What is Hoshin Kanri
This blog gives you an quick overview of hoshin kanri and why you should know this effective strategy deployment method.
Implementing hoshin kanri with software
Why hoshin kanri software - we already have Excel
Hoshin Kanri is a powerful methodology for strategic planning and management that can help organizations align their objectives with their vision and mission, and ensure that all employees are aware of and working towards the organization’s objectives. The implementation of Hoshin Kanri software can provide organizations with a kickstart to hoshin kanri or boost their hoshin kanri processes and organizational transparency.
Excel or an equivalent office tool is often used in documenting hoshin kanri materials. However, such office solutions have many handicaps which can jeopardize the successful implementation of hoshin kanri. The essence of hoshin kanri is to openly share information across the organization to increase engagement. In addition, hoshin kanri is supposed to ensure better alignment toward common objectives. Lastly, hoshin is supposed to create an efficient and harmonized management process in the organization.
Critical handicaps of office software (e.g. Excel) in hoshin kanri
- Storing office documents in SharePoint may seem simple, but long-term document management and version control in larger organizations are challenging. In addition, sharing such office documents with many employees openly requires a lot of effort in access control and might lead to the need for storing materials in pdf format separately.
- Alignment, aka catchball, is often done manually by comparing two documents side-by-side. Horizontal alignment with support functions is difficult. Often separate software is needed for managing projects that overlap many parts of the organization.
- Daily, weekly, and monthly management can become a nightmare with manual data updates in many locations.
- Training needs are underestimated: Standard office software requires an organization-specific template to be developed and trained for all employees.
Why hoshin kanri software
1. Transparency across the organization
With hoshin kanri software, such as Amplon, users can have different access rights enabling viewing or editing if needed. The X matrix is a powerful tool to visualize the strategies of each department. By enabling view rights to a large number of employees, transparency and engagement increase.
With the software, users don’t need to be worried about storing the data as all changes are saved to the database automatically. Those with editor rights can easily update materials and progress as frequently as they like. So while KPI and development project progress are always up-to-date, employees are fully aware of the situation – all the time.
2. Quick alignment
One of the critical benefits of Hoshin Kanri software is that it can help organizations to align their efforts across different departments and levels of the organization quickly—no more comparing Excel files side-by-side.
Furthermore, the management can quickly see how the alignment work is progressing in the organization.
Finally, Hoshin Kanri software can foster collaboration across different departments and levels of the organization. This helps ensure that everyone is working towards the same objectives and can improve communication and teamwork across the organization.
3. Real-time dashboard for instant overview
The speed of businesses is growing, which leads to introducing a new level of agility into the execution of strategic projects. Agility in project execution means continuously updating strategic project portfolio and their progress. Integrated project portfolio management in Amplon makes this effortless.
Hoshin kanri software makes the daily, weekly, and monthly management process efficient, as updates are immediately available for everyone. Furthermore, with software, the maturity of the management process is quickly improved.
Another benefit of Hoshin Kanri software is that it can provide real-time data and analytics, which can be used to make informed decisions about allocating resources and managing risks. This can help organizations be more efficient in their efforts to achieve their objectives and can also help to ensure that they make the most effective use of their resources.
4. Implementation
Hoshin Kanri method implementation can be a long process if the organization’s maturity is low and the practice of setting tangible and measurable objectives is new. In Amplon, the AI-assisted coach will help managers to increase the quality of the strategic objectives faster, that shortens the method implementation time by up to 50%.
Implementing Hoshin Kanri software can be a simple process. Modern SaaS (software as a service) and cloud-based solutions can be implemented within a few hours.
The benefit of off-the-shelf hoshin kanri software is to get access to proven templates immediately and to ensure the data quality is improved instantly. For instance, in Amplon, usability has always been the focus. As one CEO said: “It took me less than an hour to formulate group strategy in Amplon.” The software can be intuitive, enabling efficient working with the X matrix, while the limitations of Excel are not guiding your work.
Watch the podcast video that is made by a Vaasa University researcher to see what Foamit Group says about implementing hoshin kanri with Amplon.
Play Video about Amplon is hoshin kanri software that contains a digital X matrix for strategy visualization.
Amplon is hoshin kanri software
Amplon uses the Hoshin Kanri principles to engage all employees and the digitalized X matrix to visualize the strategy.
With Amplon companies can design a bottom-up strategy and can easily adapt this software to their culture and processes. Amplon makes it easy to share common development projects and activities ensuring focus in the organization. Instant monitoring of strategy through software dashboards allows the immediate reaction to any deviation.
Amplon is easy-to-use, so you can immediately focus on content, not the software features and widgets.
Kickstart your hoshin kanri journey with Amplon or take your existing hoshin kanri process to a next level
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