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Clients globally are struggling with increasing complexity in the business world
We know that the world gets more complex and interconnected with each passing year. Trade barriers, Brexit, economic sanctions and technological disruption can mean either a windfall or disaster for a company. Very few CEO’s and Boards have a mechanism for tracking this fast-changing environment.
Recession and a sluggish economy have led even giants of the industry to cut back on costs
As a scenario planner what does that mean for you? Companies are no longer willing to spend bucket loads of cash on expensive consultants and long drawn out solutions. They would love a precise targeted solution that they could use even on their own, to avoid being billed for consulting hours.
Are you using outdated tools or possibly nothing at all?
You can do scenario planning with pen, paper and post it notes. You could do it with commercial software that’s available. But do you have a reusable visual reasoning architecture that allows your client and his team to work with your solution?
The writing is on the wall. Top scenario planners globally, whether freelance or working in companies know that their time has come. Top managements increasingly rely on them for crystal ball insights into a complex world. The question is, are you prepared?
If you are reading this, you are a scenario planner or strategy consultant, or you aspire to be a professional advisor and consultant for the very top.
Introducing Eidos –
the visual reasoning architecture used by professionals globally for two decades and counting.
Here are some key reasons why you should consider trying Eidos out.
Demystifying Complexity
Today’s business world is incredibly complicated for a leader to navigate. From external scenarios like Brexit and trade embargos to internal ones like the constant threat of disruption, competition, and running out of cash, the CEO of today has his hands full. Yet to act like an ostrich and carry on as if business is normal is the road to disaster. What the CEO needs is a tool that can map all these elements out at one time, sharply bringing into focus elements that might have been hidden and chart a course through the rocks to safety.
Four Core Tools
So how does one master complexity in business when even Governments and the largest of company’s fumble? Even the mighty Boeing, a $93B company made a colossal mistake in trying to cut costs in the wrong areas and at the time of writing is facing a $9B loss and counting, a possible dismissal of the CEO responsible and a potential unravelling of the entire company if things don’t get sorted out quickly. The four core tools of Eidos are Situation Analysis, Goal Assessment, Strategy Development and Option Analysis. These powerful tools are part of the Management Toolbox of over 100 tools and can set up scenarios and strategies for just about any situation in a day. As a consultant, you can provide your clients with a blazing fast solution that is 100x more comprehensive than anything they can usually come up with.
Parmenides Matrix
Decision-makers usually make decisions in a linear one-dimensional manner. This is generally because of the inherent limitations of Excel and PowerPoint as well as limitations of cognitive processes due to biases and other constricting factors. The outcome is that the decision made, especially if it is high stakes decision is not based on scientific evidence but usually on extrapolation of numbers and other facts strung together to support or disprove a hypothesis. The Parmenides Matrix is a dynamic tool that plots the outcome of the Four Core Tools. The best of 3-4 decisions are visualised over a long-term horizon. Very often, it is seen that a strategy that underperforms in the short term is a clear winner in the long run. This is an invaluable aid for a decision-maker and is probably the single most potent tool in Eidos.
Data Visualisation Suite
Big data is a key buzz word in recent years. But analysing data in Excel even with built-in graphs, is not optimal. A lot of subtle inflexions can easily be missed. The Visual Scoremap in Eidos visualises what spreadsheets hide. The brain can easily follow the trail down to the smallest source of origin and forms a picture that helps understand what the data is trying to express quite easily. This is an extremely valuable add on in your toolbox as a consultant.
Better Decisions
Business Leaders look for help in making better decisions. Since 25% of CEO’s lose their jobs because of the wrong decision, this is very understandable. However, most consultants can only provide help in the form of experience or quantitative extrapolations. This in itself, is very useful, but not always. Especially in a turbulent world. Only a consultant, using Eidos can provide qualitative inputs that lead to a decision that can significantly improve the odds of success.
Built-in Help
Eidos is a sophisticated tool bristling with dozens of toolkits for just about any problem a Boardroom might face. It takes time to master. To help you navigate through the maze of tools, Eidos comes with a comprehensive help toolbar. In addition, we have an online training video suite to help you get going. On our website, we have a live training class recorded so you can benefit from the questions and interactions. At regular intervals, we have classroom training for advanced strategy development.
