Why is Strategy Execution a pain for many companies? Most companies are really great at developing strategies. Some of those strategies are “must haves” like everything around regulation and compliances. Most mid-term strategies reflect the view that enterprise has on the world and how it will take advantage of the situation at hand. Nicely written up in their annual reports, most companies lie out their plans to gain market share, grow in new areas or even transform their business. Yet when we look at it, when we do a reality check and compare the investments of these companies with their strategic plans it becomes apparent that only a fraction of all enterprises puts their money where their mouth is. Because while strategy development and communication are about knowing something, strategy execution is about doing something. And the gap between what you know and what you do is often huge. Add in the necessity of having everyone acting in alignment with each other, and it gets even huger. Obviously there is something very wrong, right? In this session, we explore how companies can master the art of strategic planning, communicating clearly and aligning long-term objectives with day-to-day operations even when the systemic element of tying strategy to execution seems “solvable” by IT.

HC has a background as Product Manager for Knowledge Management Solutions. His collaboration with Fraunhofer*, Steinbeis* and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI*) about methods to apply AI in knowledge management goes back to 1999. As Chairman of Manufacturing Solutions for Jan Baan he was responsible for enabling companies with agile business processes and comprehensive analytics to allow faster decision making in a volatile world. With more than 20 years of experience with solutions for knowledge- and decision-intensive business processes, HC Eppich today focuses on aligning strategic initiatives with operational excellence, still building on the foundation of knowledge management principles. In his current role as Business Development Director for Sopheon, HC supports customers across various industries to execute on their strategies, future-proof their current portfolios and achieve more revenue with new business.