Strategic Investment Selections

What is a strategic investment selection and why is it important?

A business strategy becomes real when the first investment is made. However, making complex multi-criteria investment decisions can be a daunting task, especially when the strategic objectives are unclear. This challenge can be compounded when there is a group of cross-functional or geographically distributed decision-makers; or a diverse set of alternative investments to consider.

As such, more business leaders are recognizing the importance of controlling their business and technology investments and managing them as an integral part of their strategic plan.

Whether the strategy is focused on achieving strategic outcomes, growing top-line revenues through the introduction of new products or services, or reducing costs of shared services and infrastructure, an enterprise-level strategic investment selection process is critical to achieving the mission and succeeding in today’s fast-paced environment.

How does Definitive help facilitate this process?

Investment selections are, by their very nature, a team sport. As such, the process must promote teamwork.

Definitive facilitates the strategic investment selection process using a proven, 6-step methodology:

1. Build a Decision Model
2. Prioritize the Criteria
3. Score the Alternatives
4. Analyze the Results
5. Optimize the Resources
6. Make the Decisions

Definitive also assists the customer by managing the business process, developing job aids and reports, and providing and maintaining the support tools, such as Definitive Pro™ and Microsoft SharePoint.

Collaboration

Definitive Pro™ enables the strategic investment selection team to collaborate anytime, anywhere, using any device. By making it easier to participate, we: bring together representatives from business, technology and finance; promote teamwork; and improve cross-functional insight.

Prioritization

Definitive Pro™ uses the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to accurately establish the relative importance of the selection criteria, and efficiently score all potential investments. The consistent and transparent scoring process yields greater consensus and buy-in than other approaches.

Optimization

Definitive Pro™ employs the Gurobi optimizer®, a state-of-the-art mathematical programming solver for optimizing the allocation of resources. The Gurobi optimizer quickly identifies the set of investments that maximize the strategic benefit, while satisfying all dependencies and constraints.

Faster and better decisions — Justifiable decision rationale — Historical record of decisions

Definitive Pro™ also powers group decision support for:

• Budget Formulation
• Business Opportunity Selections
• Business Partner Selections
• IT Demand Management
• Merger & Acquisition Selections
• Organizational Cost Savings
• Personnel Selections
• Product and Feature Selections
• Requirements Prioritization
• Risk Assessments
• Strategy Development
• Surveys and Audience Response
• Vendor Selections