This case study outlines how a diversified investment-holding company in Abu Dhabi implemented a modern strategy architecture and performance-management platform to drive alignment, clarity and real-time reporting across its business units.
About the Group and Its Structure
This case involves a large Abu Dhabi–based investment-holding group with a broad portfolio of subsidiaries across sectors such as hospitality, facility services, transport, security, real estate and IT. The company has approximately 220–230 employees and revenue of around US $33 million.
Its business model involves complex coordination between:
- Corporate leadership
- Subsidiary management teams
- Functional heads (HR, IT, Finance, Operations)
- External stakeholders including regulators, government partners and multinational clients
The diversity of its operations and stakeholder environment required a coherent system to align performance, improve reporting standards, and support strategy execution across multiple layers of the organization. Managing these diverse stakeholders was a central element of this transformation, ensuring that strategic objectives were clearly communicated and supported across the group.
Why the Existing Performance System Was Not Working
The company faced several interlinked challenges that motivated the decision for change. Some of the key issues included:
- The lack of an integrated system spanning corporate, subsidiary and department levels, meaning that strategy execution and performance reporting were fragmented.
- A need to move away from manual performance tracking to a more automated, governed system with alerts, dashboards and aggregated roll-ups.
- The requirement to cascade strategic goals and metrics across multiple layers (group → business units → functions → departments) to ensure alignment and accountability.
- The aspiration to integrate data from external systems (ERP, CRM, HRM) to reduce human dependency and improve timeliness and accuracy of performance data.
A senior leader phrased their pain point succinctly:
“We need a solution which provides top management all the necessary performance reporting … and alert them on non-performing KPIs and initiatives, to take corrective measures and help teams to ensure they all are aligned to the performance and strategy.”
From the vendor’s perspective, this underlined the requirement for a platform with governance, automation, alignment and dashboarding built in. Another quote further clarified the strategic expectation:
“Cascading of Strategic perspectives, Strategic Objectives, Strategic goals, KPIs and Action Plans / Projects to be more result oriented.”
This reinforced the importance of ensuring clear accountabilities, timely alerts and the ability to drill down to non-performing measures across subsidiaries and functions.
How the New Strategy and Performance System Was Built
The team from BSC Designer worked with the client to deploy a strategy and performance-management system tailored to their structure and needs. Several key elements defined this implementation:
- Leveraging existing strategic perspectives: The company already used a set of strategic perspectives due to its organizational legacy. These perspectives were conceptually compatible with the cause-and-effect logic of the Balanced Scorecard framework, which made it possible to build a clear strategy architecture at the group level (“Corporate Scorecard”). Strategic objectives and key goals were structured around these perspectives, covering topics such as growth, operational efficiency, governance and innovation. Future readiness principles were also embedded in the design.
- Cascading scorecards aligned to organizational structure: The company’s organizational chart provided the natural hierarchy for cascading strategy. Corporate, subsidiary, and departmental scorecards were named after their respective business units — for example “Subsidiary A Scorecard”, “Shared Services Function Scorecard”, “Facilities Management Dept Scorecard”. Each scorecard inherited roll-up logic, allowing KPI values to flow from department to subsidiary to corporate level. This structure helped align departmental operational KPIs (e.g., occupancy rate in hospitality, fleet utilization in transport, contract renewal rate in facility services) with corporate strategic objectives, forming a unified strategy deployment system.
- Dedicated M&A strategy scorecard: As part of the strategic roadmap, the company expected to expand through acquisition. A dedicated mergers and acquisitions strategy scorecard was developed and aligned with the main corporate scorecard. This ensured that integration goals, synergy targets, and operational transition KPIs were explicitly tracked from the start, increasing the likelihood of successful post-acquisition integration and value realization.
- Automated data collection and dashboards: Dashboards and alerts were configured with update frequencies ranging from daily to quarterly, depending on the KPI. Initial implementation included data import from spreadsheets, with a planned roadmap to integrate ERP, CRM and HRM systems for automated data collection. Alerts were set to trigger on KPI threshold breaches, with a full audit trail for accountability. Management review processes were conducted directly within the platform’s strategy maps and dashboards, ensuring leadership had access to the most recent data during review sessions.
- Capability development and mindset shift: BSC Designer delivered structured sessions with senior leadership, business unit heads and KPI owners. These sessions were not limited to technical platform training — they focused on giving the team the necessary knowledge and mindset to manage strategy effectively, update KPIs responsibly, and interpret performance information in line with strategic objectives. Embedding training and certification practices helped ensure the sustainability of the system and built internal capacity for future growth.
Results Achieved
Within the first 6–12 months the group reported several positive outcomes:
- Improved visibility for the executive team: dashboards now present real-time performance across subsidiaries and functions, with alerts highlighting under-performance.
- Clear alignment from strategy to operations: departments understand how their KPIs map to higher-level corporate goals, and cascading logic ensures accountability at every layer.
- Better decision-making: management can identify non-performing KPIs and initiatives early and deploy corrective measures faster than before.
- Reduction in manual workload: by standardising the scorecard process and automating data import, the administrative burden decreased and data accuracy improved.
Performance measurement was reinforced with traceable data, audit trails, and supporting documentation, making KPIs more reliable and actionable. This was supported by the platform’s capability for evidence-based KPIs, ensuring that performance results could be verified and trusted at every level.
Key Performance Indicators & Industry Relevance
For an investment-holding group with diversified operations, relevant KPIs identified include:
- Subsidiary Return on Investment (ROI) – measures capital efficiency of each business unit.
- Portfolio Diversification Index – tracks the balance across industries and geographies.
- Shared Services Cost per Interim Report – for functions like facility management or transport, measuring cost efficiency.
- Contract Renewal Rate – especially relevant in facility services, transport and hospitality units.
- Operational Utilisation Rate – e.g., fleet utilisation in transport, occupancy/room rate in hospitality, service delivery rate in facility management.
- Strategic Initiative Success Rate – % of strategic projects delivered on time, on budget and achieving target benefit.
Risk Management Perspective
The company identified several business risks that could affect the successful execution of its strategy:
- Concentration risk due to overreliance on a few large contracts within facility services.
- Market volatility risk in hospitality and transport sectors affecting occupancy and utilisation rates.
- Regulatory risk, especially for contracts involving government clients or cross-border operations.
- Financial performance risk at the subsidiary level, particularly if portfolio diversification goals are not achieved.
Using a bow-tie analysis framework, one of the scenarios modelled involved the loss of a major service contract. The team analysed causes (e.g., client consolidation, service performance issues) and consequences (e.g., revenue loss, capacity underutilisation) and identified mitigating actions, such as proactive contract renewal monitoring, diversification of client base, and strengthening strategic sales to maintain stable revenue streams.
How Do We Align Strategy Across Different Business Units?
This case demonstrates that even a diversified, mid-sized holding group with multiple business units and functions can elevate its strategy execution capability by implementing a structured scorecard system. Key lessons include:
- Start with clear strategic architecture aligned with existing perspectives — this creates a natural foundation for cascading and alignment.
- Use organizational structure to guide scorecard cascading — naming scorecards for units and functions helps embed ownership.
- Governance, training and stakeholder engagement are as critical as technology: tools alone do not deliver results.
- Monitoring business risks alongside KPIs creates a more resilient strategy architecture.
Going forward, the group plans to expand automation by integrating its ERP, CRM and HRM data systems, roll out the scorecard system across new business units, and enhance predictive analytics capabilities to further support decision-making.
BSC Designer is strategy execution software that enhances strategy formulation and execution through KPIs, strategy maps, and dashboards. Our proprietary strategy implementation system guides companies in practical application of strategic planning.