为首席财务官制定有效的资本配置策略

Gartner for Finance 3 Principles for AllocatingCapital Across EnterpriseStrategic Investments Adherence to historical investment funding levels wastes capital — especially as marketshifts reset business value drivers. Top chief financial officers (CFOs) avoid this bydesigning resource-light initiatives, tying funding to non-negotiable success factors andembracing product-line funding models. Overview Key Findings •Only 17% of companies consistently demonstrate capital responsiveness whenmacroeconomic or market disruption occurs, but those that do add 250 basis pointsmore economic value than their less responsive peers, on average.•Many firms struggle to optimally distribute funding across strategic priorities becausethey rely too heavily on subjective or only partially objective rankings, to inform capitalallocation decisions.•Many initiatives — especially new ones — absorb funds more slowly than companiesexpect them to, which wastes capital that could be put to work elsewhere.•To ensure their organizations maintain an optimal distribution of funding acrossenterprise strategic priorities in the face of market shifts, the top CFOs adopt“capital activism.” They drive trade-offs in the growth investment portfolio andhave a “no project is sacred” mindset about individual investments. Recommendations To drive capital responsiveness and optimally fund their growth investment portfolios,CFOs must: •Pursue allocative efficiency from the earliest stages of the investment life cycle (e.g., byintervening in the ideation phase) to reduce the resource intensity of new investments.•Determine the optimal funding level for strategic investments by employing amultidimensional framework that takes into account each investment’s non-negotiablesuccess factors (NNSFs).•Transition the organization to a product-funding model (i.e., funding adjusted based oncapability delivery or business outcomes) to allow business leaders to nimbly respond tochanging value drivers and direct funding where it is needed. Introduction In an environment of significant macroeconomic and competitive disruption, being ableto respond quickly to change is paramount. Companies that do so add 250 basis pointsmore economic value than companies that don’t.1However, only 17% of CFOs say theircompanies consistently demonstrate capital responsiveness.1 The following barriers prevent many companies from optimally distributing funds torespond to change: •Initiatives’ ranking provides insufficient information to determine funding levels.•New initiatives’ funding needs are hard to predict, and they tend to absorbfunding slowly. To surmount these challenges, CFOs must become “capital activists” by taking a hands-on approach in working with the business to manage the investment portfolio. Capital activists are finance leaders and senior finance business partners whoactively direct funding flows to respond to changes in the drivers of enterprise valuerealization. They do so by: •Driving a focus on the enterprise investment portfolio as a set of trade-offsand synergies •Applying a “nothing is sacred” mindset to investment options Successful capital activists reduce wasted capital and help maintain the optimal flowof funding across priorities by making three key changes to their capital allocationframeworks (see Figure 1): •Pursue allocative efficiency early in initiatives’ life cycles by working with the businessin the initiative ideation stage to design investments that require smaller initial capitaloutlays. •Treat enterprise strategic priorities — not individual projects — as sacred. Evaluate eachinvestment proposal using a multidimensional framework that takes into account theNNSFs required for it to successfully support enterprise strategic priorities.•Facilitate nimble capital allocation by transitioning the organization to a product-fundingmodel that responds to businesses needs and flows the optimal level of funding toinvestments at the optimal times. However, the approach capital activists take is rare. Only 31% of CFOs lead companies thatconsistently take bold steps to redistribute their investment portfolios, such as significantlychanging how they allocate economic capital as the risk-opportunity landscape resets.1CFOs seeking to increase capital responsiveness by more optimally allocatingfundingacross enterprise strategic priorities should integrate the following capital activistapproaches into their existing capital allocation frameworks. Analysis Pursue Allocative Efficiency Early in Initiatives’Life Cycles Slow ramp-ups, operational resource constraints and a lack of management talentavailability can bring new projects screeching to a halt with unspent funds, even asother strategic projects experience a paucity of funds. Most finance organizations areineffective at identifying underused funding and reallocating it to investments throughoutthe company that need or can use it. Left unchecked, this dynamic will restrict capitalrespons