Reap benefits from your strategic portfolio planning

In a recent ServiceNow survey, just 30% of respondents indicated they could achieve expected business outcomes for more than 70% of their strategic initiatives. 42% failed to achieve outcomes for over half of their strategic projects. 

These are striking statistics, and it’s not always a lack of execution. In many cases, the problem is with planning: setting unrealistic goals and objectives, the wrong investments, and inappropriate success criteria, to name a few. And for many organizations, the rate of change is fast; they can’t cope with what is happening in their operating environments.

Strategic portfolio management thus becomes the need of the hour – a discipline that has strategic planning at its core.

It aims to connect all aspects of strategy: from the initial setting of priorities and goals and the selection of investments to the execution of work and the measurement of business outcomes.

How SPM benefits organizations

Align work with strategy more easily by separating investments from strategic priorities, allowing investment owners to define and drive work delivery.

Focus on strategic priorities by eliminating traditional, silo-based development of project proposals that only nominally align with corporate goals; ultimately the work that is defined and approved directly contributes to business success.

Optimize resource utilization and work delivery by creating a centrally managed portfolio with a single source of truth for scheduling, dependencies, and so forth.

Drive employee engagement by providing consistent communication of overall strategy, contextualized for all groups to help ensure that all contributors understand how their work supports organizational success.

What you should expect from an SPM solution

World-class SPM solutions must

• Assess performance against all portfolio investments, regardless of how work is being carried out. 
• Show current and forecast performance against benefits
• Provide accurate and complete information on resource capacity and actual, planned, and forecast costs
• Allow all investments to be managed for their entire lifecycle, whether those investments are epics, projects, products, value streams, or something else.

Total control of your world, all in one place

Strategic planning isn’t a once-a-year activity; it’s continuous. And business leaders must know what is happening at all times. With SPM in place, organizations improve their ability to deliver successful strategic initiatives and, in particular, focus on improving strategic planning. That’s what drives the adoption of SPM.