FX1

A Message from Lord Pickles and Lord Blunkett, followed by FX1's best practice article

The ability to listen and learn from one another has always been vital in parliament, in business and in most aspects of daily life. But at this particular moment in time, as national and global events continue to reiterate, it is uncommonly crucial that we forge new channels of communication and reinforce existing ones. The following article from FX1 is an attempt to do just that. We would welcome your thoughts on this or any other Parliamentary Review article.

Rt Hon The Lord David Blunkett

Rt Hon The Lord Eric Pickles

www.fx1.com

1FX1 |

BEST PRACTICE REPRESENTATIVE

Consulting Director

SuzanneTrew

Fx1 is a company committed to helping organisations solve

their toughest innovation challenges and achieve their

goals. It advises brand-led, fast-moving organisations on

innovation and marketing capability solutions that ensure a

consistent competitive edge, while offering services that help

create exceptional practitioners with smart processes to back

them up. Fx1 believes it takes speed, creativity and consistent

delivery to stay ahead of the rapidly changing economic

landscape. Consulting Director Suzanne Trew explains how

companies that implement the changes required to execute

their business with excellence become top performers and are

realising the benefits. Success rates for such companies are

2.5 times higher than poor performers, so Fx1 offers profitable

solutions to meet this demand.

With stratospheric growth of disruptive players have come changing consumer

demands, as well as new barriers and opportunities created by regulation change.

Businesses must therefore be able to execute their innovation strategies quickly,

effectively, sustainably and at scale. Great companies release innovation with

aplomb, wowing their customers in the process.

Since founding, our mission has been to help companies create a smooth and

high-performing pipeline of new product introductions. We advise brand-led, fast-

moving organisations on innovation and marketing capability solutions that ensure

a consistent competitive edge.

FACTS ABOUT

Fx1

»Consulting Director:

SuzanneTrew

»Established in 2015

»Based in Edinburgh, Scotland

»Services: Innovation capability

consulting and teaching

»No. of employees: Three

»Suzanne Trew is an expert

practitioner trainer with Stage-

Gate International

»www.fx1.com

Fx1

THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW

Highlighting best practice

2| FX1

Our services transform innovation

project teams’ capabilities, creating

exceptional practitioners with smart

processes to back them up.

We make innovation strategies real by

turning companies’ attention to what

really matters: the speed, agility and

precision with which ideas become

reality.

Though most have a defined way of

releasing new products, it’s rare to

find companies who realise their full

potential.

Where to focus

The issues are common across all

markets and sectors. The great news

is that there are just six essential

capabilities needed to successfully

execute a new product strategy:

1. A best practice innovation process

2. Optimisation and allocation of

resources to maximise portfolio

value via portfolio management

3. Agile decision-making via a strong

governance structure

4. Accountable cross-functional

project teams

5. Strategic planning and execution

linkage

6. A process manager to drive and

facilitate

Commonly, at least three of the above

are not mastered, as they fall between

departmental responsibilities or are not

well understood.

Delivering results

The aim of Fx1 is to facilitate

collaboration at all levels and across

the organisation. Our toolset is a

collection of methods, guides, forms

and templates ready to be quickly

tailored to suit the needs of any

business, and it is designed to support

these six capabilities. It’s worth noting,

too, that our tools are multipurpose.

For example, the Fx1 3P Tracker –

portfolio, project and process – is an

innovation support solution that not

only provides executive dashboards to

enable effective portfolio management

but also services the needs of

process managers. We also provide

unique training programmes tailored

specifically for the needs of innovation

project teams and process managers.

These courses are available publicly via

Stage-Gate International or for in-

house delivery.

Though a small organisation, we have

a huge passion to help organisations

and their teams succeed. Our

global success to date is due to

our understanding of what it takes

to deliver real-world results. We

collaborate with leadership teams and

assess their functions to apply proven

practices, efficiently and creatively.

We’ve become trusted advisers to

CEOs and process administrators, as

well as subject matter experts across

all functions. This breadth and depth

of understanding has helped us offer

sustainable value – be this in the form

of optimising just one performance

driver, for example, project team

performance or delivering end-to-end

capability transformation.

Consequently, our projects have

been delivered in over 25 countries,

Fx1 work with

organisations to make

innovation strategies

successfully come to life

We advise

brand-led,

fast-moving

organisations

on innovation

and marketing

capability

solutions that

ensure a

consistent

competitive

edge

“

3FX1 |

BEST PRACTICE REPRESENTATIVE

and we have worked with market-

leading organisations across diverse

sectors including food, drink and

optic industries, as well as training

practitioners from all sectors via our

public training programmes.

Six essential capabilities

1. Implement a best practice innovation

process: Design and improve idea-

to-launch models that truly work

for the organisation. According to

research by Nielsen, companies that

have gated innovation processes

average 130 per cent more revenue

on new products than companies with

informal processes. A gated process

is a business process used by cross-

functional teams and decision-makers

to quickly and profitably transform

an organisation’s best new ideas into

successful new products.

