Having experience relating to EIDOS that goes back to 2001 (before it was even called EIDOS), I have found the tool set to be fantastic for structuring complex challenges in even the largest organizations. The core tool suite has not really varied dramatically over the past 15+ years, but the usability has soared. I find EIDOS greatly complements my work in Enterprise Architecture, the value of which I often bottom line as being "Better informed decisions faster." In Enterprise Architecture (EA), one tries to better link Business Demand with Information, People, Process, and Technology Supply. EIDOS helps me ensure coherency and comprehensiveness in addressing and scoping any major business/government/non-profit transformation, especially on the business strategy/architecture side of the house up front and then with analysis of alternatives to best satisfy any chosen course of action. I have used it to support my EA work with some of the largest organizations, including the United Nations and the U.S. Federal Government, along with Ivy League universities and Fortune 10 companies. In short, EIDOS, once mastered, and it is not easy to master, to be honest, can really raise the IQ of an Enterprise. As with any complex tool environment, an investment is absolutely required to get at least a couple of people up to the expert level in the tool suite to fully benefit from it and this must be a concerted, focused effort over a reasonable period of time.

This rich suite of complementary tools for strategic reasoning, decision making, and visualization can undoubtedly lead to better collaboration and communication for more comprehensive understanding of opportunities and alternative ways to approach them. EIDOS integrates myriad templates and allows for customizations of others to help do everything from stakeholder analysis; to better understanding drivers/concerns and requirements; goals, objectives, and measures; and ultimately of a consensus on the optimum courses of action, and associated implementation choices, including from different perspectives. Once one fully understands every tool in the EIDOS toolkit and how to leverage them all, one can become a master strategist in any domain, needing of course, to bring together particular experts and reference material related to the context of the strategic challenge is for what business or organization. The toolset is surely one of the best in the world for doing high-level impact analysis and analysis of alternatives -- again, provided the inputs into it are based on the leading business and technology thinking in any particular area. This is a great toolset for supporting CxOs in any vertical and any type organization, but it depends on outstanding skill in facilitation to link the tools to each other and the use cases. It is a world class set of tools for Decision Architecture. Its use for every significant change initiative would provide certain return on investment.

Being in the Decision Architecture and strategic tools business for over 20 years, I respect how difficult it is to introduce any new tool or method into an organization's workflow and how easy it is for anything new to become yet another silo rather than the integrated platform intended. With this in mind, I think recognition of the need for other tools, and recommendations for their integrated use, such as Mind Mapping and modeling/diagramming, would be a big plus. In addition, processes that would lead to some kind of Quality Assurance of the products coming from EIDOS, such as through the use of Red Teams, should probably be included in the whole approach. This could force more thorough research and greater confidence regarding the data ultimately used in the different stages of the strategy and decision making processes. Finally, guidance on how to ultimately build and maintain a Decision Architecture Repository for the organization or "Enterprise" would be extremely valuable and a great way to showcase the contributions of EIDOS. Ideally, one could have a record of all key aspects of any transformation life cycle that could also serve as a reference library of potentially reusable building blocks.

The software has supported difficult client engagements ensuring that one can deliver in their high expectations in unusually short timelines. I have applied the tools in facilitations for mainly large public organisations but also for the NGO sector. Without fail it allows capture of content in a systematic fashion and when such content (actors and factors) are connected to provide a situational view that provides clarity to context of the problem statement to both the leadership and management of such organisations. In times when the environment keeps changing and within such the industries have to continually evolve, the tools support quick updates of context and scenarios while keeping in tact outcomes from previous engagements as useful baselines. After the workshops I have found that executives and management are able to consistently communicate the knowledge gained and strategies formulated i.e. the process supports participants obtaining a deeper understanding of the situation, scenarios and selected strategies which the process forces to be very clearly articulated and evaluated. At the same time the common language and understanding gained by participants supports consistent communication crucial to execution of selected strategies.

