Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy - Hardcover

by Anand Sanwal (Author)

If where an organization allocates its resources determines its strategy, why is it that so few companies actively manage the resource allocation process? "Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy" goes beyond platitudes about why you should use corporate portfolio management (CPM) by offering a practical methodology to bring this powerful discipline to your organization.

"Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management" takes an expansive view of where CPM can be utilized by demonstrating that it can be used across any business line, product group or functional area, e.g., IT, R&D, innovation, marketing, salesforce, capital expenditure, etc. CPM is appropriate anywhere discretionary investments are being selected and executed. As a result, other terms used to describe portfolio management such as IT portfolio management, enterprise portfolio management, and project portfolio management are all merely subsets or slices of CPM.

The book is written by Anand Sanwal, an expert on CPM, who has led American Express' CPM discipline (referred to as American Express Investment Optimization). American Express' CPM efforts are widely recognized as the most extensive, substantial and progressive deployment of CPM across any organization. Sanwal avoids academic theories and consultant jargon to ultimately deliver pragmatic and proven recommendations on how to make CPM a reality. The book features a foreword by Gary Crittenden, former CFO and EVP of American Express, and several case studies from leading financial services, technology, and government organizations utilizing CPM. Additionally, the book has received significant praise from thought leaders at Google, HP, American Express, The CFO Executive Board, Gartner, Accenture Marketing Sciences, The Wharton School of Business and many others.

Front Jacket

Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management
Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy

An essential resource for anyone involved with managing or supervising their organization's discretionary investments, Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management provides practical guidance for C-level executives as well as finance, IT, marketing, R&D, and business managers serious about maximizing and realizing their financial and strategic objectives. With comprehensive coverage, author Anand Sanwal--a leading authority on corporate portfolio management (CPM)--shares a pragmatic and proven framework for building a robust CPM capability within an organization.

Written by a practitioner for executives and fellow practitioners, this crucial resource offers a guide to enabling CPM within an organization by focusing on the behavioral and process dimensions vital to making CPM a success. Starting with a Foreword by Gary Crittenden, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of American Express, this book avoids a simplistic "one size fits all" approach to the evaluation of an organization's investments, and instead recognizes that every organization varies its view on investments, priorities, risk tolerance, strategy, and financial goals.

CPM has yielded tremendous results at leading companies, and case studies demonstrating the power of CPM are provided for a diverse array of organizations including American Express, TransUnion, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, and the State of Oregon Department of Human Services.

Keeping corporate and management jargon to a minimum, Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management details a practical capability that works best when organizational behavior and process are aligned. It covers relevant topics including:

• A description of corporate portfolio management and why it is important to your organization's success

• Mismanaging your corporate investment portfolio: the Seven (and a half) Deadly Sins of CPM

• A detailed four-step process to bring CPM to your organization

• How CPM can be applied to various functional areas including IT, Innovation/R&D, Marketing/A&P, capital expenditure, and sales force

• Useful tools, frameworks, and practices to enable CPM

Filled with proven strategies and examples, this groundbreaking guide will demonstrate how to capture a more holistic view of your company's investment portfolio while working smarter to deploy its finite resources. An invaluable companion Web site supplies forms, checklists, and useful exhibits that can help organizations on their road to achieving an optimal corporate portfolio.

Back Jacket

Praise for
Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy

"Companies today spend more and more time micro-optimizing individual investments while broad portfolio trade-offs go neglected. Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management attacks this intractable problem, providing solutions for companies interested in breaking down organizational barriers to unleash growth."
--Jeffrey Merrihue, CEO, Accenture Marketing Sciences

"Anand Sanwal has brilliantly articulated the essence of corporate portfolio optimization and skillfully spelled out the pitfalls and difficulties in achieving it. But his greatest achievement is in leading the charge to a rare state of conscious portfolio management competence on an enterprise-wide basis in a large, complex, and highly successful multinational organization, American Express. A must-read for CEOs and CFOs who truly want to create shareholder value on a sustained basis."
--Michael Menke, Chief Portfolio Advocate and Business Strategist, Hewlett-Packard

"Portfolio management is the 'holy grail' of resource allocation but very few companies have been able to reach it. Anand Sanwal has done a superb job of creating a practical, step-by-step guide for implementing portfolio management techniques in all resource allocation decisions, including operating expenses. Most compelling is the book's focus on changing managers' behavior, not just changing processes."
--Eisha Tierney Armstrong, Managing Director, CFO Executive Board

"What is more important to an organization than effective resource allocation? The trick is to remove the emotion and focus on what can be measured . . . not easy to do, but this book shows you how."
--Alan Gallo, Senior Vice President, Corporate Planning & Analysis, American Express Company

"Of the Seven Deadly Sins described by Anand Sanwal, my favorite for derailing corporate portfolio management is 'Decibel vs. Data-Driven Decision Making.' Those who avoid the sins and who adopt the many virtues Anand explains will realize far greater benefits from their IT and other corporate investments."
--Matt Light, Research Director, Gartner Inc.

"Insightful and to the point, Sanwal clearly highlights one of the greatest challenges facing large businesses in today's dynamic market environment. Any company that struggles with allocating investment resources now has a viable prescription for bringing order to the potential chaos of portfolio management."
--Satya Patel, Senior Product Manager, Google, Inc.

Author Biography

Anand Sanwal is Vice President, Investment Optimization and Strategic Business Analysis, at American Express. Within this role, he is responsible for managing billions of dollars of per annum discretionary investment spent as part of American Express's CPM initiative, and also overseeing the CFO's strategy and analysis group. Sanwal holds a degree in finance and accounting from the Wharton School of Business and is a recognized thought leader on corporate portfolio management, speaking frequently to companies and research organizations including the CFO Executive Board, Beyond Budgeting Roundtable, Enterprise Portfolio Management Council, and Gartner, among others. He welcomes your feedback, insights, and comments and can be reached at asanwal@corporateportfoliomanagement.org