Thursday, September 13, 2012

De facto Strategic Partner for The Business


                                       
Two Levers Portfolio Management CompanyDe facto Strategic Partner for The Business
So now the question turns into how to build a portfolio management discipline and ensure its success. Efforts Successful portfolio management company based on two dimensions.
1. Modern Portfolio Theory (aka process) - This is what people generally think of when they think about the portfolio management company. The program consists of:
o Valuation of Investment - This includes defining what the investment is. It is useful to take a broad definition of what comprises an investment as it is not only the capitDe facto Strategic Partner for The Businessal expenditure (capex), but should also include operational costs (OPEX). In general, 25-40% of the cost of the organization and therefore discretionary investment. Valuation of investment also requires consistency assessment methodology that requires the use of driver-based models to make projections and also look at the past NPV and ROI to consider strategy and other qualitative aspects that encourage investments 'value'.
o Allocation Portfolio - This requires determining investment areas / themes and related allocations. Basically, what my strategic priorities for investment and how much will go to each area? For example, 25% in customer acquisition, 20% in IT, 55% in customer retention. The allocation should also consider the risk profile of the investment, for example, 60% low risk, 30% intermediate risk and 10% high risk.
o Portfolio Optimization - It requires choosing the best investment to support the portfolio allocation and periodically rebalancing the portfolio to ensure consistency with the desired portfolio allocation. The goal is to maximize strategic and financial return per unit of risk.
o Measuring performance - a key element of successful portfolio management company is capturing actual investment returns to allow the promise vs performance. Doing this in turn allows organizations improve the sustainable investment valuations based on actual results and allow to rebalance the portfolio based on the performance achieved.
Most people with a financial background will recognize the above teaching portfolio theory. The problem with most of the discussion of portfolio management is that it assumes that people behave in accordance with the construction of the theory / rational. While many experts to offer the empty saying things like, "Just manage your company's investment as you manage your own investments," they fail to realize that many people may not even manage their personal portfolios accordingly. They may know what they should do but emotion, intuition, and other external influences releasing this way rational. That often we get lost in our personal portfolio is what leads us astray in an organizational setting - behavior. The challenge in an organization is magnified by the fact that it is hundreds or thousands of people whose behavior is to be considered. And so this is the second fundamental lever portfolio management - organizational behavior.
2. Organizational Behavior - In order to optimize one's portfolio, the behavior element must be understood:
o A data-driven mindset - Organizations often create decibel-or intuition-led decisions and portfolio management companies, such as 6-Sigma, requiring data and analytical decision making.
Silos o removed - portfolio company management success requires people to think about what is best for the organization and not just what is best for "my world" - silos and dynastic organization needs to be broken.
o Incentive alignment - People should be driven by short-term incentives and long term alike.
o Accountability and transparency - There must be a willingness to share information and effectively created a market for investment.
Moving organizational behavior is a bigger challenge and it takes time to change. At American Express, we have been actively working on changing organizational behavior and has made significant inroads from time to time, but it has not happened overnight. We have done a review of investment units of traffic, sponsoring conferences internal portfolio management companies, and even created the simulation of resource allocation to be seen showing the benefits of portfolio management company.
Bring Portfolio Management Company for your organization if you think the company's portfolio management can be implemented within a month or a quarter, not for you. Portfolio management companies did not sprint and requires the will and heart of a marathon runner. You will see the benefits along the way, but it takes time to realize the full potential of portfolio companies thrive. But once set up and running, disciplined portfolio management actively managed the company will pay dividends vary. For American Express, we can show the stock price out-performance for our benchmark index as well as our competition since adopted a portfolio management company. Effectiveness of our allocation of resources also helps to encourage our PE multiple (price to earnings multiple), which is significantly larger than our competitive counterparts.
Very tactical, disciplined portfolio management company has helped us understand what our business should be out and where we might want to invest more. This has allowed us to allocate money across business segments for the first time can be extremely challenging in large organizations. Most importantly, portfolio management companies have become part of the DNA with the financial and business organizations to talk about their investments on an ongoing basis. Financial companies led the portfolio management but with significant input and is very direct and interaction with the business. The gulf between the financial and the business has been bridged by utilizing a portfolio management company, and the benefits to the organization in terms of financial performance and strategic and employee involvement has been significant.



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