The Enterprise Map: A System for Implementing Strategy and Achieving Operational Excellence

Abstract:

This article describes how senior leaders can use the tools and techniques of systems analysis to develop a top-level process architecture that identifies the key processes of a business and specifies the critical interconnections and interrelationships between them. We call this top-level architecture an enterprise map and we believe it represents an important addition to a senior management toolkit, complementing other popular, performance-enhancing tools like process maps (Eckes, 2001) and the balanced scorecard (Kaplan and Norton, 1992). We have used the enterprise map to help the senior leaders of a networking products company merge what they had described as “islands of quality” into an integrated quality system, complete with an operational “dashboard” for measuring and managing process performance. We have also used it to help the leaders of a network services company identify the operational implications of a new strategy and translate them into specific modifications of the business processes that were required to execute it. The effort also helped them set aside functional roles that had begun to hamper their performance and enabled them to address the strategic change as an integrated leadership team.