A Modern Approach to Strategic Portfolio Management
Introducing (SEA)results: Strategic Portfolio Management, Built for Higher Education
Higher education institutions, like most enterprises, feel a constant tension between the scope of their ambition and the resources necessary to achieve it. This simple fact elevates the importance of prioritization, not in a vacuum, but in the context of those finite resources. Despite the fact that this tension is not new, enterprise prioritization solutions do not exist. Where they do exist, they tend to be manual, error-prone, and inefficient. Think meetings, flip charts, spreadsheets, PowerPoint decks: this is the old way.
A new category of software – Strategic Portfolio Management – is finally emerging to address this gap. Gartner defined the category about three years ago by proposing the consolidation of three separate software categories: Strategy Execution Management (SEM), Enterprise Program and Portfolio Management (EPPM), and Integrated IT Portfolio Analysis (IIPA). At the time, Gartner also pointed out that existing solutions in these categories were overly complex, expensive, hard to implement, and neither mobile- nor executive-friendly.
When we read that report, we were stunned by the close alignment between Gartner’s vision for the category with what we were building at Higher Digital. That is, a single system to align all projects with strategic objectives…so that they could be prioritized by stakeholders in a cyclical workflow that reflects the latest context like project completion percentage and KPI value impact. Dashboards that indicate resource constraints by project, by resource, and even by skill. Roadmaps that signal project completion scenarios based not on theoretical personnel capacity but on effective team yield per portfolio and per project. And one more thing we made sure was part of our solution, even if it isn’t included in Gartner’s market definition: the ability to understand and continuously improve your change management process and culture based on periodic self-assessments, internal and external benchmarking analytics, and AI-generated recommendations.
If all that sounds too good to be true, we would love to give you demo so you can see for yourself. If you, like many institutions, also need help operating the Strategic Portfolio Management process, we have a great team of experienced consultants ready to assist for as long as you need us and at whatever stage your team has reached. We stand ready to meet you where you are and accelerate your Digital Transformation success with (SEA)results, the only Strategic Portfolio Management system purpose-built for higher ed.
