Portfolio Management

Portfolio Management is the responsibility of the senior management team of an organization or business unit.
This team, which might be called the Product Committee, meets regularly to manage the product pipeline and make decisions about the product portfolio. Often, this is the same group that conducts the stage-gate reviews in the organization.
A logical starting point is to create a product strategy - markets, customers, products, strategy approach, competitive emphasis, etc. The second step is to understand the budget or resources available to balance the portfolio against. Third, each projectmust be assessed for profitability (rewards), investment requirements (resources), risks, and other appropriate factors.
The weighting of the goals in making decisions about products varies from company. But organizations must balance these goals: risk vs. profitability, new products vs. improvements, strategy fit vs. reward, market vs. product line, long-term vs. short-term. Several types of techniques have been used to support the portfolio management process:
· Heuristic models
· Scoring techniques
· Visual or mapping techniques
The earliest Portfolio Management techniques optimized projects' profitability or financial returns using heuristic or mathematical models. However, this approach paid little attention to balance or aligning the portfolio to the organization's strategy.
Scoring techniques weight and score criteria to take into account investment requirements, profitability, risk and strategic alignment. The shortcoming with this approach can be an over emphasis on financial measures and an inability to optimize the mix of projects.
Mapping techniques use graphical presentation to visualize a portfolio's balance. These are typically presented in the form of a two-dimensional graph that shows the trade-off's or balance between two factors such as risks vs. profitability, marketplace fit vs. product line coverage, financial return vs. probability of
success, etc
Portfolio Management is used to select a portfolio of new product development projects to achieve the following goals:
· Maximize the profitability or value of the portfolio
· Provide balance
· Support the strategy of the enterprise
The art and science of making decisions about investment mix and policy, matching investments to objectives, asset allocation for individuals and institutions, and balancing risk vs. performance.
Portfolio management is all about strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the choice of debt vs. equity, domestic vs. international, growth vs. safety, and numerous other tradeoffs encountered in the attempt to maximize return at a given appetite for risk.
Benefits of the portfolio management program:
· Customized investment management
· Diversification
· Unified fee structure
· Personalized client service
· Resources of an industry leader addressing your
individual needs
· Unified fee structure.

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Business Intelligence and how can it help us

Every year organizations gather and store increasing amounts of data. Mid-size organizations tell us that, on average, they have a minimum of seven operational data sources.
These sources contain data the business users often want to tap into, in order to make the best decisions to steer the business in the right direction. But for IT to respond to the escalating requests and really help the business use that data can be a huge drain on time and resources. And the requests are piling up.
Requests such as:
Can you give me a report that combines sales and forecast data? Can you provide a spreadsheet that shows a top 100 customers by product type—what and when they bought, and where they are located?
Can you provide a dashboard that shows the executives of the key performance indicators such as sales, costs, and profits, so they can have up-to-the minute access to this information? Sounds familiar?
You want to help, but are limited in time and resources. And you often don’t want to give them access to the data directly for control and security purposes. That’s where Business Intelligence (BI) comes in. http://InfosDemocracy.com

Training Other Qualifications, and Advancement

An educational requirement for these managers are broadly varies, depending on the size and complexity of the organization.
In some organizations, experience may be the only requirement needed to enter a position as office manager.
In administrative services management, the office manager may be promoted to a certain position based on past performance of the manager without being passing through a managerial course.
In large organizations, however, some administrative services managers are chartered consultant to the organization (Company)and each position have formal education and experience requirements. Some of them have advanced degrees.
Specific requirements vary by job responsibility. For first-line administrative service managers of secretarial,
mailroom, and related support activities, which many employers prefer in associate degree in business or management, with a high school diploma may suffice when combined with appropriate experience. For managers of audiovisual, graphics, and other technical activities, postsecondary technical school training is
preferred at a first time employment by a small organization, but they may summer, summer recommended for training to enhance the development organization. While Managers of highly complex services, such as contract administration, generally need at least a bachelor’s degree in business, human resources, or finance.
Regardless of major, the curriculum should include courses in office information technology, such as: accounting, business mathematics, computer applications, human resources and business law. Most facility managers have an undergraduate or graduate degree in engineering, architecture, construction management, business administration, or facility management. Many however, have a background in real estate management, construction, or interior design, in addition to managerial experience.

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 If you're interested in business but not sure if you’ll get the right skills from a degree, then you can stop worrying.