Problems We Solve with Social Network Analysis

We specialise in solving problems using Social Network Analysis as the key diagnostic tool. Our solutions to the problems are all based on understanding the relationship patterns which underpin these relationships.

We solve problems associated with these 8 areas:

Service Area

Typical Problems We Solve

Organisational Performance

 

 

  • “We need to get our lateral business processes to work better across our business units. The hand-overs aren’t working well.”

  • “I look across our business and get the strong impression that some of our teams just don’t seem to get much traction while others seem to be in high demand. What’s going on?”

  • “Things seem to take a long time here. I flattened the organisational structure, but I am worried that people haven’t adjusted yet. Can we measure this?"

  • “Our recent experience tell me that the [business unit] is really not connecting well with [other business unit]. I want to help then understand the gap and then fix it."

  • “We have just completed this merger/restructure but we suspect that the only integration happening here is financial. What can we do?”

  • “We are implementing this new enterprise system. Its cost us a lot of money so we are concerned if our staff don’t get real value from this investment.”

Core Competency Assurance

  • “Some of our core competencies are at risk. How can we better assess our current capability and potential risks?”

  • “I know we will be losing some very experienced people due to retirement. I am really worried that our service levels will drop significantly.”

  • “We have a high turn-over of staff. I really need to work out how we get new people up-to-speed as fast as possible.”

  • "We have identified our ‘high performers’ and we know that their people networks are what will see them through. How can I measure this and help them grow?"

Workplace/Property Strategy

  • We are building a new HQ, but who should move in? Where should they sit to maximise collaboration?

  • We have introduced Activitiy Based Working, but can't measure if we have improved collaboration.

  • How do we prove our business case that our property strategy will lead to increased collaboration?

Stakeholder Engagement

  • We have so many stakeholders we are really struggling with firstly identifying them and then prioritising our attention to them?”

  • “There’s a big risk that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. We just don’t know who in our own organisation has relationships with our stakeholders.”

  • “The problem is that we often have conflicting objectives between many of our stakeholders. We need a way to agree on some common ground and get some clear accountabilities.”

  • “We are delivering what was asked, but it is clear that our stakeholders are still not happy. What more can we possibly do?”

Market/Business Intelligence

  • “We have plenty of market intelligence on market shares etc, but we can’t tell who our competitors have relationships with.”

  • “We are launching a new offering into a new market place and we have little idea of the dynamics of this market place.”

  • “We now that a lot of partnering goes on in this industry but we only get word of mouth. How can we get a better handle on this whole ecosystem?”

  • “Our job in Government is to facilitate growth in this industry sector. We need to map current activities and capabilities before we can even start to do the job”

Innovation Management

  • “We want to be more innovative, but where are we going to get the ideas from? Who do we need to get involved?”

  • “What worries me the most is actually after we have identified a great idea. How do we get those influential opinion leaders on board.”

  • “We know that innovation happens when people see new connections. How can I be pro-active in getting people together so that these new connections can happen? And who are those people?”

  • “Innovation is one of our key objectives, but we just aren’t seeing any results!”

Event Management

  • "We know that so much value is gained when new connections are made. How can we actively help broker new connections at the conference?"

  • "We want to know more about what people are actually interested in so we can tailor sessions to the need of the people in the room."

Program Management

  • “We manage many projects in our portfolio, but there is no master Gantt chart. We can only find out the interdependencies between projects from collecting intelligence from each project manager.”

  • “We have so many projects running that we seem to be continually tripping over each other to get things done.”

  • “We have projects of many different sizes. While we tend to concentrate on the larger ones, we intuitively know that some smaller projects are enabling projects for many of the large ones, but we have no way of visualising these dependencies.”

Alliance Management, Outsourcing, Supply Chain

  • We interact with a range of different external organisations along our supply chain. We must get better at communicating with each other.”

  • “We run the risk of stepping on each other’s toes. I don’t have a clear picture of who the players are and how they may be connected with each other.”

  • “I know my people have lots of relationships with our counterparts/clients – but I have no idea if our coverage actually enable our business objectives.”

  • “I am new around here and I need to get some objective measure for our level of cross- collaboration.”

  • “I am worried that we have a ‘team of stars’ rather than a star team” – can this be measured?"

 

 

 

Snapshot of Experience

We have extensive experience in solve these types of problems. Our solutions are packaged into Services Areas which we have applied into a range of different industry sectors:

  • Banking and Finance
  • Defence
  • Energy
  • Government
  • Health
  • IT&T
  • Manufacturing
  • Mining and Resources
  • Non-profit and Community
  • Petroleum
  • Professional
  • Services
  • Transport
  • Water

Snapshot of clients

We have completed more than 60 projects for organisations in Asia-Pacific, Europe, US and South America. A sample list of clients include:

  • Qantas Engineering (Australia)
  • NSW RailCorp (Australia)
  • BlueScope Steel (Australia)
  • Rio Tinto (Australia)
  • BHP Billiton (Australia)
  • PwC (Australia)
  • Canon (Australia)
  • Queensland Manufacturing Institute (Australia)
  • Hunter Water Corporation (Australia)
  • Smart Water Fund (Australia)
  • Queensland Health (Australia)
  • Queensland Alliance (Australia)
  • NSW Health (Australia)
  • NSW Government (Australia)
  • Centrelink (Australia)
  • Australian Bureau of Statistics (Australia)
  • Victoria Police (Australia)
  • AusAID (Australia)
  • Bechtel (Australia)
  • Sinclair Knight Merz (Australia)
  • Sedgman (Australia)
  • World Vision Australia (Australia)
  • Westpac (Australia)
  • Intesa (Italy)*
  • ENI (Italy)*
  • Indesit (Italy)
  • Gentoo (UK)*
  • Kent Council (UK)*
  • GDF SUEZ (South America)

(* Delivered through OpenKnowledge)

We deliver projects all over the globe with local implementation partners such as Italian-based Open Knowledge or Australian-based Hargraves Institute.

Clients which are using our ONA Surveys tool have included:

  • Monsanto (US)
  • IBM (US)
  • Royal Society of the Arts (UK)
  • Queensland Department of Transport
  • ...and many, many others

 

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