting a friend.

I love Bardeen’s ability to integrate with other CRMs like HubSpot and over 100 other integrations, which makes it easy to automate numerous processes and boost productivity.

What I love: Bardeen is a useful solution for companies of all sizes looking to optimize their marketing and sales automation efforts. Getting started is easy, with thousands of ready-to-use automation templates to choose from.

5. LiveChatAI

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  • Price: Free versions are available. Plans start at $39 per month.
  • Best for: AI chatbot for customer support queries
  • What it does: Create a custom AI chatbot trained with your own data to manage your conversations.

If you want to allocate your business focus to different areas to be more productive, you can let LiveChatAI deal with customer support.

This software allows you to meet customer inquiries efficiently by training your AI chatbot with your data. You can both generate leads or manage efficient support operations easily.

I appreciate LiveChatAI’s easy integration with WhatsApp and Slackleading, which allows you to conduct conversations on different platforms.

Plus, if you are eager to improve your AI actions, you can use possibilities like Make.com, Open API, and webhook.

What I love: LiveChatAI allows you to combine AI support with human support and include human-agent support whenever your customer needs into the process automatically.

6. involve.me

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  • Price: Plans start at $29 per month.
  • Best for: Lead generation
  • What it does: Creates all kinds of embeddable forms, surveys, and quizzes with AI.

Marketers need to create online quizzes, forms, or surveys to gather data (like email addresses or customer feedback), organize events, or engage with audiences.

In the past, this required coding skills. Now, it‘s possible to create these tools by simply writing a brief prompt of your goals for the online form.

Involve.me will then generate the form instantly, incorporating your website’s branding, including colors, logo, and font.

Once the form is generated, users have the option to choose from several branded designs and can also customize the form using the no-code drag-and-drop editor.

I’ve had a lot of success with creating surveys and quizzes as a way to generate leads, and involve.me makes it easy to put them up on your website.

With its low price and simple integration, involve.me is my top pick for those who need an AI tool to build forms.

What I love: involve.me also offers AI features for personalization based on user input and generates detailed reports from extensive open feedback provided by users via the form. This can save hundreds of hours when dealing with a large amount of data.

7. 6Sense Revenue AI for Marketing

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  • Price: Free versions are available. Pricing is available upon inquiry.
  • Best for: Account targeting and prioritization
  • What it does: Leverages AI to analyze audience data to glean visibility into anonymous buying team research to prioritize accounts and to help focus resources.

I’ve found that when only a small fraction of a total addressable market is buying at any given time, having insight into who is actually looking can turn marketing from guesswork into a predictable pipeline.

Long a contender in the intent data space, 6Sense now has AI sifting through the massive amount of intent data to surface actionable insights. That way, your team is focusing on the highest-value activities at any given time.

What I love: 6Sense can help you match buying signals to accounts across devices and channels.

8. Adverity

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  • Price: Plans start at $500 per month.
  • Best for: Data analytics
  • What it does: Centralizes all marketing data from various sources, including campaigns across all channels, where it can be easily analyzed.

If you’re a marketer like me, then you will never have enough data. Adverity gives a single-pane view into your marketing analytics, so your team surface can identify trends and insights to empower you to make more informed decisions.

I like that Adverity has data governance built into the platform. This can help you ensure that your information is complete and high-quality. You can also maintain complete control of your data all from one place.

What I love: Adverity has pre-built connectors and no-code templates that allow you to use the platform without coding expertise.

9. Predis.ai

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  • Price: Plans start at $29 per month.
  • Best for: Social media content generation
  • What it does: Generates all types of social media content with AI.

With Predis.ai, users can give a small text input and generate a complete branded social media post, including the creative, caption, and hashtags.

I love that Predis.ai can generate branded posts, carousels, reels, videos, and memes with AI in seconds.

Users can publish or schedule the content to their favorite social media platforms with built-in integration with top platforms and content scheduler.

I think this AI tool is best for business owners, social media managers, and agencies looking to save time in generating content.

With its ease-of-use and ability to create tons of different content, Predis.ai wins my pick for a social media AI tool.

What I love: It is able to reduce the time required to make content by half. Built-in AI chat feature helps to generate text. Users can set posting targets and stay consistent on social media.

10.Flick’s AI Social Media Marketing Assistant

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  • Price: 7-day free trial with plans starting at £11 per month
  • Best for: Social media content creation and ideation
  • What it does: Everything you would want from a social media manager in seconds, including content creation, ideas, scheduling, and more.

