A Sneak Peek into the Strategy Planning and Implementation Function
Hevo is growing at a fast pace, and we need to continue doing that to win in the market. Though growth is defined by the number of customers and top-line, these north star metrics need to be translated to function-level plans and activities. Someone in the organization needs to stitch the long-term vision to the 1-year plan and to the monthly/weekly outcomes. If we don’t do this, fast-growing companies like Hevo have a risk of losing sight of their strategic goals. To make sure that every function in the organization is aligned to meet these goals, Hevo has set up a Strategy Planning and Implementation function.
The Strategy team broadly fulfills its objectives through two types of activities — planning & implementation, and independent thought leadership.
Planning & Implementation
We start with a company-level north star metric, which generally entails increasing our customer base and revenue by a certain amount, say 5x for a sample year. The Strategy team then breaks this down into month-on-month trajectory and functional metrics like leads, product activations, sales funnel efficiency, etc. These functional metrics are then communicated with the respective teams, which in turn become their function-specific north star metrics.
Now, planning is just one piece of the puzzle. We also need to ensure that we as an organization are meeting our plans every month. To do that, the Strategy team further anchors weekly and monthly business reviews where all the functions discuss their performance, progress, and blockers/problems. The Strategy team ensures that the functional teams have the right data, analytics, and viewpoints to have a coherent picture that can be discussed with the broader leadership.
The Strategy team also ensures transparency by maintaining ongoing communication with external stakeholders, primarily investors, about the quarterly and monthly performance of the organization.
Independent Thought Leadership
While the Strategy team has one eye looking inwards, it is incomplete without the second eye monitoring outwards. While the team performs data analytics on marketing, sales, product, and support data to derive insights and impact strategic as well as tactical decision making, acting as a central intelligence unit upon which other teams rely for planned and ad-hoc inputs, it also keeps a tab on the industry and competition. It is responsible for regular competitive benchmarking on dimensions such as product features, pricing plans, operating metrics, and financial metrics (if available). This helps the organization prioritize investments, projects, and product developments based on market needs.
The team also undertakes some ad-hoc projects which generally cut across multiple functions because it has the best view of how different functions operate and what are they currently working on.
Ways of working of Strategy Team at Hevo
At Hevo, we believe in first-principle thought processes and decision-making based on data. In fact, our mission is to help companies make quality decisions through data. The same applies to the Strategy team as well, along with some of the other values that we adhere to on a daily basis. We discuss these in detail below.
- First Principle Problem Solving
The Strategy team has visibility and understanding of all functions in the organization. Hence, the team has a unique advantage in solving problems that involve multiple functions. The team uses First Principle Problem-Solving to break the problems at hand into the smallest possible pieces, and overlay data onto these pieces to pinpoint the problematic ones. We then devise a solution, implement it and monitor the outcome.
2. Data-first Approach in Decision Making
As the common cliche goes, actions speak louder than words, and it is not possible to encourage an attitude within a company without implementing it in a top-down manner. We seek to lead by example, which is why every decision, whether it be by the top management or an intern on their first day, is backed by data. The Strategy team spends a lot of time on data analysis and insights and provides actionable insights to the leadership.
It is an exciting time to be at Hevo because we are growing rapidly and solving interesting problems on a day-to-day basis. The Strategy team at Hevo provides an exceptional opportunity to practice structured problem-solving, implement org-wide solutions, and influence decision making. We have already made a meaningful impact across marketing, sales and product functions, and continue to do so to propel the rocket ship that is Hevo.
