ASATE Group
The Organizational Strategist

According to statistics, over 50 percent of strategic efforts in companies are failures. “Years ago, we began to notice that there was a major problem with the strategic process in companies,” says Pierre Hadaya, founding partner of ASATE Group. “This is because companies underestimate the challenge of transforming themselves so they can truly execute their new strategy. We believe that the business transformation is just as important as the new strategy.” The ASATE Group is a consulting firm focused on helping companies formulate, implement, and execute business strategies. The firm’s founding partners, Bernard Gagnon and Pierre Hadaya, have had long careers as business consultants. Hadaya and Gagnon aren’t just consultants, they are researchers as well. Their research in the area of business strategy led to the publication of a book—Business Architecture: The Missing Link in Strategy Formulation, Implementation, and Execution—that forms the basis for the ASATE Group’s business architecture program. The duo has refined their approach through years of working with companies to identify solutions to avoid failures in their strategic endeavors.

In order to stay relevant over the long-term, businesses typically need a competitive advantage. However, achieving this advantage and overcoming challenges on the roadmap can prove extremely difficult. The ASATE Group helps companies from a variety of different industries solve complex problems through their approach. By leveraging both strategy management and business architecture, ASATE helps its clients achieve stronger results. Developing a strategy is difficult, but successfully implementing it is even more. ASATE helps companies to both formulate and implement their strategy. “What sets ASATE apart from other consulting firms is the fact that it doesn’t stop at the formulation process,” says Bernard Gagnon, founding partner of ASATE Group. “It stays with its clients to help them overcome the important challenge of aligning their underlying business and management structures to the new strategy.”

When working with a new company, ASATE studies the company’s internal and external environments, looking at things such as its capabilities, processes, organizational structure, stakeholders, clients, vendors, and employees as well as macro-economics, technological changes, legal ramifications, and political factors.

This is a big part of ASATE’s future as a consulting firm, leveraging business architecture to help companies become more agile throughout their strategy formulation, implementation and execution process

In 2017, ASATE was able to help a medium-sized manufacturing company through a strategic formulation project, which led to the development of a new strategy for interacting with the Canadian market. In addition to the processes of formulation, implementation, and execution, ASATE is also working with the manufacturer on its agility. Agility refers to the ability of a company to adjust to a rapidly changing environment in a relatively short period of time. External factors can change quickly, and even companies that have developed and implemented a sound strategy can fail if they are not agile. “This is a big part of ASATE’s future as a consulting firm, leveraging business architecture to help companies become more agile throughout their strategy formulation, implementation, and execution process,” says Gagnon.

Gagnon and Hadaya’s process has helped companies overcome challenges in a complex and ever-changing world. As practitionners and researchers, they are better able to refine their processes as new standards evolve in different industries. Clients understand that ASATE’s comprehensive program is designed to maximize their ability to effectively respond to problems. As new technologies and global trends arise, ASATE will continue to guide its clients to execute a winning strategy aimed at achieving business excellence.