Big Sky Thinking

Welcome to the launch of Big Sky Thinking, where Big Sky Associates will post its most current ideas related to helping organizations improve technology, strategy, and operations decision making. We thought it important to introduce Big Sky in this first post to explain what we do and how that helps our clients.

In short, Big Sky Associates, Inc. is a management consultancy with a singular focus: to help organizations make better choices about strategy, budgets, and systems – in short timeframes.

The firm was founded in reaction to the founders' observation that organizations faced with more and more resource constraints have few effective methods for improving practical decision-making that are grounded in theory and tailored to their industry. Furthermore, those organizations face pressure from shareholders and stakeholders to reduce timeframes in which critical decisions are made. Add increasing enforcement of compliance with regulations and directives--such as Sarbanes-Oxley and the Performance Assessment and Rating Tool (PART)--and organizations find themselves making critical choices without tools to achieve the appropriate level of fidelity and timeliness.

Big Sky isn't in the business of making decisions for our clients. We help clients accelerate and optimize decision making by examining the mechanisms by which decisions are made and identifying the fastest path to improvement. In our work with clients we have observed several areas of critical importance:

• Budget and financial decisionmaking, – such as financial analysis and program plans
• Technology selection and requirements analaysis -- with depth in solution requirements and identity management
• Sourcing and acquisition – such as vendor selection and material or service acquisition

Big Sky defines itself in terms of measurable results for clients, and better decision making enhances their ability to get measurable results such as:

• Bigger bang for the buck – higher success rate for choices made using sound decision and optimization theory, and higher performance per dollar spent
• Faster “time to market” – shorter duration from dilemma to action
• Reduction in decision-related flaws – reduced waste from systemic decision making errors
• Decisions that stick – more defensible decisions that stand up to stakeholder and shareholder scrutiny
• Decisionmaker Consensus –participants buy into and act on decisions after meetings are over

Big Sky will regularly post articles, observations, and ideas on thinking.bigskyassociates.com, so check back as often as you like. In addition, direct comments and questions to info@bigskyassociates.com and we will respond right away.