Building a finance portfolio from the ground up, and keeping it steady through change.
Turning a fragmented portfolio into a shared plan, clear priorities, and actionable governance.
Bringing order to a fragmented portfolio and creating boundaries for over-capacity teams.
A global retailer’s finance data and analytics organization was supporting several enterprise transformations at once: a multi-region ERP rollout, a move to a new enterprise data foundation, a cost initiative, and the start of an AI agenda. There was no portfolio office and no single view of the work. Each program had a roadmap, but no one could see how it all connected.
Our founder was brought in to stand up the portfolio from scratch, and stayed for two years to lead the team that ran it as the organization grew and changed.
Two teams, two systems, too many requests
The organization needed a shared purpose and one set of priorities before anything else. Finance transformation tracked waterfall milestones in Smartsheet while technology tracked sprints in Jira, and executive, business, and technology audiences each needed different updates. VPs across finance and technology were making requests at once, and about 80% of capacity was going to stabilizing the ERP and rebuilding the data foundation. The portfolio also had to keep up as Finance reorganized. When a finance automation team joined under a new organization, priorities and ownership had to be reset without losing momentum.
Without a clear way to prioritize and communicate capacity limits, the team would keep absorbing requests it couldn’t deliver. The organization’s goal of becoming a source of predictive insight and AI-driven decision support would stay out of reach.
A portfolio team built for the job
Standing up and running a portfolio for two years meant doing several jobs at once: setting strategy, running governance, managing delivery, and getting the business ready for an ERP go-live. Our founder oversaw the full team throughout, which flexed from three to five people across portfolio management, program management, and change management as the work evolved.
Strategy, capacity, and governance
We first created a portfolio structure, governance, and a roadmap, built in the middle of an ERP rollout. We tracked and managed the remediation of non-SAP reports across two regions, and guided a new data foundation from concept to launch. Each year, we co-designed the organization’s leadership summit, mapped every workstream to its goals, and built a multi-year view of how capacity would shift toward value work. When a finance automation team joined, we reset the portfolio: new goals, refreshed governance, and a new team onboarded.
The outcome
Leadership that can explain trade-offs
The combined organization has a shared purpose, goals, and one prioritized roadmap. Leadership can see capacity, explain trade-offs, and decide on resource gaps rather than absorbing them, and stakeholders now get proactive updates instead of chasing status.
The team entered the ERP go-live with business readiness, training, report tracking, and hypercare plans in place, and the finance planning and data teams work from one integrated plan.
19
workstreams prioritized across 4 goals
6
resource gaps surfaced for leadership decisions
353
non-SAP reports remediated across North America and Europe
6
to 1 executive updates consolidated into a single portfolio view
We partnered with the senior director and her leadership team and worked across finance transformation, global and geo FP&A, controlling, and the technology organizations. Our team of three to five worked inside the organization as its portfolio, program, and change function. Portfolio and program roles were new to this organization, so part of the work was demonstrating their value.
This became strategy work, not just portfolio execution. When we started, work came in through one-on-ones and urgent requests. By the end, it had a purpose, goals, and a clear view of its own capacity. Finance was new territory for us, and the engagement kept growing because the client kept finding more for us to do. Leadership also left with a playbook, KPIs, and a maturity baseline to keep improving.
"Jess came in without a finance background and within days was asking the questions that mattered most to our business. She helped us set a clear strategy for our portfolio, connecting every workstream to our goals and giving us a realistic view of what we could take on. She built the structure and governance that gave us visibility into the work in flight with pragmatic flexibility to navigate the unexpected. Working with her felt like having a true partner on my leadership team."
Senior Director, Finance Data & Analytics
Global Athletic Brand
Program management consulting firms plan, coordinate, and govern interconnected initiatives, including priorities, dependencies, capacity, and stakeholder communication. For this organization, we prioritized 19 workstreams, flagged six resource gaps for leadership decisions, and replaced six separate executive updates with one portfolio view.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) modernization is upgrading or replacing a company’s core ERP system, along with the processes, data, and reporting built around it. This client was in a multi-region ERP rollout, and we tracked and managed the remediation of 353 non-SAP reports so the business kept its reporting through the transition. The team entered go-live with training, reporting tracking, and hypercare plans in place.
Every digital transformation strategy should begin with a clear purpose. Once the purpose is defined, set a small number of goals, tie every initiative back to them, and stay honest about capacity to accomplish the work. For this organization’s digital transformation, Alder45 helped leaders turn a crowded set of transformations into one prioritized plan they could explain and staff.
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