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Testing – From Spreadsheets to AI: A Practical Playbook for IT Portfolio Management
Enterprise IT leaders spend more time reporting on work than doing it. Status decks, intake spreadsheets and quarterly portfolio reviews consume hundreds of hours — and the picture they produce is already out of date by the time it reaches the steering committee.
This playbook walks through a practical, phased approach to replacing manual portfolio management with AI-driven intake, execution visibility and reporting — without disrupting the systems your teams already use.
Why spreadsheets stopped scaling
A spreadsheet is a snapshot; a portfolio is a moving picture. The moment an intake sheet is emailed, it forks into versions, and every version drifts further from reality. Multiply that across departments, and leadership ends up steering the ship using last month’s weather report.
The three shifts AI brings to portfolio management
- Conversational intake — teams describe a request in plain language; the AI structures it into a charter automatically.
- Live execution visibility — status flows in from the tools teams already use, so nobody fills a tracker twice.
- Portfolio intelligence — leadership asks questions in natural language and gets answers backed by live data, not last quarter’s export.
Watch it in action
A 30-60-90 day rollout plan
Start with intake — it is the highest-friction, lowest-risk process to automate. In the first 30 days, route new requests through conversational intake while the legacy sheet stays as a read-only mirror. By day 60, connect execution tools so status reports write themselves. By day 90, retire the manual roll-up entirely.
We stopped asking teams for status and started asking the portfolio itself. That single change gave every PM a day back each week.
Enterprise PMO Director, Fortune 500 manufacturer
Key takeaways
- Manual portfolio reporting fails because data goes stale the moment it is exported.
- AI-first intake is the safest first step — automate the front door before the whole house.
- A phased 30-60-90 rollout lets teams keep their existing tools while reporting becomes automatic.
Watch trmeric in Action
See trmeric in action — a walkthrough of the AI platform for IT, from unified planning and project delivery to sourcing trusted providers and surfacing risk autonomously.
Unlock the Power of trmeric: Watch the Overview
Get a complete overview of the trmeric platform in one sitting — how IT & tech teams use GPS workflows, the Tango copilot and the provider Network to plan, source, execute and maximize value from their tech initiatives.
Tech Teams Go Modern: trmeric Goes AI-First to Simplify IT
The last two decades working with IT & tech teams, right from startups to Fortune 500 companies, we have seen how technology has become the lifeblood of businesses. From automating mundane tasks to cybersecurity and now driving innovation, technology has become an indispensable asset. This shift is being reflected in the staggering growth of IT spending, which is now projected to reach $5.3 trillion by 2024.
Managing the ‘Business of Technology’ is Super Complex
The challenges faced by IT & Tech teams responsible for driving this transformation are significant. They find themselves burdened by the increasing complexity of their ‘business’. CIOs, CTOs, and their teams juggle a multitude of responsibilities; formulating tech strategy, responding to rapidly changing business priorities, managing projects & teams, optimizing tech spend, navigating emerging technologies, and more — the list is long!
The Challenge: a Stacked Deck
Without a system to manage all things IT/Tech in one place, these teams often find themselves burdened by manual processes, siloed tools, lack of real-time data for decision-making and sub-optimal technology partner choices for their initiatives. As a result, productivity gets slashed, teams struggle to keep up with ever-increasing business demands, value delivered from tech is often questioned and tech outcomes often get adversely impacted.
The challenges are felt even more acutely at small and mid-sized companies that are aspiring to gain competitive advantage. They typically have smaller technology teams, and lack access to top talent pools, specialized service provider partners and best practices that can take their initiatives to the next level.
Put simply, the deck is stacked against them. Tech executives know that their No. 1 task is to drive business value but there is very little infrastructure at their disposal to accomplish this consistently, efficiently and autonomously. The bar keeps rising, the resources don’t keep up, and the complexity grows by the year.
But it doesn’t have to be like this — not anymore.
