The CEO of a given organization is usually responsible for implementing its strategic objectives. He gives the direction and leadership necessary to achieve the organization’s mission, strategy and philosophy to achieve its objectives. Put simply, the CEO must make sure the company is profitable.
The question then is: how do CEOs help organizations be more profitable? Hiring talented executives and giving them the direction and vision necessary to do their job properly. Each executive is assigned particular responsibilities and their performance is measured through the achievement of a set of objectives. For example, the director of the sales department is in charge of increasing the organization’s sales. To monitor his success, the manager uses a combination of software and other tools to track the efforts of the sales department. The tools help answer questions like: how many calls have been made this month? How many sales have been closed today? What’s in progress?
Similarly, the directors of administration, production, marketing, IT and other business divisions need dashboards and reports to help them monitor the success of their divisions. For a project-based company, such as a website maker or a construction company, the role of the CEO and in particular the role of the production manager is very project-centric. The success of a company is based on the profitability of the projects it carries out. Therefore, executives have an increasing interest in understanding how projects are selected and managed.
To ensure success, executives must have an automated and standardized approach to project management. In practice they want to see projects that fall within the scheduled times and budgets. Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) software allow project managers and executives to have a dominant view of all upcoming projects. In the same way that the sales manager uses a CRM software, the production manager can use a Project Portfolio Management (PPM) software to monitor project deadlines, view budgets and schedule conflicts as well as make predictions about the future profitability of projects. PPM software provide dashboards and reports that help keep all projects aligned with business objectives and ensure that every project is a profitable investment for the business.
Project managers and executives may find it difficult to keep track of the project schedule and budget without real time information often resulting in the loss of overview, investing time and money in projects that are unpromising or destined to failure before they start. Therefore, use of PPM software can help key stakeholders get complete visibility of revenue at risk, revenue leakage and residual invoicing. It also helps you control cost overruns with better project budget estimation.
The moral is that managers need project and portfolio management to help organization to be more efficient and process oriented. All CEOs, especially those from companies working on projects, need a top view of what is actually happening in their organization. Hence a PPM software becomes a primary need which compare projects with each other and suggest the best way forward.
Will the benefit outweigh the risk? Will the project align with corporate objectives? Do more resources need to be allocated on one project than another? Which projects will provide a higher ROI? Project portfolio management software helps answer all these questions and helps CEOs do their job better.
