Shibumi
Cloud Solution—Measure Success by Results Delivered

The name has an interesting ring to it—Japanese for ‘effortless perfection’ or the ideal that perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to remove. While explaining its essence, Bob Nahmias, the CEO of Shibumi compared it to the game of golf, “I really enjoy the game of golf, but anyone who has tried to play golf will confirm that hitting the ball where you want it to go is incredibly challenging. Many amateurs achieve poor results by focusing on each little mechanic in a swing, while the pros are able to filter out the noise and take a simple, consistent approach. To the average spectator, the pro swing looks almost effortless. That’s the essence of Shibumi.”

Our goal is to use the power of technology to learn from past experiences and better predict the road ahead

“We're on a mission to reduce the complexities involved in executing successful business initiatives by helping organizations bid goodbye to the endless status meetings, Excel files to manage all the activities, and PowerPoint slides to communicate progress,” says Nahmias.

Founded in 2012 and based in San Francisco, Shibumi is a provider of a secure business execution platform. Shibumi helps organizations manage strategic business initiatives, measure performance and focus on continuous improvement. The cloud-based application is a turn-key solution for customers ranging from sales teams looking to improve territory performance to enterprise clients running complex business improvement programs.

According to Nahmias, CIOs are challenged by the fact that their employees expect corporate applications to offer the same simple user experience as they see in consumer applications. Additionally, the trend to do more with less has led to an increased need for prioritization and health assessment of initiatives and projects.

To avoid hiccups in their business execution, organizations are relying on cloud technologies that are cost effective and reduce manual work so employees can spend more time executing and less time pulling together reports.

Shibumi has carved out a space for itself by focusing on business results and continuous improvement, differentiating itself from traditional PPM tools that focus primarily on helping teams manage projects to be on time and on budget. To successfully execute, managers are increasingly realizing that they need the ability to manage performance and objectively track quantifiable benefits and the impact on customers, not just the plan schedule and budget. Shibumi offers a methodology that permits teams of all sizes to execute effectively by defining and communicating goals and objectives, the measures for success and the action plans necessary to achieve those outcomes.

Partnering with a utility provider to help manage their massive portfolio of change initiatives. Prior to Shibumi, the client was tracking the health and progress of these initiatives using PowerPoint templates and spreadsheets for reporting. The organization wanted to standardize on new change methodology that would increase objectivity of health assessments and improve their project success rates. While they still use a traditional PPM tool to manage project plans and budgets, they have adopted Shibumi as their enterprise standard for project health assessments and success checks. Nahmias shared that this client’s CIO personally thanked Shibumi for contributing to a significant improvement in their project quality, efficiency and success rates.

Shibumi has partnered with some of the most respected companies and advisory firms and is continuously working on product enhancements with companies like Salesforce.com and Box that will make it easier to prioritize initiatives and projects, to do real-time course correction on in-flight programs, and understand the impact of changes. “Our goal is to use the power of technology to learn from past experiences and better predict the road ahead,” concludes Nahmias.