Single user
Specialists in Scenario Planning and related fields rarely if ever use tools. This can be a disadvantage for speed, greater cognition when disassembling and reassembling complex situations and involving a client’s team literally on the same page. More importantly, a comprehensive tool like Eidos gives you an advantage that de-commoditises your proposal and solution, making you unique amongst your peers.
Peer support and Marketing assistance
Eidos is a team-oriented tool. Yet, by definition, a single user operates alone. Recognising this, we have created a forum where you can interact with other Single Users as well as our Eidos Partners and get your problems solved and update yourself on the latest trends in the scenario space. We also include sound marketing support for small business owners to help you if you need visibility and guidance in client acquisition. Select Single Users who are exceptional at what they do may be invited to be an Eidos Partner, which means that we will include you in our client advisory team and send business your way.
Some of the many features Eidos offers to an experienced user:
- How to use Decision Architecture to map the reasoning process of a complex problem
- How to use the Situation Analysis tool to understand the relationship between factors in a problem and isolate the important from the unimportant
- How to use Goal Assessment to assess current gaps in goals to derive priorities for future focus
- How to use Strategy Development to help you identify strategies that are internally consistent and robust enough to withstand various scenarios
- How to use Option Evaluation and weight criteria leading to a thorough comparison and better decision making
- Why use the Conceptual Overview tool to map complex multidimensional relationships in a 3-D space
- How to use the Parmenides Matrix to help the CEO identify the best decision out of dozens of options over the long term
- How to use the Risk Assessment tool to assess the risks of implementing a decision and identify the potential pitfalls and navigate them
- Why use the Visual Scoremap to monitor performance in multiple perspectives, identify gaps for setting priorities and find the focus for future actions
- How to use Next Neighbour Mapping to easily identify your “next neighbours” for more efficient knowledge management
- How to use the Data Landscape tool to identify critical moments that could have repercussions on the overall development
- Why use Data Trends to capture and process large volumes of data in multiple dimensions over time
- How to use our built in Help (to suit all learning styles) to quickly get up and running
- Why our monthly webinars will keep educating you and adding value even if you are an experienced user
- How our advanced user classroom training helps you discover new perspectives and features you never knew about which help you maximise your usage of Eidos
- Why invitations to our 2-day workshops can change the way you run your company forever.
- Why creating a reasoning architecture on Eidos is considered as having done due diligence as a compliance tool accepted by auditors in the UK and Germany (and quite possibly soon in your country)
- How using our Risk Assessment tool can help you think your way out of possible trouble and create safer scenarios after considering all options
- Why our big data visualisation suite is far superior to Excel and will give you refined insights into your business verticals you could never imagine.
- Live Tech Support. Yes, talk to a real person and solve your problem immediately
EIDOS CLIENTS
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What people saying about Eidos
CEO, Chief Architect Architecture & Planning
“Unique Set of Strategic Planning and Visualization Tools for the Most Complex of Transformations”
Having experience relating to EIDOS that goes back to 2001 (before it was even called EIDOS), I have found the tool set to be fantastic for structuring complex challenges in even the largest organizations. The core tool suite has not really varied dramatically over the past 15+ years, but the usability has soared. I find EIDOS greatly complements my work in Enterprise Architecture, the value of which I often bottom line as being “Better informed decisions faster.” In Enterprise Architecture (EA), one tries to better link Business Demand with Information, People, Process, and Technology Supply. EIDOS helps me ensure coherency and comprehensiveness in addressing and scoping any major business/government/non-profit transformation, especially on the business strategy/architecture side of the house up front and then with analysis of alternatives to best satisfy any chosen course of action. I have used it to support my EA work with some of the largest organizations, including the United Nations and the U.S. Federal Government, along with Ivy League universities and Fortune 10 companies. In short, EIDOS, once mastered, and it is not easy to master, to be honest, can really raise the IQ of an Enterprise. As with any complex tool environment, an investment is absolutely required to get at least a couple of people up to the expert level in the tool suite to fully benefit from it and this must be a concerted, focused effort over a reasonable period of time.
