Finance & Strategy: Are You Putting Your Money Where Your Strategy Is?
Every business spends money but not every business drives strategy. With xPM, that finance and strategy become linked.
Introduction
Every business spends money but not every business drives strategy.
In most organizations, budget and project spend are tracked meticulously. Yet often, these numbers live in silos, like different projects, different departments, and different spreadsheets. And the result is that there is no unified story. There’s no strategic overview.
With xPM, that fragmentation ends.
The key question PMOs should be asking is: "Is our spend aligned with our strategic priorities?"
Strategy is more than a Slide Deck - it's All of It
If strategy lives in PowerPoint, but your budget lives in Excel, you've got a disconnect. Every work item - from project to portfolio to initiative - should map directly to your strategic pillars. That includes the money behind it.
The key question PMOs should be asking is: "Is our spend aligned with our strategic priorities?"
Unified Reporting: One view, One Truth
If you’re working the xPM-way, your goal should be to unify financial and benefits tracking across all work types. Whether it’s projects, epics, or non-project work, xPM brings it together into a single reporting view. This is what gives you real strategic clarity.
When financial data is connected to strategic components, you suddenly gain insight into:
Which initiatives are receiving the most investment
Whether your spend reflects your top strategic goals
Which parts of the business are generating the highest return on investment
With these questions, you can quickly spot, whether your strategy is living in your organization, or stuck on paper.
From Budget Oversight to Strategic Foresight
Tracking spend is reactive. Aligning spend with strategy is proactive. By combining finance tracking with strategic vision, you can see how investment contributes to the bigger picture.
So, ask yourself: Are we investing in what matters most? Or are we funding the familiar? And if you aren’t? Why not? What’s stopping you? It may be a simple oversight, or it might be an indicator that your strategy is lacking, or that you’re not making brave decisions. When finance and strategy come together, you move beyond managing money to enable real strategic execution.
Closing the Loop between Spend and Strategy
In today’s landscape, PMOs can’t afford to let strategy and finance operate on parallel tracks. The future of portfolio management is integrated, transparent, and purpose-driven.
When every dollar spent is traceable to a strategic outcome, you're not just executing projects. You're executing vision.
So the next time you're reviewing budgets, don’t just ask, “What are we spending?”
Ask, “What are we achieving?”
That’s the power of putting your money where your strategy is.
Peter Kestenholz, Partner and Head of Innovation & AI
Peter Kestenholz is a successful entrepreneur and business leader with 20 years of experience from founding and growing the company Projectum. Peter is a recognized Microsoft MVP for 13 years straight, Fast Track Architect for the second year in a row, and a member of the Forbes Technology Council.
