Strategic Planning & Investment Prioritization

At a glance

Formulated and managed the Planning, Portfolio investment prioritization and governance. Received accolades, awards and promotion.

Key metrics

$100M

Portfolio Spend

-1 TO 3%

Budget Actuals

10%

Ringfenced for new investments

In Cisco, in the environment of budget cuts, the planning process was adhoc with no standardization. There were executive dashboards with many vanity metrics but no actionable metrics required for decision making. No portfolio investment prioritization criteria and budget allocations were done randomly.

  • Engaged the Executive ‘s leadership team members understand their programs, scope, top of mind and prioritization for their spend.
  • Built a horizon-based investment model balancing near-term and long-term strategic opportunities.
  • Established portfolio-level guardrails for budgeting, spending and governance. Socialized the new process with the executive leadership team and delegates to get buy-in and weekly follow-up with stakeholders.
  • Developed and managed the Service Operations prioritization process-focused on strategic fit and business value. Presented to Steering Committee for decision making and assisted in the upfront high-level scoping budgeting, interdependencies and roadmap initiatives.
  • Developed Balanced Scorecard level setting 5-7 actionable metrics focusing on Portfolio Performance, Sales Productivity, Customer Experience and Employee Engagement.
1

Ringfenced 10% of budget to invest in new programs. Quarterly Budgets were met within -1 to 3%.

2

Awarded for developing planning processes, investment prioritization model and actionable Dashboards.

3

Promoted more standardization, visibility and transparency for the executive leadership team to view their program spend. Ease of doing business and eliminated redundancy.