The Strategy represents a vision and the image of the company’s future.
This is then translated into SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time-bounded) objectives.
Then the Organization embarks on various initiatives in the form of Projects, Programs, and Ideas to realize their strategic objectives.
They are grouped into Portfolios based on unique themes and manageability. The role of Portfolio Management is to evaluate the initiatives against the benefits, costs, and strategic alignment.
Benefits Management can be defined as the identification, definition, planning, tracking, and realization of benefits.
A benefit represents the value that is created by the completion of objectives or projects. Benefits can be positive or negative (Dis-benefit).
Examples:
Increasing sales
Reducing production cost
Improving customer satisfaction or reducing churn rate
Benefits Realization is the practice of ensuring that benefits are derived from outputs and outcomes. Its main objective is to ensure the alignment between Project Outcomes and Strategic Objectives.
The three phases of Benefits Realization are:
Defining the benefits,
Attaching Benefits to Projects and defining Target values,
Realizing and Evaluating the benefits.
In Sciforma, while Benefits may be used to measure the value produced by a given piece of the Strategy, it is considered as a separate, independent structure that may or may not be used in addition to the definition of the Objectives.
Benefits can only be attached to Project.
Benefits are the expression of common gains like increasing Sales or reducing Costs.
Global Benefits will be identified by Key attributes – such as a Name, a Description, a Nature (Benefit or Dis-benefit), a Unit (Decimal, Cost or Percentage), a Type, etc.
The Type can be displayed with different colors: Blue, Purple, Green, Yellow, and Orange.
Types will be configurable.
Let’s imagine Mr. and Mrs. Dumont expect from their new projects to:
Increase revenue,
Increase sales.
Once a Benefit is linked with a Project, it is then possible to define a Target value for the Project, as to say, how much achieving this Project will contribute to the Target Benefit.
Once projects are running, it will be possible to track how well they are doing:
From a project point of view – For this project, what is the difference between my target and my current for this benefit, and be able to continue tracking current as time passes.
From a Benefits point of view – How is each project contributing to the Benefit Target.
The Tracking attributes will be the following: Target value, Current value, Completed (Yes, No), and Completed Date.