u/Independent-Watch118

I'm working on a problem that seems to sit somewhere between BI, strategy, and operations.

Context:

• Mid-sized HVAC distribution and servicing company
• 8+ branches
• Residential and commercial business
• Multiple departments (Sales, Operations, Service, Finance, etc.)
• We use Asana for project/work management alongside our ERP/CRM

Our dashboards are good at answering questions like:

• Sales performance
• Service response times
• Revenue
• Inventory
• Project status

But they don't answer questions like:

• Are our current projects actually supporting this year's strategic objectives?
• Which departments are drifting away from company priorities?
• Which objectives have lots of activity but little measurable impact?
• Where are teams repeatedly raising the same blockers before they become KPI problems?

We've worked with consultants, improved reporting, and introduced structured planning, but maintaining alignment still relies heavily on management meetings and manual reviews.

I'm wondering whether anyone has approached this from a BI perspective rather than purely as a management problem.

Specifically:

• Do you model strategic objectives as part of your data model?
• Have you built scorecards that connect company objectives → department goals → projects → KPIs?
• Have you integrated work management data (Asana/Jira) with ERP/CRM to identify strategic drift?
• Have you experimented with AI/LLMs to summarize recurring risks, blockers, or cross-functional issues from operational data?

I'm not looking for dashboard design tips—I already have plenty of those. I'm more interested in whether anyone has successfully built what feels like a "strategy intelligence" layer on top of traditional BI.

I'd really appreciate hearing about real implementations, lessons learned, or even failed attempts.

I'm researching a problem we've been struggling with internally.

We're a multi-branch HVAC distribution and servicing business.

The company has a clear vision and leadership team, but over time departments naturally optimize for their own goals.

Sales has one definition of success.
Operations has another.
Service has another.
Finance has another.

We've implemented planning processes, OKRs/KPIs, Asana, management reviews, and even brought in consultants.

The surprising part is that none of these seem to permanently solve the problem.

Eventually people become focused on completing projects instead of asking whether those projects still support the company's strategy.

There are also the normal organizational realities—different personalities, varying leadership styles across branches, and internal politics—which means ideal frameworks don't always survive contact with reality.

For those who've been in senior management:

• Was there a turning point where alignment became noticeably better?
• What practices actually lasted more than a year?
• If you had to start over, what would you do differently?

I'd love to hear lessons learned rather than textbook advice.

I'm looking for practical experiences rather than framework recommendations.

Our company has:

• 8+ branches
• Distribution and field servicing operations
• Multiple departments with different priorities
• Asana as our primary work management platform

Leadership has clear strategic objectives, but somewhere between company goals, department goals, projects and individual tasks, the alignment gradually weakens.

We've already invested in consultants and implemented structured planning processes, but maintaining alignment requires so much manual effort that it eventually falls apart.

What I'm trying to understand is:

• Is there a process that actually scales?
• How do you know when projects are no longer contributing to strategic objectives?
• How do you collect feedback from employees that influences strategy rather than just becoming another status report?
• Has anyone built dashboards or AI tools that identify strategic drift before leadership notices it?

I'm curious whether anyone has solved this operationally rather than just documenting goals better.