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 Dean
Dipak Jain
Sandy and
Morton Goldman Professor of
Entrepreneurial Studies
Kellogg Graduate School of
Management
Northwestern University |
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"While prior generations of
senior managers focused on
assessing and segmenting their
markets to determine portfolio
investment strategies, today’s
executives are demanding more
structured and rigorous analyses
to complement their strategic
investment criteria. PROXI’s
methodology not only provides
the means to visualize and
determine the best strategic
direction, but also quantifies
the impact of alternative
strategic options. In this
manner, decision makers can
readily identify the best set of
project investments and
objectively understand whether a
given project warrants inclusion
in the plan." |
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 Steve Csermak
PMO Director
Gennum Corporation |
| "Proxi
provided us with the tools and
methodology to objectively
invest across multiple
portfolios and enabled decisions
to be made on the expected
performance of the business as a
whole. The ability to understand
the consequences of multiple
what-if scenarios on
enterprise-level performance
metrics is a powerful
decision-making competence and a
key differentiator of Proxi’s
capabilities. I was particularly
impressed with the industry
knowledge and technical
expertise of the Proxi team.
They came in and did the heavy
lifting in the data collection
and tools-configuration phase.
Then, they brought our core team
up on skills training and
hands-on experience with the
toolset, as we started to
develop concrete investment
scenarios. In the final phase,
Proxi enabled our team to run
the portfolio planning process
autonomously and were readily
accessible for consultation and
facilitation, as needed. This
effective “crawl-walk-run”
approach, led by such high
calibre personnel, provided us
with both the immediate and
on-going capabilities needed to
optimally manage our business
portfolios." |
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 Michael Millman
Director R&D, Product Lab
Hewlett-Packard Company, Inc. |
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"If you are looking for a
Portfolio Management tool, you
have several options to consider
from spreadsheets to modules of
large-scale, enterprise database
programs. All have their own
pros and cons. However, if you
are looking to do BUSINESS
management, you need to consider
your business dynamics,
strategic 'choice points',
available tools, and strong
partnerships with domain
experts. PROXI provided us with
a great, customized tool that
fit our business complexities,
and they worked hard to build a
strong partnership and
understanding of our business.
Great software and a great
partnership has lead to great
Business Management!" |
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 Simonetta Turek
Vice President, IT Corporate
Programs
Alcatel-Lucent, Inc. |
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"Historically, decisions
about prioritization and
execution of our projects were
primarily a matter of subjective
evaluations and driven by
immediate needs. PROXI provided
our organization with the
methodology and tools to
rationalize our portfolio of
over 200 projects. It allowed us
to bring sound, objective
measures and consistency in
evaluating the value of projects
relative to corporate strategic
objectives and needs. With a
focus on business value and
aligning priorities with the
growth objectives of our
company, PROXI allows us to make
better, consistent and
transparent decisions to manage
our business, and this enables us to better meet our
customer and market needs" |
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 Mike McCourt
Vice President & General Manager
Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. |
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"PROXI has been instrumental
in our portfolio successes - we
are seeing the ability to work
through the complexity of our
operations with the process and
tools that we have
collaboratively deployed, and
are we are seeing key managerial
questions surface in a timely
manner. This has allowed us to
improve our hiring plan and
budgeting process, to determine
which projects to delay, and to
create the most business value
from our aggregate resource
investment. These
decision-making advantages
provide the weight to push
through many barriers we are
facing as a Division." |
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 Dean Richard Lyons
Sylvan Coleman Chair in Finance
Haas School of Business
University of California,
Berkeley |
"PROXI's Project
Executive is a wonderful
combination of creativity,
intellect, and hard-nosed
application of financial
portfolio theory. At the
Haas School of Business, it
is exactly the kind of
management science
innovation that we like to
see put into practice. I
suspect that for many
managers, it will feel like
projecting a two-dimensional
thought process into a three
or four-dimensional space."