With Flick’s AI Social Media Marketing Assistant, you will get access to a powerful AI marketing tool specifically designed to help you streamline the brainstorming, writing, content creation, and planning process for social media.

I like that Flick’s AI Assistant can help you brainstorm content ideas, generate the most on-brand captions for your accounts based on your Brand Info, and transform long-form content into bite-size captions.

You can also supply AI-generated images if you don’t have imagery, auto-generate hashtags completely based on your captions, and schedules out content for you, all in a single click.

What I love: Provide the AI Assistant with your website URL, and it will generate content based on your brand voice, audience, language, and more.

11. Drift

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  • Price: Plans start at $2,500 per month.
  • Best for: Conversational marketing
  • What it does: Turns the choose-your-own-adventure chatbot experience into an interactive support and lead generation tool.

Drift has trained its AI to answer human questions and integrated it into its chatbot experience.

This way, if a person has a question that is not featured in the chosen path, users will still get an answer or otherwise be routed directly to a person.

I currently use Drift on my own website because it is an amazing AI chatbot tool that can be helpful for screening customers visiting my site, while increasing quote requests.

You do have to set up Drift with the questions and answers you want it to ask, so the more complicated your industry, the more complicated the set up will be.

Drift is my top pick if you need an AI chatbot assistant.

What I love: Drift’s AI features can help give a VIP experience to key accounts or relieve overburdened support teams from answering simple questions that the bot can handle.

12. Zapier

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  • Pricing: Free plans are available. Paid plans start at $19 a month.
  • Best for: Text parsing
  • What it does: Connect your apps to automated workflows, saving your team time so you can focus on growth.

Zapier is designed to help you scale your business by automating time-intensive tasks. For marketers, that could include sending contacts to email lists and kicking off important workflows.

I like that Zapier can also turn text-based input — whether that’s emails, Slack messages, Tweets, or a form — into data and answer simple questions. Whether routing hand raisers from a “Contact Us” form or lead routing, Zapier can drastically cut down on manual work.

What I love: With automated text analysis, marketing teams can also parse huge amounts of text and acquire valuable insights from customer feedback that people might miss.

13. Brand24

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  • Price: Plans start at $69 per month.
  • Best for: Social listening and sentiment analysis
  • What it does: Sifts through massive amounts of information generated on public platforms, whether that’s social media or forums. Provides organizations with a dashboard that analyzes everything from mentions, the volume of discussion, and overall brand sentiment.

Customers today expect brands to respond quickly on social media.

The trouble is, if an organization is present across every major social media platform, there’s simply too much data to keep track of every comment, mention, and trending topic — and spot the signal through the noise.

I think Brand24 is a great pick for businesses that need help identifying conversations that your community management, evangelists, or social media teams should be paying attention to.

What I love: Brand24 insights can help you identify ways to improve your marketing campaign and even the product itself.

14. MarketMuse

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  • Price: Free. Paid plans start at $149 per month.
  • Best for: Content strategy and planning
  • What it does: Analyzes your website and uncovers top opportunities in search, helping surface gaps in your content.

Depending on how long your content engine has been running, the volume of content existing on your website could make auditing a time suck. MarketMuse can help you focus on what matters: creating better content your audience wants.

I like to use MarketMuse for identifying blogs and content I have that fits keywords I need to target. This narrows down which blogs I should refresh and invest more time into.

What I love: MarketMuse can help you find keywords that match your content. You’ll also see ways to optimize your content for search engine result pages.

15. Semrush

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  • Price: Plans start at $119.95 per month.
  • Best for: Search Engine Optimization
  • What it does: Helps generate content and ensure your writing is optimized for SEO.

Semrush has long been a top contender for managing keyword targeting for SEO and paid campaigns. Now, they’ve integrated AI in the form of The SEO Writing Assistant (SWA), making an already powerful platform even more robust.

I personally use Semrush to build backlinks (a truly time-consuming marketing task) and for analyzing my competitor’s seo strategies.

If you lack the budget for a product like BrightEdge, I think Semrush is a great substitute for those who need an AI SEO tool.

What I love: SWA is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s like a personal writing assistant who can ensure your writing is targeted toward achieving the best results in search.

