UAE Government organisations implement global business model to drive growth

Over the past few years organisations such as du, Dubai Customs, Abu Dhabi Electricity and Water Authority (ADWEA), Department of Economic Development (DED) in Dubai and Emirates National Oil Company (Enoc) have implemented the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) approach successfully.

"Through the implementation of the BSC model we designed an entire strategic transformation, which we branded as ASTRO (ADWEA Strategic Transformation) with its own logo, tagline and core message, in which we developed a corporate strategy for the whole water and electricity sector for Abu Dhabi Emirate. BSC helped us in going further," said Dr Mohamed Guidoum ADWEA's Senior Business Planner and speaker at this year's Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Summit.

The summit, taking place from March 16 until the 21 at the Address Hotel, Dubai Marina will see government and private organisations share their successes and challenges in implementing the business tool, and draw on key examples in the region. The application of this method in the region has led to the development of both the public and private sectors.

Since the implementation of BSC, ADWEA has established an executive leadership team responsible and accountable to the whole sector. ADWEA's strategic plan is a major milestone and is in step with the Abu Dhabi Government's Policy Agenda and Vision 2030.

A key focus for ADWEA is sustainability-planning for business growth while retaining social, economic and environmental balance; and the BSC model is helping in achieving this goal.

"As a group of over 7,000 people spanning from generation, transmission and distribution, we have one clear strategy to deliver our vision 2020 aligned with Abu Dhabi 2030. We designed specific training material on our strategy and performance framework that is delivered by our own staff to our people with participant satisfaction running at over 95%."

"We have a great level of alignment. Driven by the corporate scorecard, our directors now look at the challenges of the entire sector and not only at their own companies' issues. Recommendations for the entire group are now discussed at the executive level," added Guidoum.

Karola Lepasaar, Executive Director of Strategy and Planning at the Dubai Department of Economic Development and speaker at the conference said BSC had helped the management team define and communicate the organisation's priorities and key success drivers.

"In less than three years DED has established comprehensive automated strategy management practices, from strategy analysis and development to performance reporting and improvements at the group, agency and division level. Combined with the unwavering support and commitment of the DED leadership team, the organisation has matured significantly in terms of strategy management culture. Business units are now proactively engaged in strategy development, target-setting and performance management and are not hesitant to commit to truly challenging targets," she added.