Pros
This rich suite of complementary tools for strategic reasoning, decision making, and visualization can undoubtedly lead to better collaboration and communication for more comprehensive understanding of opportunities and alternative ways to approach them. EIDOS integrates myriad templates and allows for customizations of others to help do everything from stakeholder analysis; to better understanding drivers/concerns and requirements; goals, objectives, and measures; and ultimately of a consensus on the optimum courses of action, and associated implementation choices, including from different perspectives. Once one fully understands every tool in the EIDOS toolkit and how to leverage them all, one can become a master strategist in any domain, needing of course, to bring together particular experts and reference material related to the context of the strategic challenge is for what business or organization. The toolset is surely one of the best in the world for doing high-level impact analysis and analysis of alternatives — again, provided the inputs into it are based on the leading business and technology thinking in any particular area. This is a great toolset for supporting CxOs in any vertical and any type organization, but it depends on outstanding skill in facilitation to link the tools to each other and the use cases. It is a world class set of tools for Decision Architecture. Its use for every significant change initiative would provide certain return on investment.
Cons
Being in the Decision Architecture and strategic tools business for over 20 years, I respect how difficult it is to introduce any new tool or method into an organization’s workflow and how easy it is for anything new to become yet another silo rather than the integrated platform intended. With this in mind, I think recognition of the need for other tools, and recommendations for their integrated use, such as Mind Mapping and modeling/diagramming, would be a big plus. In addition, processes that would lead to some kind of Quality Assurance of the products coming from EIDOS, such as through the use of Red Teams, should probably be included in the whole approach. This could force more thorough research and greater confidence regarding the data ultimately used in the different stages of the strategy and decision making processes. Finally, guidance on how to ultimately build and maintain a Decision Architecture Repository for the organization or “Enterprise” would be extremely valuable and a great way to showcase the contributions of EIDOS. Ideally, one could have a record of all key aspects of any transformation life cycle that could also serve as a reference library of potentially reusable building blocks.
prev. COO of Development Bank of Southern Africa Insurance
“Engagements with public sector clients are fascinating as outcomes always exceeded expectations.”
The software has supported difficult client engagements ensuring that one can deliver in their high expectations in unusually short timelines. I have applied the tools in facilitations for mainly large public organisations but also for the NGO sector. Without fail it allows capture of content in a systematic fashion and when such content (actors and factors) are connected to provide a situational view that provides clarity to context of the problem statement to both the leadership and management of such organisations. In times when the environment keeps changing and within such the industries have to continually evolve, the tools support quick updates of context and scenarios while keeping in tact outcomes from previous engagements as useful baselines. After the workshops I have found that executives and management are able to consistently communicate the knowledge gained and strategies formulated i.e. the process supports participants obtaining a deeper understanding of the situation, scenarios and selected strategies which the process forces to be very clearly articulated and evaluated. At the same time the common language and understanding gained by participants supports consistent communication crucial to execution of selected strategies.
Pros
Development Bank of Southern Africa is the custodian of the Eidos licenses for the South African Government. My engagement were as administrator and custodian for the engagements supporting state initiatives such as the training and support to the secretariat for the National Development Plan within the Presidency, Policy Development within Local Government, parastatals such as Eskom (public electricity utility) and public initiatives such as the application funding to the Global Aids Fund by the South African National Aids Council. The set of tools supports decision processes both from a systemic helicopter as well as detail evaluation perspective while maintaining process and allowing unstructured and structured problem analysis. This is unique in my experience with the tools over the last 12 years. One can use the tools in isolation although I would recommend a structured use of 4 to 5 of the tools that usefully combine in support of the strategy development and then refinement required to select and execute different options. In point solutions one can perform detailed analysis of scenarios and strategies provided by others in very short time periods. The rich content without fail has provided useful insights for executives and senior management alike. The computational engines behind the tools extend our thinking capacity enormously while supporting such with visual representation that make interpretation and engagement with the content possible.
Cons
One must ensure that the right people are in the room to support and engage with the content that the decision and strategy processes develop and build on. Groups of 10 to 12 participants are ideal, beyond which the skill of the facilitator will be even more important. Preparation takes time and is key but is very worthwhile in my experience. The process does tend to show up possible gaps in participants understanding which have to be managed. Usually this is an opportunity for learning but it does require follow up within the organisation.
VP Strategy & Transformation Telecommunications
“Szenario based strategy development. Visualized reasoning and development of strategic options.”