16. Crayon

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  • Price: Pricing is available upon request.
  • Best for: Competitive intelligence
  • What it does: Automatically gathers and organizes data from millions of sources to help you track industry trends.

Similar to Semrush, Crayon has been a leader in their field for years. They’ve recently integrated AI to help sort through millions of data points from sources across the web to help you gain a better competitive advantage.

Crayon’s AI and machine learning integrations help make sense of what information is important about your competitors and what’s just noise.

I like that Crayon keeps track of SEC filings, pricing updates, and messaging pivots while summarizing the important information in an easy-to-share format.

What I love: You can take a deep dive into competitors. Crayon assesses your competitors’ digital footprints to provide a view of the competitive landscape.

17. Lavender

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  • Price: Pricing starts at $29 per month.
  • Best for: Email training
  • What it does: Plugs directly into your email platform of choice and suggests how to improve email content to drive more replies.

If you’re looking to optimize your emails, Lavender can help. Whether you’re writing an internal memo or a pitch for journalists, Lavender can compose the text for you — or just help you optimize your message.

Lavender can also help your sales teams. Account executives and sales development representatives can craft personalized emails to hook prospects.

I love the email feature because writing sales collateral is a time consuming part of my job and Lavender can reduce the time I spend.

What I love: Lavender gathers prospect news, data, and insights so you can craft a personalized, timely message to close deals.

18. Braze

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  • Price: Pricing is available upon request.
  • Best for: Customer intelligence
  • What it does: Integrates with all your data sources (CRM, MAP, etc.) and looks for signals that a customer might be at risk for churn or shows interest in potential upsell opportunities. Suggests potential messaging strategies to use based on that same data.

Many organizations have been laser-focused on customer retention.

Braze helps even the smallest teams save thousands of hours sifting through data to understand what their customers need, whether that’s an additional feature or more engagement from their account managers.

Sometimes, the signals related to churn are difficult to see. I love that Braze can help your sales team re-engage prospects with marketing content, customer support, and more.

What I love: Braze can also help marketing create personalized offers using data. You can also A/B test your campaigns to see how they impact sales.

19. Axiom.ai


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  • Pricing: Plans start at $15 a month.
  • Best for: Automation of repetitive tasks
  • What it does: Automates scraping and interacts with websites in simple ways that previously required a person.

Unlike the process flow automation offered by tools like Zapier, Axiom.ai falls into a category known as Robotic Process Automation.

Axiom.ai can scrape data and automate simple tasks. Your team can gather data from Google Trends, automate website actions, and build bots.

Axiom.ai can take on the brunt of mundane marketing tasks, and with its low price point it gets my vote as the top AI tool for automation.

What I love: Axiom can scrape websites for data, extract information, or perform other simple user interface actions.

20. Hemingway

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  • Pricing: $19.99
  • Best for: Content editing
  • What it does: Analyze your content and suggest where you could make it clearer, more concise, or improve your diction.

As Strunk and White suggest, you should omit needless words when writing. The only question that we sometimes have is, which ones?

Hemingway uses AI and machine learning to identify opportunities at a sentence level that can make your writing that much stronger.

What I love: Hemingway gives you a readability score so you can assess your overall performance.

21. Grammarly

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  • Pricing: Free basic tool or $12 USD a month for Premium
  • Best for: Content editing, grammar, and AI writing
  • What it does: Spell-checks, grammar checks, offers different tones for writing, and more.

Grammarly is like a more grown-up Hemingway, with more features and a convenient plug-in for different browser types.

I have been a long-time user of Grammarly, and if there’s one AI tool you need on this list for content marketing, it’s this one.

The reason I’ve stuck with Grammarly for so long is because their grammar and spell check really are the best in the industry.

If you want to sound and look professional on your blog, your writing really should be as close to 100% error-free as possible.

I originally started with the free Grammarly version which made a difference in my writing, but the upgrade to Premium has been worth it for me.

That's because I can now get suggestions in Google Docs, as well as take advantage of the AI content creator tool.

What I love: Grammarly gives you professional writing-level grammar, spelling, and tone suggestions.

22. CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence

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  • Pricing: $85/month
  • Best for: Call recording, transcription, and summaries
  • What it does: Analyze all your calls, all the time, turning your conversations into easy-to-act-on data.

Leveraging a robust AI trained with more than 650,000 hours of vocal data, Conversation Intelligence effortlessly transcribes and examines all your incoming and outgoing phone conversations with precision.

