How do you give your CFO a portfolio view of data spend?
Your CFO can audit any other portfolio in financial terms; data has been the exception. Impact Operations is the capital allocation system that fixes that — three metrics (FTE Debt, PCU-V, CDSI) give CEOs and CFOs a portfolio-level financial view of where data investment is returning value.
Impact Operations is a capital allocation system for data portfolios. It treats every data product as a financial asset with a carrying cost and a measurable return, and gives CEOs and CFOs a portfolio-level view of where data investment is actually working.
The problem it solves
Most data functions are reported in engineering language: dashboards shipped, models deployed, tickets closed. None of that translates to capital allocation. A CEO can't decide where to invest based on velocity. A CFO can't defend a budget based on adoption.
Impact Operations replaces engineering reporting with three financial metrics that a board can evaluate.
The three metrics
1. FTE Debt, what the business pays for friction
Hours the rest of the business loses to data products that don't fit their workflow, priced at fully-loaded cost. This is the return half of the ROI ratio: every euro of FTE Debt eliminated is a euro returned to the business.
2. PCU-V, what each product costs to sustain
Portfolio Capacity Units, Verified. The true monthly carrying cost of a data product: infrastructure + incident response + support load + change requests. Most data budgets only count infrastructure. PCU-V counts the whole picture.
3. CDSI, where the team's capacity actually went
Capacity Drain & Shift Index. Measures how much planned capacity was consumed by unplanned work. High CDSI explains why ROI is low even when the team is busy: they're busy on the wrong things.
The Portfolio ROI Ratio
For each data product: Portfolio ROI Ratio = FTE Debt displaced ÷ PCU-V. A ratio above 3.0 is a strong asset. Between 1.0 and 3.0 needs monitoring. Below 1.0 is a sunset candidate, regardless of how often the product is used.
How it connects to the rest of the system
Impact Operations sits underneath the Vision Board (where the company defines what decisions matter) and the 3-5-7 cycle (how those decisions get sequenced into 3-month, 5-month, and 7-month bets). Vision sets direction. 3-5-7 sets cadence. Impact Operations measures whether the data investment supporting both is returning value.
Who it's for
Series B and later companies with a data function large enough to warrant portfolio thinking, typically 6+ data people sustaining 10+ products. Below that scale, lighter instruments work fine. Above it, the lack of portfolio visibility starts compounding quickly into FTE Debt the CFO can't see.
Next Step
Want this measured for your portfolio?
A 30-minute working call maps where capacity is leaking and what it would take to recover it. No slides.
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