Development Bank of Southern Africa is the custodian of the Eidos licenses for the South African Government. My engagement were as administrator and custodian for the engagements supporting state initiatives such as the training and support to the secretariat for the National Development Plan within the Presidency, Policy Development within Local Government, parastatals such as Eskom (public electricity utility) and public initiatives such as the application funding to the Global Aids Fund by the South African National Aids Council. The set of tools supports decision processes both from a systemic helicopter as well as detail evaluation perspective while maintaining process and allowing unstructured and structured problem analysis. This is unique in my experience with the tools over the last 12 years. One can use the tools in isolation although I would recommend a structured use of 4 to 5 of the tools that usefully combine in support of the strategy development and then refinement required to select and execute different options. In point solutions one can perform detailed analysis of scenarios and strategies provided by others in very short time periods. The rich content without fail has provided useful insights for executives and senior management alike. The computational engines behind the tools extend our thinking capacity enormously while supporting such with visual representation that make interpretation and engagement with the content possible.

One must ensure that the right people are in the room to support and engage with the content that the decision and strategy processes develop and build on. Groups of 10 to 12 participants are ideal, beyond which the skill of the facilitator will be even more important. Preparation takes time and is key but is very worthwhile in my experience. The process does tend to show up possible gaps in participants understanding which have to be managed. Usually this is an opportunity for learning but it does require follow up within the organisation.

Eidos structures strategic foresight projects. It is not super easy, but with the right guidance at the right time, is becomes a powerful tool.

The world is getting more complex, and strategic foresight is maturing to match that complexity. Students enter the MBA here at Aarhus University with lots of different experiences in making strategy at their organizations. Because of this, there is a problem with harmonizing their vocabulary and the parameters under which the futures, strategies, and goals are discussed. Eidos is a good way to align these concepts so that groups can get further into the future and deeper into strategy. Eidos provides the architecture to transfer and collaborate, also decentrally, for the completion of project processes.

Not the software, per say, but some students are unwilling from the get-go to learn new software. Not that it is overly complicated, but they just decide beforehand not to.

With this coherent methodological framework you'll be enabled to craft and develop scenarios and strategies. Enhancement of decision making processes with tools that enable a rigorous analysis and synthetic integration through effective visualization and efficient computation. Highly effective interaction between tools addressing endogenous factors (PESTLE) in strategic frameworks, and those enabling assessments of external drivers and trends through scenarios. Eidos also captures knowledge generated in strategic planning exercises. The highly dynamic and integrated formats, are reuseable and easily support modifications and expansions later on. Enabling effective strategic management of issues and challenges in highly volatil, uncertain, complex and ambigue environments.

Advanced systemic Analysis of cause and effects relevant for strategic decisions. Helps to handle complexity rather than simplify. Avoiding managerial bias within the crafting of different strategic initiatives. Comprehensive toolset to support different Business Tasks. Help to evaluate robustness of strategies within different external Szenarios and effectiveness of Strategies to Support internal Goals. Integration of existing knowledge in and interlink with other programs / documents like Office, Acrobat. Exchanging and recordind knowledge in workshops interactively in a resuable way, with the benefit of effectively identifying main issues of un-/certainty or non-/conformaty.

Licencing Modell is focused on Enterprises models. Stand alone licences not offered. Drag and Drop / Copy & Paste between Eidos and PPT could be more anhanced. The power and manifold of the Software somestimes leads to hesistant initial user Feedback. The gap between the minimalism of visualisation Features in Eidos tools to support the effective reasoning process and usual variety or used visuals in ppt sometimes hampered involvement of different stakeholders.

The guidance, and yet the flexibility Eidos offers, make my workshops more professional and qualitatively more valuable.

I use the software in a wide variety of tasks in my projects and workshops. It is the ideal tool to structure content and thought processes, to visualize complex challenges and show their interrelationships to gain a deeper understanding and/or simply to create a common understanding for the participants. My customers are always excited how well structured the workshops run, how easy it is for everybody to follow while nobody gets lost, and also how effectively we work together. Besides, I find a suite that offers the necessary template for nearly every (managament) task and I can create my own background template if needed. Also the follow-up of the workshops is supported: using the "create slides" functionality there is no need to exhaustingly and stressfully prepare a summary or photolog nobody looks into afterwards anyway.

Improvement on the import/export functionalities would be helpful.