It almost matches human expertise.

This results in enhanced keyword detection, more precise auto-tagging, improved lead categorization, and refined sentiment analysis, freeing your team from countless hours of manual tasks.

What I love: CallRail's conversation intelligence creates action-based analytics to determine the best way to interact with your customers and leads.

My Top Marketing AI Tool Picks

As a recap, here are my top seven AI tools marketing teams should have if they perform these functions:

  1. Content writing:Grammarly. It’s a must-have for ensuring your writing is top-notch and error-free.
  2. AI chatbots:Drift. This is a straightforward chatbot AI technology that can win you leads.
  3. Content creation: HubSpot’s AI Assistant. It’s a free and easy-to-use AI content generation tool.
  4. Press releases:Howler.AI. This tool is pricey but could potentially replace a corporate communications position by automating press releases and follow up.
  5. Building forms:Involve.me. The tool creates forms that actually convert with ease.
  6. Social media:Predis.ai You can customize social media templates and automate your tasks.
  7. Automation:Axiom.ai. It takes on the brunt of mundane marketing tasks with a low price point.

Going Beyond ChatGPT

If you use AI ethically and with the right guidelines in place, it’s no different than any other tool. Whatever your marketing needs, there’s an AI tool out there that exists to make your job easier.

In the meantime, move past just using ChatGPT and try out other AI tools that take away boring marketing tasks so you can focus on doing what you truly love.

https://tinyurl.com/bdz4nh64

понедельник, 22 июля 2024 г.

Проблемы стратегического управления = стратегические проблемы организации

 

Проблемы стратегического управления – ранний индикатор ухудшения конкурентоспособности и возможного последующего краха компании. Такие проблемы не возникают сами собой, а проистекают из существующих в компании практик управления.

Стратегические проблемы организации зарождаются в глубине системы управления и часто скрыты от глаз даже внимательного внутреннего наблюдателя. С помощью специальных подходов можно заранее выявить некоторые такие проблемы и своевременно предпринять соответствующие превентивные меры.

Ярким отражением проблем стратегического управления является стратегия развития. Несмотря на то, что только время может показать, насколько хороша или плоха стратегия компании, есть однозначные признаки, наличие которых позволяет заранее оценить вероятность её реализации.


На рисунке выше представлены типичные проблемы стратегического управления, которые часто идентифицируются нами при анализе стратегической документации

Проблема стратегического управления №1. Недостаточная аналитическая проработка

Одной из главных проблем является неполный стратегический анализ внешней и внутренней среды. Например, если разработчик стратегии исходит из стратегического допущения, что тенденция развития отрасли линейная, то это сильный повод насторожиться.

В современном мире нельзя считать, что тенденция продолжится. Наоборот, многолетний существующий тренд является поводом задуматься о возможности его слома, чтобы предпринять превентивные меры. Хорошая стратегия должна основываться на принципах системной динамики и учитывать цикличность развития экономики и общества.

Также стоит насторожиться, если в стратегии отсутствует анализ имеющихся у компании ресурсов в широком понимании. Речь идёт не только об обычных материальных и денежных ресурсах, которые стратегические и финансовые департаменты отлично рассчитывают с помощью таблиц.

Речь идёт о стратегическом анализе нематериальных ресурсов, о которых мы говорили ранее. Под ресурсами в широком понимании имеются в виду не только компетенции персонала, но и отношенческий, организационный и интеллектуальный капиталы. Подробнее об этом вы можете почитать в книге Managing Intellectual Capital in Practice.

Если в стратегии отсутствует анализ возможности использования этих ресурсов для захвата новых или предполагаемых рыночных возможностей, то это, конечно, не затрагивает текущую бизнес-модель, но является той проблемой стратегического управления, которая создаёт стратегические проблемы организации в будущем.


Перечисленные выше особенности вашей стратегии могут косвенно означать, что менеджмент компании начинает «вязнуть» в текущей бизнес-модели, и не рассматривает в полной мере изменения своей отрасли и смежных рынков. На диаграмме выше показаны фрагменты инструментов стратегического анализа, который помогает решать данные проблемы стратегического управления.

Но необходимо понимать, что даже передовые методы стратегического анализа в методологии Strategium Space — далеко не панацея. Важно и то, какую информацию вы подаёте на вход этих методов и какие стратегические допущения используете при анализе.

