Portfolio Management: do your "users' expression of value" drive your decisions?
Jinfo Blog

By Stephen Phillips

Abstract

Effective Content Portfolio Management can be enhanced with effective product scoring mechanisms. But getting the right balance between quantitative and qualitative measures is critical if you are going to enhance your credibility with your stakeholders.

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August is usually a quiet month, but this year has been very different.

The economic headwinds facing many organisations are transforming the work of Jinfo clients from what I call “good busy” (helping their organisations prosper in a buoyant market), to “bad busy” (preparing for a more challenging operating environment).

For one Jinfo client, their timing has been perfect. We are about to conclude a major project to overhaul the way they capture and articulate the value of licensed information.

One outcome of this project was the crafting of a succinct scorecard to build quantitative and qualitative product assessments.

Nothing unusual about that, I suspect many of you already have similar mechanisms to inform your decisions; if you haven’t, feel free to get in touch or you can get started here.

Their scorecard contains all the quantitative measures you might expect to see, as well as provisions to score functionality and coverage. In many respects, these are the easiest variables to capture and whilst they are useful they are not always a good indicator of value without additional context.

What emerged as a critical part of the scorecard, was a group of indicators we call "end-user expressions of value". In other words, the stakeholders’ qualitative assessment of a product and how it impacts the business.

Why was this the most critical part of the scorecard? Firstly, there were multiple indicators and assessment criteria for their users’ expressions of value. Then, when our client weighted the scorecard components, they assigned 50% of that weighting to these indicators.

What became apparent was that our client, despite having what they considered to be excellent stakeholder engagement, needed to take it to the next level to gather those “expressions of value” to make their scorecard credible.

Our client is now enhancing their engagements to build a richer, more intimate understanding of their stakeholders’ perceptions of product value. They use their scorecard to enrich their stakeholder conversations and reinforce their credentials as content advisors to the wider organisation.

It's never too late to start developing your strategy and priorities for managing your portfolio and engaging your stakeholders. Jinfo wants to work with information leaders on their information strategy.

Contact us if you would like to discuss how we can help you develop your capabilities and enhance your credibility.

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