Cascade Strategy

"Cascade delivers on its promise - is very easy to use and provides fantastic functionality"

Comments: All my staff have access to see our plan, goals and projects. That has greatly assisted their knowledge of the bigger picture and how they can contribute. The reporting functionality is excellent for Board reports, management meetings through to controlling my own tasks or that of my reports.

Pros: easy to use, provides capacity to view projects at high level or to drill down to the weeds, very flexible with reporting options, allows various User permissions, brilliant support service and priced in the sweet spot

"Cascade has transformed the way we manage our business goals and company strategy. "

Comments: Transparency of goals, and alignment of priority. It also enables better accountability for all staff.

Pros: The Cascade program aligned strongly with the needs of our business. We needed a tool to help us manage our business strategy across 20 different functional departments. We chose Cascade as the concept of cascading goals matched the way our business performed strategic planning. The system allows each of the areas to manage their own strategic plan, whilst enabling visibility and accountability of alignment with the high level business strategy. The transparency of the system is one of it's biggest benefits. At the click of a button you are able to assess the health of the organisation according to its strategic objectives and associated goals. It is very user friendly and easy to customise. In a matter of minutes, anyone can set up team dashboards to use in meetings or as a general communication tool. The snapshot reports are great for sharing with others outside of the system and provide an up to date gantt chart of project status. I would highly recommend this tool to anyone.

Cons: Occasionally you will stumble across features that don't exist in the system which would be useful. The chat function allows you to communicate directly with the Cascade team and get a real time response to any issues you might have or any ideas for improvement. This is really great for efficiency, as you can just continue working through any challenges with the help of the Cascade team. They take the feedback on-board, and we have already experienced a number of system optimisations which have been rolled out as a result of our company's suggestions. It is empowering for the team to have that kind of influence on the software, and really aids in employee engagement.

"Customer review "

Comments: Cascade customer support team has been extremely helpful and available when needed. They were patient while training us and answering any question that we had about the platform. Very happy with the service.

Pros: It is very organized and user friendly; the home page is not too busy and it is very easy to get to the place that you need; updates are very easy to make in the system; many things are being saved automatically and that makes it easier and faster to use the system.

Cons: There is no specific thing that was bad about the platform, it was slightly confusing in the beginning (just like any other new platform), but once I got to play around and learnt the system - it was very neat and easy to use.

"Cascade - The A Team"

Comments: We wanted a tracking tool that would roll up only our priority projects for our leadership teams' reviews. The Cascade Team was so amazing. They created ways we could highlight and track so but the product was just was too sophisticated for our needs. I would recommend this product and the team to anyone if it meets their usage needs. It just wasn't the best fit for our team.

Pros: Cascade is a great tool for tracking initiatives and using those initiatives to drive performance and KPI's.

Cons: It was too complex for our company that mostly just tracks progress on initiatives. Our leaders found that they could not delegate the updates to their team members, which meant they were using other methods as working documents and then going into Cascade for only the purpose of updating the leadership team. Although it did have KPI tracking abilities it was hard for us to attach metrics for many of our initiatives by their very nature.

"Serious Strategy Execution Software"

Comments: Mainly, we use Cascade Strategy with our clients that don't want their strategic plans to become BOTS (Books On The Shelf). Cascade allows for constant updating, new goals & initiatives, real-time reporting, etc. It provides an easy-to-use platform to keep the plan alive and active throughout the life-cycle of the plan.

Pros: Cascade Strategy Execution SaaS takes the complex area of generating accountability around strategic initiatives and makes it clear, concise, and transparent. The thought that has been put into the structure of getting it set up essentially forces you to consider the alignment of your goals, objectives, focus areas and ultimately vision. Cascade is one of the few that gets that the fundamental unit of strategy implementation is NOT individual goals or tasks - it is people, and Cascade re-emphasizes this point subtly throughout the platform.

Cons: The platform is quite elegant on the screen, but Cascade still has some work to do around the printed reports. Its a bit of a conundrum as showing the sometimes complex and always multi-layered relationships between people, tasks, goals, vision, etc is likely impossible given the static format of the printed page - but I do feel like it could still probably be a bit better than it is. Most importantly, if you go down the path of using strategy management software, just realize that the dynamic connections that you are able to create with the platform will not always easily translate to the printed page.