Обратите внимание, если вы не сделаете качественный PESTEL-анализ, то на вход в SWOT-анализ попадут неполные данные: такие мелочи и создают стратегические проблемы организации.

Проблема стратегического управления №2. Подмена стратегии целями

Другой распространенной проблемой является то, что компания в своих стратегических начинаниях ограничивается лишь формулированием новых целей или видением желаемого будущего. Мы часто слышим практически ультимативные заявления о том, что именно компания будет представлять собой в будущем.

Такой подход к стратегическому развитию больше похож на выдачу желаемого за действительное. В результате получится вовсе не стратегия, а красиво оформленный список благих намерений менеджмента и акционеров. Это инфантильное заявление, похожее на детскую отговорку «хочу стать космонавтом».


Стратегия развития должна содержать четкий и предусматривающий все необходимые ресурсы план достижения намеченного будущего состояния. Да, действительно, это желаемое состояние описывается видением компании и уточняется картой стратегических целей, пример которой показан выше.

Да, такая визуализация очень полезна и соответствует правильному определению стратегии развития организации. Но такое описание далеко не полный стратегический план, а лишь один из его необходимых разделов.

Чтобы не пропустить важнейшие этапы разработки стратегии необходимо использовать научно обоснованные методологии. Например, шаг за шагом выполняя инструкции и используя шаблоны в рамках нашего практикума по разработке стратегии развития. С помощью этого детального и пошагового руководства по разработке стратегии развития вы или ваша команда не пропустите важных этапов и обеспечите высокое качество стратегического плана.

Проблема стратегического управления №3. Узкие и неоднозначные по методам достижения цели


Одной из проблем стратегического управления также является неоднозначность целей или выражение их только в финансовых показателях (доход или прибыль). Если не уточнять другие ключевые параметры будущего состояния компании, то реализация такой стратегии может быть лишь случайностью.

Такое утверждение имеет под собой научные обоснования. Одним из них является принцип ограниченной интенциональности стратегической теории фирмы. Из этого принципа следует несколько выводов, часть из которых напрямую предъявляет требования к стратегии, как к детальному описанию будущего состояния с помощью различных целевых параметров.

Финансовые параметры лишь отражают физическую реальность в одном из измерений, но далеко не описывают её. Нефинансовые параметры будущего состояния компании гораздо более важны.

Дело в том, что при отсутствии подобных уточнений и ограничений менеджмент компании стремится найти наименее затратные для себя способы достижения целей. Обычно это происходит за счет использования методов, подрывающих долгосрочное развитие компании.

Эта проблема стратегического управления становится особенно опасной, если доход менеджеров в значительной степени зависит от достижения этих узких и, в то же время, многовариантных по способам достижения стратегических, как правило, финансовых целей.

Особенно опасными в этом смысле являются системы ключевых показателей эффективности, которые формально правильны, но могут вызвать дисбалансы развития и снизить отзывчивость компании на изменения внешней среды. Эту тему мы разберём в отдельном уроке.

Проблема стратегического управления №4. Отсутствие операционализации стратегических планов

Представим, что созданный стратегический план развития компании чёток, прозрачен и обеспечен необходимыми ресурсами. Однако, часто бывает, что стратегия развития описывает план деятельности только компании в целом. Это обстоятельство тоже входит в проблемы стратегического управления.

Любая организация является сложной многоуровневой социально-экономической системой. Поэтому отсутствие каскадирования стратегического плана на нижние уровни управления значительно подрывает доверие к нему со стороны исполнителей.

Исключение из стратегического процесса нижних уровней управления угрожает не только намеченной стратегии развития, но и будущему компании.

Дело в том, что стратегия сама по себе имеет ценность только тогда, когда она транслируется в конкретные действия по её реализации на всех уровнях организации. Именно на данном этапе стратегия должна превращаться из сложных, порой, научных текстов и мало понятных исполнителям схем, графиков и аналитических абстракций в чёткие проектные, функциональные, производственные и личные задания, основанные на стратегических намерениях предприятия.

Процесс каскадирования и синхронизации стратегии мы уже рассматривали в одном из предыдущих уроков. Повторим типовую схему.


