Essential Launchpad was first released just over two years ago, with the aim of allowing organisations to quickly convert the mass of data held in siloed spreadsheets into usable data that supports the business in its decision making process.
Since the launch we have had almost 1,000 downloads of the Launchpad, and we have made some pretty major improvements:
- Launchpad export now allows data to be exported from Essential to the Launchpad spreadsheet, so you can always add more areas safe in the knowledge that you are working with the most up to date data from your repository
- We have split the Launchpad into Foundation and Plus, as it was getting too big to be easily usable
- Foundation captures a foundation of your architecture across Business, Application, Information/Data and Technology and populates over 20 views
- Plus extensions use data that is exported directly from your repository to allow you to easily populate additional, more advanced views at any time, including:
- Strategic Plans
- Support for the Strategy Planner view including Customer Journeys
- Technology Reference Models
- Value Steams
- Business Application Health Footprint
- Supplier Management
- Technology Lifecyle Management
- Validation highlights potential errors that will cause issues in the views
- A dedicated Launchpad portal provides access to all the resources you need, such as:
- The latest versions
- Detailed capture Instructions
- An online mapping tool to show which worksheets to populate for specific views
- Supporting videos
You can access the new Essential Launchpad page here, and we hope it will make the experience easier and quicker. Our new Essential Editors make data maintenance simple and accessible to all in the organisation. Launchpad and Editors remove one of the main hurdles to any EA initiative – keeping the data up to date.
If you do have any suggestions for improvements or the next set of Launchpad Plus extensions, please feel free to let us know.