Lean Portfolio Management for Financial Services
The entire financial services industry is in a state of disruptive innovation. While opportunities have never been so plentiful, neither has the threat of obsolescence ever been so prevalent. Financial services must now innovate to survive, and that starts with replacing long-standing business concepts with modern methodologies like Lean Portfolio Management for financial services.
Traditional approaches to portfolio management once acted as the business foundation for many financial services companies. But those approaches were designed for an entirely different paradigm. Today, they can restrain innovation and impede the flow of value. Financial services organizations are now turning to Lean Portfolio Management approaches to nurture innovation, enable the flow of value, and improve funding and planning speed.
Planning and funding can no longer be an annual event. For the financial services industry, planning and funding must be continuous and collaborative, budgeting cycles must be flexible, and demand must be managed against capacity. Additionally, progress must be measured in terms of value delivered and businesses must strive to achieve agility.
During the strategic planning process, financial services leaders set objectives, define direction, identify priorities and determine funding requirements and allocation. Lean Portfolio Management assists by allowing them to:
- Work more efficiently by looking at how value as a whole is flowing throughout the organization. Continuous focus on what the customer needs and desires minimizes wasted time and effort.
- Focus on how their organization is funding priorities: Are they funding projects on a 12-18 month funding and planning model, or are they aligning funding to value streams or key areas of the business?
- Introduce new operational teams and groups to ensure adherence to Lean Portfolio Management practices and principles throughout the organization, as the shift is made to new ways of working, funding, and planning.
- Establish parameters for incremental funding to value streams, relinquishing control from the executive level to the value stream leader, and holding the teams accountable to delivering value.
With the right information and portfolio management model in place, stakeholders make informed portfolio decisions, and can break the traditional strategic planning and funding cycles to deliver what customers want, when they want it.