Listening to the “voice of experience” and learning from the lived experiences of other companies can help skip some steps in professional journeys and avoid common mistakes made by inexperienced managers. For this reason, this article gathers stories from those who have been using the Strategic Management software for five years or more – professionals who have witnessed the maturation of management within their own institutions and can therefore offer valuable lessons.

AltoQi is a technology company that has been developing building software for 24 years. Edimilson Sardá, the company's operations director, explains that the Strategic Management software has been used at AltoQi since 2008, and initially, the tool was simpler and people were reluctant to use it. “Nobody wanted to see their red numbers on the dashboard,” he says. “When we introduced the new tool, people who used other reports thought that was the right way. What we did was not force anyone to abandon their personal controls, but we warned them that the official tool from then on would be the Stratec software,” he emphasizes.

One of the biggest improvements Sardá sees since the software implementation is the transparency and clarity of the company's strategic plans. “What existed before in the company was people saying ‘the company doesn't know what it wants.’ Any problem we had, we would hear this justification: ‘The company doesn't have a defined strategy.’ Today, there are no more excuses. The strategy is clear in the software, no one can say they didn't know what to do. The strategy might not work out, but they can't say they didn't have a direction to follow,” evaluates Sardá.

Currently, the software is used at AltoQi to plan strategic objectives for the coming year, hold meetings with the board, and maintain or alter objectives. “We map out the year with the strategic objectives and create new indicators or verify which old indicators should remain,” he says. He explains that they also check which managers are responsible for each indicator. “Sometimes the indicators change owners,” he jokes. Then, the goals are tracked to verify if the company is meeting the previously established strategies. An interesting fact is that today people want to use the software and suggest indicators for other areas. According to Sardá, with the indicators, the actions of the departments become more visible and people start to suggest improvements.

José Alberto Ferreira also has extensive experience using Strategic Management. He doesn't remember when the software was implemented at Time Now, a company where he holds the position of director's advisor, but he confidently states that “it's been at least six years.”.

According to Ferreira, in the past, the company's results were compiled by the finance and accounting departments and sent to the directors. Today, each manager is responsible for entering their data into the system, and a “pressure” has been created for results to be positive in all sectors of the institution. “Before, if my contract hadn't gone very well, it would slide by. Today, the result is shown to everyone, so there's greater concern, I have to explain to everyone. The next month, the manager works to ensure that doesn't happen again. This creates a certain pressure so that the company doesn't end up in the red,” he says.

He states that the system is currently used at Time Now for the control and visualization of goals set for the current year. Directors and partners meet, draw up a strategic plan for the following year, input everything into the software with strategic objectives and indicators that will guide the next year. This allows them to monitor whether these objectives are being met or not. “We have a monthly general assembly and 90% of it is guided by the Stratec software presentation. We show the results of each directorate and keep track. The GE gives us all the visuals we need to follow the company's information. We can see over time if it's green, yellow, or red,” celebrates Ferreira, who believes that the image provided by the GE facilitates data interpretation. “I'm the famous super user. I put a lot of information in there,” he jokes.

According to Ferreira, the software will remain with the company for even longer. “Yes, we intend to continue using the software. We have had excellent support, always available and always providing the results or solutions we need. We have had the opportunity to suggest some customizations and changes to the software, but they also cater to other clients,” he reveals happily, adding that this year he was one of the few clients chosen to test Beta versions even before the official release by Stratec.

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