Story of OrgVue
OrgVue is the product of deeply experienced business consultants being frustrated with the lack tools available for doing organisational design. The journey to develop OrgVue has taken 7-years, the creation of a new type of firm, and the bringing together of a diverse set of industry leading skills. Below are the highlights of this journey so far.
Chapter 1: A pain is keenly felt
When organisations seek ways to improve there is always pain involved. The models that inform organisational design are difficult to produce, clunky to work with and hard to communicate. Managers and consultants can spend weeks or months on detailed legwork and present recommended options only to find stakeholders arguing among themselves. PowerPoint, Excel and Visio are the only tools available and they are hopelessly ill-suited to the task - just ask the people that have been up all night building the models and their audience.
Frustrations felt by our clients include:
- Getting to a macro-level design can be relatively easy even in complex environments. The micro-level design where the detail of individual activities and interfaces lives is always painful
- Once a detailed design or scenario is mapped (at an accountabilities-in-role level) the design and its implementation becomes hard, if not impossible, to maintain
- There are dramatic risks in any right-sizing activity. Detailed analysis and benchmarking helps but maintaining line-of-sight to business objectives proves impossible
- Data quality is generally poor to begin with and erodes dramatically over time. By the time the design is finalised the underlying data and assumptions are out of date. Finalising the business case and getting sign-off is messy and time consuming
- Communicating the new organisation and rationale for the design is critical as perceptions have a powerful impact on a change programmes. PowerPoint and Visio are too limited and painful to prepare
Chapter 2: There has to be a better way
Concentra was formed with the coming together of two worlds. Management consultants with deep experience helping the world's largest businesses improve and an award winning technology firm and statistical analytics team who are the UK leaders in visualisation for data and process-driven applications.
We would often see transformation programmes start with a commitment to improve organisations but morph over time into a slash-and-burn cuts project as commitment wanes in the face of implementation difficulty. Even when the start is positive, perceptions of what a programme's intent is can wreak havoc on achieving the outcomes.
We knew there had to be a better way of capturing, modelling and communicating organisational change using our combined capabilities. One that made the transition to organisational fitness easier for everyone.
Chapter 3: What was it going to take?
Whatever the answer it had to meet a set of 'no compromise' principles. It had to support millions of entities, it had to have the ease-of-use and engaging user experience of the 'iPhone and Web 2.0' world and as every organisation has reporting and process hierarchies it had to handle relationships beautifully. We wanted it 'just to work' for anyone, from anywhere and be flexible enough to capture any data thrown at it. At its heart it needed to seamlessly incorporate people, processes and performance information.
An enterprise grade, SaaS delivered product that met these needs was going to take solid commitment and require funding.
The task we had set ourselves was daunting.
Chapter 4: What a team to get busy with
In mid-2010 we put together a leading team of architects and developers, the brightest and best with a passion for user interfaces, data and visualisation. Two venture capital (VC) funds Solon Ventures (a deeply experienced British tech fund) and Notion Capital (the ex-founders of MessageLabs) shared our vision and joined the team. We started by robustly testing and refining the idea, conducting detailed interviews with dozens of high-level professionals across all industries and firm types to ensure we were solving their real-world issues. Concentra ring-fenced the development of OrgVue and adopted the detailed approach to quality assurance taken with our critical client developments.
Chapter 5: Unleashed to market
An elegant user interface was coupled to a robust, flexible graph database (a type highly suited to hierarchies and relationships). The University of Westminster came on board early as our academic partner, recognising the powerful organisation design principles OrgVue supports. As we showcased early prototypes to senior execs in large firms, local authority leaders and partners in global consultancies, the feedback was unanimous: they'd never seen anything like it before. Talent management systems, HR analytics and Business Process Management (BPM) all have a place but this is the first product that brings them together, flexibly and engagingly for real-world modelling. We rapidly took on 4 pilot projects with many others in the wings, you can see the remarkable results being achieved here.
The analogy we use to describe what OrgVue can do is physical fitness. Too often individuals chase clumsy diets and potentially dangerous weight loss instead of focussing on fitness and the balance it entails. OrgVue is designed to help an organisation become fit, not just lean. It supports the link from company strategy and goals to people and what they do.
'The fit organisation' has been accepted as a formal research topic and we'll be co-publishing with the University of Westminster. An academic research programme is being drawn up to support a book and white paper due for publication in 2012.
