EA Voices

But is this enough? 

If executives are fully occupied with execution and doing things right (e.g. processes, projects and production) how will they know when time, effort, and money are being spent on areas that are not truly important to the business.

While efficiency, doing things right, is certainly vital for business success, perhaps it’s even more important for executives to take a step back on a routine basis and ask themselves a few important questions such as:

• Where are all business assets (people, processes, technology, applications)?
• How much does all this cost?
• Are all of these assets vital to my business – are there areas of obsolescence, redundancy or waste?
• What assets are really needed to operate and grow the business?
• What are our plans to introduce assets that are missing, optimize critical assets, and safely decommission the rest?

Answering these questions will help ensure precious resources (time, people and money) are being directed towards areas that will help the business grow and better compete. 

By adopting an Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPM) approach, leaders can make more informed business and technology strategy decisions by gaining insights into the key areas (portfolios) that characterize their business.  This transparency delivers executives with a clear, real-time view into their assets (tangible and non-tangible) and illustrates how and where they are spread across their business.  An EPM approach shows decision makers how assets support corporate goals, strategies, and core business processes.  With this newfound clarity, decision makers have the ability to better understand which assets are required to operate and grow their business and which are not.  This level of visibility equips business leaders with the ability to take action by making well-informed investment and divestment decisions.  Hence ‘Doing The Right Thing’. 

It is equally important to recognize that doing the right thing also means avoiding ‘doing the wrong thing’.  Unfortunately, it is not at all uncommon to hear examples of two project teams whose actions are in direct conflict with each other.  Imagine the savings and benefits in time, money and morale that would be achieved by eliminating one unneeded project.  

Using an EPM approach business leaders and decision makers no longer have to assume they are doing the right thing.  Decisions that affect the business can now be consistently made on facts rather that ‘gut-feel’.  Business leaders will be armed with the confidence that the time, money and effort, they are responsible for governing, are being spent in the right places.  Once executives know the right things to do, they can focus on doing them right.