2. Portfolio management: Optimise and

allocate resources to maximise portfolio

value. Top-performing companies boast

portfolio management methods to help

the leadership team effectively focus

their resources on the right strategic

areas and on a shortlist of high-value

projects. This involves both strategic

portfolio management and tactical

portfolio management.

3. Agile decision-making via strong

governance structure: Too many

projects, not enough resources,

pipeline moving too slowly, needless

ongoing projects – these are all

common symptoms of an innovation

governance system that is not working

properly. Top performers ensure they

have in place clear go or no-go decision

gates and clearly identified decision-

makers. Decisions are made at their

gate meetings, in the understanding

that effective gate meetings are critical

to enabling the entire process.

4. Accountable empowered cross-

functional teams: Innovation projects

are complex and affect or require input

from many parts of an organisation.

Therefore, the way project teams

are organised and how their team

members work together will impact

both time-to-market and project

success rates. Eighty per cent of

project teams are led by managers

from a function such as marketing or

R&D rather than professional project

managers. The impact of high-

performing cross-functional teams,

who are accountable for their projects

and are led by trained project leaders,

cannot be underestimated. It isn’t

enough to train project managers

in the process: companies must also

train their project leaders on how to

manage teams and schedules.

5. Create operational linkage between

strategic planning and execution:

Organisations can often stumble in

their integration of strategic planning,

budget cycles and innovation

development. Businesses therefore

should create an operational link

between planning and execution.

Instead of creating strategies that no

longer apply, we recommend using

iterative and dynamic processes while

keeping the pulse of the market at the

forefront of decisions.

6. Process manager to make it happen:

No system, no matter how good, ever

implemented itself. It needs someone

to make it happen. That’s the role of

the process manager and it is often

undervalued and misunderstood. Think

of the role as lubricant for the whole

system. This is not an administration

role, rather an essential, highly

influential position that’s necessary for

co-operation to occur across all levels

of the organisation, developing and

facilitating the process as a whole.

Our services

transform

innovation

project teams’

capabilities,

creating

exceptional

practitioners

with smart

processes to

back them up

“

www.fx1.com

This article was sponsored by FX1. The Parliamentary Review is wholly funded by the representatives who write for it. The publication in which this article originally appeared contained the following foreword from The Rt Hon Theresa May MP.

The Rt Hon Theresa May MP's Foreword For The Parliamentary Review

By The Rt Hon Theresa May MP

This foreword from the then Prime Minister appeared in the 2018/19 Parliamentary Review.

British politics provides ample material for analysis in the pages of The Parliamentary Review. For Her Majesty’s Government, our task in the year ahead is clear: to achieve the best Brexit deal for Britain and to carry on our work to build a more prosperous and united country – one that truly works for everyone.

The right Brexit deal will not be sufficient on its own to secure a more prosperous future for Britain. We also need to ensure that our economy is ready for what tomorrow will bring. Our Modern Industrial Strategy is our plan to do that. It means Government stepping up to secure the foundations of our productivity: providing an education system that delivers the skills our economy needs, improving school standards and transforming technical education; delivering infrastructure for growth; ensuring people have the homes they need in the places they want to live. It is all about taking action for the long-term that will pay dividends in the future.

But it also goes beyond that. Government, the private sector and academia working together as strategic partners achieve far more than we could separately. That is why we have set an ambitious goal of lifting UK public and private research and development investment to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2027. It is why we are developing four Grand Challenges, the big drivers of social and economic change in the world today: harnessing artificial intelligence and the data revolution; leading in changes to the future of mobility; meeting the challenges of our ageing society; and driving ahead the revolution in clean growth. By focusing our efforts on making the most of these areas of enormous potential, we can develop new exports, grow new industries and create more good jobs in every part of our country.

Years of hard work and sacrifice from the British people have got our deficit down by over three quarters. We are building on this success by taking a balanced approach to public spending. We are continuing to deal with our debts, so that our economy can remain strong and we can protect people’s jobs, and at the same time we are investing in vital public services, like our NHS. We have set out plans to increase NHS funding annually by an average by 3.4 percent in real terms: that is £394 million a week more. In return, the NHS will produce a ten-year plan, led by doctors and nurses, to eliminate waste and improve patient care.

I believe that Britain can look to the future with confidence. We are leaving the EU and setting a new course for prosperity as a global trading nation. We have a Modern Industrial Strategy that is strengthening the foundations of our economy and helping us to seize the opportunities of the future. We are investing in the public services we all rely on and helping them to grow and improve. Building on our country’s great strengths – our world-class universities and researchers, our excellent services sector, our cutting edge manufacturers, our vibrant creative industries, our dedicated public servants – we can look towards a new decade that is ripe with possibility. The government I lead is doing all it can to make that brighter future a reality for everyone in our country.

British politics provides ample material for analysis in the pages of The Parliamentary Review

The Rt Hon Theresa May MP
Prime Minister