Communicating Your Business Roadmaps
Are you responsible for communicating your business strategy or helping different parts of your business to proactively engage in developing new products that are aligned to your business strategy and market needs, by utilizing innovative technology?
If you are, you will know that communicating this kind of information is quite a challenge for many reasons such as the complexity, the variety of people and functions that need to be engaged, the linkages between technology resources and company objectives, as well as the lack of time and the ability to maintain.
Technology is an important strategic asset for you and there is an increasing need for you to include technological considerations in your strategy and planning processes.
Using visual roadmaps as a way to map your strategy, innovation and technology plans and understand the linkages between each element provides you with a framework that is easy for people to understand, communicate and deliver.
What type of roadmap do you need?
There are various types of roadmaps that you can use, which have different purposes and formats. Some of these are listed below:
Purpose
- Product Planning – type of technology roadmap identifying technology within products, including generations of the product
- Capability planning – this is for more service based businesses and how technology acts as an enabler
- Strategic planning – identifies strategic areas including the evaluation of opportunities and threats – refer to SWOT workshop.
- Long-range planning – sometimes referred to Horizon Planning and can span hundred years plus and is applied typically at a national level.
- Knowledge asset planning – this helps to align your knowledge assets and knowledge management system with your business initiatives. Using Strategy Maps is also a good visual tool to use.
- Programme planning – this typically takes the format of Gantt charts and visualise multiple projects and programmes such as R&D, Innovation.
- Process planning – Facilitates the management of knowledge to support a particular business process such as New Product Development (note the image below is based on a Pharmaceutical NPD and Manufacturing roadmap)
- Integration planning – Focusses on the integration/evolution if technologies and how they can be used to develop new products.
Format
The format of technology roadmaps can vary from very structured to pictorial. Click on the link at the bottom of this email to see some examples of different formats using SharpCloud. Formats can include:
- Multiple layers
- Bars
- Table
- Graph
- Pictorial
- Flow
- Single layer
- Text
The advantage of using Roelto’s R-TRM (Roelto – Technology Roadmap) or R-SRM (Roelto – Strategy Roadmap) roadmapping solutions, powered by SharpCloud is that you can use all formats where applicable and you can select from any of the roadmap templates based on the purpose of your roadmap.
The advantage of using Roelto’s R-TRM (Roelto – Technology Roadmap) or R-SRM (Roelto – Strategy Roadmap) roadmapping solutions, powered by SharpCloud is that you can use all formats where applicable and you can select from any of the roadmap templates based on the purpose of your roadmap.
“Visual roadmaps are great communication tools to communicate complex plans and relationships associated with your business strategy, innovation and technology .”
Life Sciences Roadmap – Filtered to show Continuous Improvement
Free 14 Day R-VCS Workshop Trial
If you want to create a Roadmap for your business or project you can start by completing a Free Roadmapping Workshop.
A Roadmap is a high-level visual tool that can be used by you to support the development and implementation of strategy and plans, as well as supporting communication of the plan.
The workshop will use the T-Plan and S-Plan roadmapping methodology developed by Institute of Manufacturing, at Cambridge University. As a trained T/S-Plan workshop facilitator I can quickly help you develop your Roadmap so you can start to improve the communication and alignment of your business objectives and technology assets.
Just let me know what type of roadmap you want to do and I’ll start setting it up for you.
Just book a meeting with me “Meeting with Jason” by clicking the button below. Follow the booking instructions, choose a date and time suitable for you, leave your details and click DONE when complete.
That’s it and I look forward to speaking with you!
Best regards
Jason
