Picture this: You're a C-suite executive of a leading company. You’re at your wit's end. Your organization recently invested millions in a transformative strategic initiative, but halfway through, it’s become clear that the program isn’t delivering the expected results. Deadlines have been missed, budgets overrun, and you’re afraid you’ll start losing ground to competitors. You largely attribute this to fragmentation across your business – from your planning practices to the tools your people are using and everything in between.
You are not alone. This problem is a pervasive one, affecting businesses of all sizes: Research shows that 60 percent to 90 percent of strategic plans are never fully launched. And, when effective change management is lacking, transformation projects are seven times more likely to fail.
In this blog, you'll find an answer. It's the unique combination of two powerful approaches: Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) and Managed Services. When you finish reading, you’ll understand how this dynamic duo can help you:
We’ll also share three real-world examples and plenty of actionable insights your organization can implement to consistently unlock value. Let’s begin.
Today’s business landscape is high-speed and competitive, and you need a workforce solution that can keep up with your shifting priorities. That’s where a Managed Service comes into play, providing a flexible, scalable, and outcomes-based partnership that works with you to proactively anticipate capability needs and sustainably achieve your strategic initiatives.
To be truly effective, a Managed Service must go beyond simple outsourcing; it needs to be a collaborative partnership that’s built on trust and transparency and evolves and innovates alongside your portfolio of initiatives. By focusing on key areas where strategic investments lie (pinpointed by SPM), a Managed Service partner can deliver high-performing, specialized expertise, while remaining agile enough to pivot when those areas change.
The value of a Managed Service is also rooted in creating lasting capability through knowledge transfer. By working closely with your workforce, our teams deliver more than high-quality results. They equip your people with the skills and knowledge needed to lead the organization effectively and independently once our engagement is complete.
Leveraging a Managed Services partner that shares your strategic alignment can be a strong driver of value. Here’s more about how:
REAL-WORLD APPLICATION: Throughout an eight-year partnership with a leading British multinational postal service, the entity has experienced significant improvements in resource optimization, performance management, and quality assurance. By adopting our innovative resourcing approaches (i.e., Managed Services), which go beyond traditional headcount or role-based models, it has been able to effectively meet resource demands while maintaining a high level of operational efficiency.
Adopting tools like NH360 Strategic Portfolio Manager can be a transformative step for your business, enabling you to turn your strategy into a reality. It provides a comprehensive, real-time view of your investments, allowing you to make decisions that are data-driven, aligned with your objectives, and will optimize every dollar for maximum impact.
A powerful SPM tool can also help you track efficiencies and manage talent by providing clear metrics and visibility into resource allocation. The outcome? You're able to make more informed decisions about where to focus your efforts and invest your resources. This is crucial for effectively managing costs in today's fast-paced business environment, where the ability to pivot quickly can mean all the difference between success and failure.
By leveraging SPM, you can tackle the main culprits of value erosion head-on, including:
REAL-WORLD APPLICATION: Consider our recent work with an oil and gas company. The company needed to manage roughly 2,000 initiatives, a task that would be insurmountable for any enterprise without the right tools and approach. With SPM, however, the company organized and streamlined approximately $1.3 billion of capital and operating investments. By leveraging SPM, leaders gained unprecedented visibility across resources and project site capabilities. And, armed with a view of the entire portfolio, they made more informed decisions, funded and executed the right initiatives, and allocated resources optimally to maximize business value.
So now that you know more about each solution, let’s talk about what happens when SPM and Managed Services come together. When combined, they create a powerful combination that addresses the end-to-end needs of managing a strategic portfolio.
By integrating SPM and Managed Services, organizations like yours benefit from a virtuous cycle of strategic alignment, efficient execution, and continuous optimization. This combination enables you to respond to dynamic market conditions and customer needs while maximizing the value of your investments.
Here’s a quick look at how:
REAL-WORLD APPLICATION: Our partnership with a leading infrastructure business illustrates the power of combining these two solutions. As the lead portfolio partner, North Highland set out to assemble a team that worked closely with leadership to reorganize the operating model and governance. Using a 'right-size' approach, the team established consistency and best practices across the program, significantly increasing efficiencies. This partnership enabled the program to swiftly respond and reorganize its 1,000+ strong workforce. Initially deploying a team of around 20 people to a single workstream, we flexibly adapted as demand shifted, seamlessly moving between workstreams and building in-house capabilities to maximize value. The result? A transformed organization, empowered to navigate change with agility and resilience.
Having a solid plan for your next initiative is no longer enough to guarantee success. Every executive today needs a comprehensive approach that seamlessly aligns strategy with execution, optimizes resources, connects your entire enterprise, and consistently delivers results. The combination of SPM and Managed Services offers a powerful framework to achieve just that.
By tapping into this synergy, expect to confidently tackle even the most complex strategic initiatives and achieve the outcomes you’ve envisioned. You’ll have the processes, tools, and expertise needed to make more informed decisions, adapt to changing market conditions, and continuously optimize your resource allocation for maximum impact.
Consider your deadlines consistently met, your budgets on track, your enterprise connected and aligned toward a common goal, and a sustainable competitive advantage that allows you to stay ahead of the curve.