Процесс каскадирования (операционализации) стратегий для крупной корпорации

Как решать проблемы стратегического управления и предотвращать стратегические проблемы организации

Основным условием решения проблем стратегического управления является наличие процессов разработки и реализации долгосрочных планов внутри организации. Не в холдинге, не в управляющей компании и не в министерстве или Госплане, а внутри конкретного предприятия. Наличие стратегического плана является необходимым, но недостаточным условием, чтобы предотвратить стратегические проблемы организации.

Долгосрочную конкурентоспособность определяют несколько важнейших областей, и качество содержания стратегии развития не единственная из них. Значительную роль играют:

  • оперативные информационные взаимодействия внутри компании по стратегическим вопросам,
  • развитые и устойчивые процессы стратегического анализа и планирования,
  • а также процессы реализации стратегии в части её каскадирования и мониторинга.

Применение нашего продвинутого метода разработки стратегии развития для одного стратегического цикла недостаточно для решения долгосрочных стратегических проблем. Такой метод должен быть встроен в управленческие процессы организации и использоваться регулярно.


Обеспечение качества этих процессов обеспечивает и качество результатов этих процессов, а именно, грамотное и логическое содержание самой стратегии, а также настройку необходимых ресурсов и систем организации на достижение поставленных целей.

Основную роль в процессе настройки выполняет процессно-ориентированное управление, интегрирующее стратегический и операционный контуры компании. Внедрить систему регулярного стратегического менеджмента – единственный метод системно решать стратегические проблемы организации. Наш практикум по внедрению такой системы помогает сделать это.


©Дмитрий Рыцев – автор является основателем проекта Strategium.Space и специализируется на стратегическом управлении в своей научной и деловой деятельности.

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Stakeholder Engagement and Empowerment Options

 


Policy advocacy

In helping my clients to develop advocacy campaign plans and stakeholder engagement strategies, I often find the assumption we start with is that the client has ‘the message’ and everyone else with an interest is seen as ‘the audience’.

Discussion inevitably ensues about the focus on ‘public interest’ versus a possible perception of ‘vested interest’. The framing of the message is one issue, but the medium is also the message, so the selection of the communication vehicle, who the organisation chooses to partner with, who acts as spokesperson, and what mechanisms will work best to achieve the desired policy outcome, all require careful consideration as well.

The header chart above draws attention to four models of participation in policy and service design:

  • Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation identifies the options available to governments seeking to engage with citizens on public policy issues;
  • The Stakeholder Matrix approach suggests options available when campaign coordination committees are planning engagement with parties known to have an interest in an issue;
  • The RASCI project management approach offers a mechanism for project managers to assign one or more roles to project team members and stakeholders; and
  • The Co-Design Process model describes major steps or stages in the process of solving a problem or developing a product or service with a focus on user experience and requirements

These four models are generally used for different purposes at different times. Consequently, their common elements are not necessarily drawn to attention. The light blue horizontal bars in this chart highlight elements which could be considered similar, or comparable, across all models. They speak to the degree of empowerment available to those ultimately affected by decision-making processes, ranging from passive audience to empowered co-design partners. Of course, with greater involvement comes greater responsibility and accountability, and that too needs to be recognised by all participants.

Polarity or Partnership

The choices available when considering other stakeholders (who may have an interest in your advocacy issue) are broadly outlined in the schematic below. You can see the other parties as having no overlapping interest, having a broadly aligned interest, being allies with some shared interests, or as partners with mostly a common interest. In my experience, the closer you can come to an alliance or partnership, the more you will be recognised as acting in the ‘public interest’.


Stakeholder Analysis

The well-known stakeholder matrix divides interested parties into four groups according to the extent of their interest and influence in the matter. The chart below re-orients the usual quadrant chart to emphasise the vertical axis, and the hierarchy of choices in the level and types of stakeholder engagement available to you.


Stakeholder Proximity and Engagement

The chart below overlays the traditional onion diagram, showing internal, external, and public interest rings, with characterisations of stakeholder dispositions, whether they be supporters, opponents, bystanders, or undecided on the issue. For each of these groups, different types and frequency of engagement are suggested. This chart draws heavily on excellent material developed by Dr Mike Clayton, author of The Influence Agenda.


Effective advocacy

Advocacy campaigns which seek public benefit will usually be more effective if they engage and involve the group for whom improved outcomes are sought. Advocates who provide services for needy client groups may only be seen to be promoting their own business interests if their bids for additional resources (to meet special needs in the community) do not involve the ultimate stakeholders.

https://tinyurl.com/mvw2err4