Following COP26, businesses will be feverishly re-writing their 5-year plans to include many of the new promises made by global leaders. In the following blog, we identify how large organisations, industries and government departments can manage a shift in focus to help meet wider governmental priorities.

COP26 isn’t the only reason businesses spanning wide industry sectors might be re-thinking their organisational objectives this year. 2021 was the year of recovery, understanding, new beginnings, work-style-shift, innovation, and unfortunately for some, defeat. 2022 and beyond will want to see operations begin to grow and mellow after the rocky ride we’ve all just experienced.

But now comes, arguably, the ‘priority of priorities’; the health and wellbeing of the planet is not just a social issue, but a political one. And organisations that don’t make some amends to their existing goals in favour of protecting the planet from future harm might well see their customer base dwindle as its importance rises and becomes a ‘front and centre’ issue with the world’s population.

Local government organisations:

Local Government organisations are unique in that they face similar challenges to each other, such as social care, education, general wellbeing of the local population, housing, transport etc. However, based on where in the country they are positioned, the environmental challenges they face might be dramatically different, along with some social and economic factors that might also require specific consideration.

Richard Godfrey explains in his webinar, Generalisation kills clarity, how a digital strategy with no direction on how to identify specific obsticles and deliver a plan to overcome them, means nothing. And this is true of a Local Authority organisation. A deep understanding of their local landscape is required and being aware of triggers, weather warnings or just being prepared for a sudden disaster is a must to mitigate crisis situations for maintaining the safety of residents within a particular area.

Central government organisations:

The scale and complexities of Central Government make shifting priorities more of a daunting prospect for disparate departments to align and co-ordinate on. Tracking the progress of smaller agencies and developing robust communication plans for internal alignment as well as for building external confidence requires careful planning and sign-off from various stakeholders. And project managing within strict timelines and frameworks, all happening while the nation watches your every move with great expectation, takes a certain set of skills and an incredible amount of bravado.

The private sector:

Private sector organisations have particular expertise to be proud of, that make them stand out from the crowd and that maintain their competitive edge. Changing their direction as a result of a global movement like COP26 might require significant transformation. Aligning with the government’s plans, while also achieving their own, might require a complete reimagination of their unique selling points, specifically within industries such as utilities, engineering, and construction industries, to name a few. If their company history is fast becoming obsolete, it might be a time of ‘innovate or die’, a challenge that has faced other businesses famously, such as Kodak and BlockBuster, who didn’t pivot fast enough to their detriment.

How Verto 365 can help:

The Verto 365 platform has grown from initially providing customisable and flexible tools specific to the project and programme management industry to becoming a complete work management solution that brings together remote teams of workers, handles complex tasks and activities within major project work and all manageable from within Microsoft Teams.

Verto 365 fully surfaces within Microsoft Teams, providing you with tools such as completely flexible dynamic dashboards for instant and real time snapshots of projects in detail or programmes as a whole. Gantt charts are interactive, easy to manipulate and help to map out progress and timelines in minute detail if needed. Kanban boards, calendar views incorporating risks and issues and full project management operations such as time, resource, and performance management can be performed all from within your MS Teams window.

Verto 365 understands many business challenges faced by companies, and molds to the exact requirements of any organisation of any size.

For larger, complex tasks, it can be tailored to suit the following, non-exhaustive, list of strategic processes, often needed when pivoting away from the original objective:

• Crisis management – Tactics to co-ordinate information can be stored in one place for easy access when it’s needed. Activation tools are used to facilitate the coming together of teams and support when required. Report easily to understand severity levels, cost of impact, or anything that provides useful analysis and learnings for the next plan. And audit the process to maintain records in one format, from one single place.
• Planning for change – Generating buy-in from all senior staff members requires a business case that’s going to hold up in all strategic areas. With Verto 365 you can easily scale up as needed and tweak to act in the way that best suits your processes. Make it work for you.
• Local initiatives – A little from many goes a long way, so when devising initiatives for community members, plan your communication and activities to encourage larger numbers of sign-ups within Verto 365 for maximum effect.
• Programme management – All projects can be managed within Verto 365, which can then be managed from a programme level. Take stock using dynamic dashboards, see a snapshot of all projects and their progress, any risks, track finances, and map next steps in a way suits all stakeholders.
• Reporting – Specific reports can be built so that, with a click of a button, the most up-to-date information you need is with you in a format that appeals to everyone who needs it. With all data in one central repository, analysing what matters is simple.
• Stakeholder management – Track the ideas and aims expected by each of your stakeholders. Build specific dashboards that provide each stakeholder with just the information they are interested in quickly, and offer them their data in real-time whenever they request it.
• Project management in any way, any style – Make Verto 365 work for you and your organisation. It can be built to support your team and their existing processes.
• Bringing multiple organisations together and reporting in one single framework – Working across departments, capturing information in one central repository, and reporting in single formats and can be scaled up to include external agencies and even different organisations who need to work together for certain projects.
• Strategy planning – Bring together the organisational goals to suit the direction of travel for all departments. Align with the whole business, plan your strategy, deliver your project work, and grow your business all within Verto 365 directly from within Microsoft Teams
• Transformation and innovation management – Large projects that aim to deliver change within a company can be organisaed with Verto 365, however complex the transformation. Information, data, files, team members, tasks, activities and plans can all be kept on track for successful innovation within your organisation using Verto 365 within Microsoft Teams.

Managing a change in direction requires buy-in from the wider workforce and a strong strategy that involves all business functions. Tools such as Verto can be designed to work in the way your business requires for new goals to be achieved and productivity to soar.