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 Bruce Starcher
Business Model Strategist
Product Generation Organization
ACCO Brands, Inc. |
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"Other companies offer software
and training that attempt to
“bend” your business model
around their rigid software
design. In contrast, PROXI
provided us with a
custom-tailored business
process, a flexible analysis
system, and the expert
knowledge, to optimize our
portfolio plan within a short
period of time. PROXI came
onboard, did all of the heavy
lifting to get the business’
operational structure, data
collection requirements,
portfolio analysis methods, and
management review process
defined, initialized, and
launched. They tackled our
internal complexities and worked
across the organization, to
ensure that we would have a
successful process to manage
going forward. PROXI provided
great flexibility to meet our
business needs, they were
dedicated to supporting our
change management agenda, and
they have continued to be
accessible for any and all
questions related to our
portfolio management process." |
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 Cindy Margules,
PMP
Director, Program
and Portfolio Management
Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. |
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"After months of evaluating
portfolio management tools, we
found the value proposition of
PROXI's Project Executive to be
'head and shoulders' above all
other solutions. PROXI's
innovative portfolio analysis
capabilities are grounded in
sound business processes and
financially robust models. The
training we received was
comprehensive - not only with
regard to the Project Executive software system,
but also with respect to excellent portfolio management practices." |
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 Ted Barnett
VP Product Management
Eastman Kodak Company, Inc. |
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“Given the rapid market
evolution in online photo
services, new product portfolio
planning is a critical task for
Kodak Digital Imaging Services.
We have hand built
spreadsheet-based solutions that
attempt to address this
challenge, but PROXI's system offers the
flexibility and robustness that
we really need.” |
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 Arezou Zarafshan
VP Research & Development
ACCO Brands, Inc. |
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"Proxi has provided us a
significant amount of capability
to view our business performance
from a variety of metric-based
perspectives, to objectively
evaluate our options, and to
make quantifiable and defendable
decisions that will ensure
portfolio health. This
capability has come in the form
of a robust process that Proxi
enabled us to institute, a
powerful methodology for
evaluating our portfolio, and
expert consultation and training
from Proxi. Another great
characteristic of the
methodology and process is its
scalability; we continue to
evolve the process as our
business conditions evolve, and
we continue to be impressed by
the benefits that it provides to
our business and to our
executive-level decision
making." |
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 Steven Tadelis
Associate Dean
Chief Strategy Officer
Haas School of Business
University of California,
Berkeley |
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"A careful look at PROXI's
Project Executive suggests that
business decision making will
never be the same. PROXI’s
approach operationally brings
back the science into management
science. Business leaders can
now make educated decisions
using a rigorous analytical
tool, while adding
accountability to the decision
process. Most impressively,
PROXI's Project Executive can
put a dollar value on strategic
decisions, breaking new grounds
in management strategy
analysis." |
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 Jill Feeler
Strategy & Operational
Planning
Memjet Technology,
Inc. |
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"Although I have
become a strong proponent of
PROXI’s software, their
training also helped
challenge my own thinking
about decision analysis, how
to make it more objective,
more analytically rich and
less subjective. The scoring
models so commonly used by
Fortune 100 firms are
intended to be objective and
data-driven but in reality
are quite subjective. The
PROXI training reminded me
of some core financial and
business principles I'd
forgotten over the years. I
left the training thinking,
"we can do so much better,
and we should do so much
better."
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 Dan Lundberg
Group Development Efficiency
Architect
Hewlett-Packard Company, Inc. |
"Our business model has some
distinctly unique and complex
aspects.
Throughout our engagements, the
PROXI team was able to adapt
their processes and tools to
provide functionality that met
our custom requirements. They
implemented additional features
in several new system screens
and extended their database and
reporting capabilities to
accommodate our needs--and they
made it look easy. The expertise
of the PROXI team was extremely
valuable as we integrated data
from multiple, departmental
repositories. Through the
capabilities of Project
Executive, they demonstrated the
power of integrated, readily
available information, and
through their flexibility to
adapt, they minimized potential
obstacles towards managing
change for us." |
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 Dr. Johnathan Mun, Ph.D.
CEO, Real Options Valuation,
Inc.
Professor at U.S.
Naval Postgraduate School |
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"PROXI Management Decisions'
portfolio management solution
blows away any would-be
competitors. The elements of
risk management and strategic
valuation are rigorously
incorporated in the powerful
inter-project relationships
which can be specified for a
diversified portfolio. Nothing
in the market today even comes
close to the novel and advanced
approach embedded within PROXI's
modeling methodologies." |
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