With this coherent methodological framework you’ll be enabled to craft and develop scenarios and strategies. Enhancement of decision making processes with tools that enable a rigorous analysis and synthetic integration through effective visualization and efficient computation. Highly effective interaction between tools addressing endogenous factors (PESTLE) in strategic frameworks, and those enabling assessments of external drivers and trends through scenarios. Eidos also captures knowledge generated in strategic planning exercises. The highly dynamic and integrated formats, are reuseable and easily support modifications and expansions later on. Enabling effective strategic management of issues and challenges in highly volatil, uncertain, complex and ambigue environments.
Pros
Advanced systemic Analysis of cause and effects relevant for strategic decisions. Helps to handle complexity rather than simplify. Avoiding managerial bias within the crafting of different strategic initiatives. Comprehensive toolset to support different Business Tasks. Help to evaluate robustness of strategies within different external Szenarios and effectiveness of Strategies to Support internal Goals. Integration of existing knowledge in and interlink with other programs / documents like Office, Acrobat. Exchanging and recordind knowledge in workshops interactively in a resuable way, with the benefit of effectively identifying main issues of un-/certainty or non-/conformaty.
Cons
Licencing Modell is focused on Enterprises models. Stand alone licences not offered. Drag and Drop / Copy & Paste between Eidos and PPT could be more anhanced. The power and manifold of the Software somestimes leads to hesistant initial user Feedback. The gap between the minimalism of visualisation Features in Eidos tools to support the effective reasoning process and usual variety or used visuals in ppt sometimes hampered involvement of different stakeholders.
But why should you change your style of working and use a tool like Eidos?
Eidos is not for everyone! It takes time and effort to master Eidos, simply because it is such a comprehensive toolkit.
We assume as a scenario planner that you are used to thinking in alternatives. Wouldn’t you love reusable templates that with a slight tweak could be used very quickly for a new project? A great time saver indeed!
When you buy Eidos, you get 14 days to try it without any obligation. If at the end of that period, you find it doesn’t suit you, uninstall it and that’s the end of the matter. If, however, the uniqueness of Eidos rings true for you, then you pay for it and create the value for your clients that can bring in six figure incomes and more.
As an example, we find Eidos uniquely suited for M&A, where historically 70% of these transactions end in failure. Companies thinking about investing tens of millions are usually very happy to pay sums in excess of $500,000 for insights that could help them decide one way or another. This is only one example of a high value niche but at the other end of the spectrum, even mid-size businesses would find value in a $5000 a month contract in the hands of a skilled Eidos user.
If, for any reason, you get stuck, we have comprehensive online video tutorials including case studies, live training and examples. We also have a monthly group coaching call where you could ask any questions.
Important Reasons
why you shouldn’t delay
1
It’s the single best high-end consulting tool in the market
For 20 years Eidos was the preserve of the largest companies in Germany who paid six and seven figure sums to use it. Single user licenses were never offered before. And certainly not at this price. Eidos is too detailed to describe. The only way to decide is to experience it for yourself.
2
We don’t track or gather any information
Your client’s data is 100% secure. The product is downloaded on your machine and no tracking devices are in place to ensure confidentiality of information.
3
You can offer Eidos to your client’s team and earn
If you are a freelance practitioner, your client will need Eidos as well to take advantage of reusable and rethink able architecture that is dynamic. We can offer special prices for bulk licenses (10 or more) and you can earn 10% as an introducers fee.
4
Limited licenses available
We are offering only 1000 licenses. We cannot support more than that for now with the personalised service that Eidos requires. There are over 550,000 scenario planners on LinkedIn. Do the math. If we scale our staff, we would be offering Eidos at much higher prices.
5
Guarantee of price
We will not raise the price for the first 1000 customers ever.
How do I buy Eidos- the visual reasoning architecture for high stake decisions?
Eligibility
This product and offer is meant for professionals who are scenario planners, futurists or advanced strategic thinkers with considerable experience. It is not suitable for novice users.
| Eidos -Visual Reasoning Architecture for High Stake Decisions | Regular | Premium |
|---|---|---|
| 12 months license to the comprehensive Eidos Toolkit | ||
| Unlimited access to online video training and cases | ||
| Access to Monthly coaching webinars | ||
| Big Bonuses | ||
| Invitation to live training “Advanced Techniques Using Eidos” | ||
| Live Tech Support | ||
| Invitation and Training to be an Eidos Partner | ||
| One Free 30-minute consulting call on any one problem |
