Strategic Planning/ Portfolio Investment Prioritization

At a glance

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

Key metrics

15%

Leads Increase

$5M

Customer Marketing Revenue Influence

30

Socialization in Global DM and regional calls promoting usage

MY RELEVANT THOUGHT LEADERSHIP ARTICLE

Devil is in the Details as Statistics are like Miniskirts

(sandeepsastry.com/devil-details-statistics-like-miniskirts/)

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.
  • Played the role of facilitator, influencer, socializer and recommend the rationale for funding. transparent for each project allocation by merits, business metrics and impacts.
  • Developed Balanced Scorecard level setting 5-7 actionable metrics focusing on Portfolio Performance, Sales Productivity, Customer Experience and Employee Engagement.
1
Benefits One
Ringfenced 10% of budget to invest in new programs. Quarterly Budgets were met within -1 to 3%.
2
Benefits Two
Awarded for developing planning processes, investment prioritization model and actionable Dashboards.
3
Benefits Three
Promoted more standardization, visibility and transparency for the executive leadership team to view their program spend. Ease of doing business and eliminated redundancy.