There is a New Way
It was not until recently that technology advanced fast enough and far enough to eliminate the structural barriers. AI / GenAI, combined with cloud and SaaS, have fundamentally transformed what’s possible. Tech teams who have access to the right tools can now do more with less and drive greater business impact. They realize that time to market, quality talent, and team empowerment are what can dramatically improve the odds of success of their tech initiatives.
And the solution they can lean on to achieve that success from day one is trmeric.
Meet trmeric
trmeric is an AI platform designed for IT & tech teams. It is their operating platform. trmeric transforms how teams operate and maximize value by reshaping their tech journeys end-to-end — from planning to sourcing to execution and monetization.
Our Journey
From the very beginning, trmeric has been focused on leveling the playing field for all businesses. We believe that every organization, regardless of size, deserves access to the best available technology and expertise.
Initially, when trmeric was founded, we set out to build a global ecosystem of tech partners and providers — the type of expert organizations with proven track records that are dialed into exactly what businesses (our customers) need to succeed.
In that pursuit we digitized the entire lifecycle of provider engagement — from discovery, evaluation, to onboarding and ongoing management. But as we worked with more companies, customer feedback was unanimous. The same granular level of digitization needed to be applied to a host of tech workflows, which were primarily being managed manually in static spreadsheets and outdated systems. Those roadblocks were massive.
With this realization, trmeric’s mission was crystal clear: we wanted to reimagine the entire day in the life of tech teams. The problems that need to be solved were critical and would need a more comprehensive approach than had been attempted so far.
trmeric, the Magic Spice of Tech Life
Our name reflects our purpose. Turmeric is seen as a magic spice with numerous health benefits in many cultures. Similarly, trmeric is designed to solve a variety of challenges faced every day by our customers, the IT & Tech teams.
trmeric is a unique platform packing the superpowers of process, people and knowledge into a single operating platform.
From day one, trmeric becomes your central hub for tech management, unifying your plans, projects, teams, providers, and budgets. But that’s just the beginning. It also connects you to a global network of specialized tech companies, ensuring you always have access to the right expertise. As you use trmeric, it learns and grows, building a custom knowledge fabric that’s like a digital brain for your company. And with an AI co-pilot at your side, navigating this powerful platform is a breeze. trmeric isn’t just about managing tech; it’s about unlocking its full potential to drive your business forward.
trmeric’s Superpowers
- trmeric GPS: GPS (generative process system) is your process foundation where each process has been re-imagined with GenAI. We have painstakingly mapped out and digitized hundreds of tech tasks and transformed them into intuitive/conversational workflows. trmeric’s unified interface and integrations seamlessly guide tech teams from ideation to execution, eliminating system & data silos, and significantly reducing the busywork — and the guesswork.
- trmeric Tango: Tango is the driving force behind these workflows. It is a state-of-the-art Agentic copilot, purpose built for IT & tech teams. Tango integrates with your knowledge fabric as well as several external sources. It is the every-buddy you need everyday, be it for gleaning insights, surfacing risk, or handling the busywork. trmeric ensures you are never riding solo when you’re running your tech. After all, it takes two to Tango!
- trmeric Network: Network is a curated ecosystem of specialized tech service providers and exciting startups. trmeric rigorously vets potential customers for capabilities, expertise, workflows, and certifications — all backed by customer feedback. This allows you to confidently source globally, saving time, effort, and cost. Simply evaluate and choose the best fit for your needs.
Real Impact, Already
The trmeric impact is best expressed by our customers. They have called trmeric a ground-breaking product for CIOs which can double up to be their virtual chief of staff, PMO, and sourcing lead all rolled into one. A startup founder called trmeric ‘godsend’, having found trustworthy providers to sustain & enhance the product and process rigor through the platform. Another founder feels trmeric is a one-stop shop for the needs of his fintech company. Other customers are driving team productivity by embracing trmeric’s GPS, surfacing risks to critical projects using Tango; the list goes on!
When you can organize and AI-fy some of your most complex tech workflows in hours, build the ‘value chain’ of tech initiatives from idea to execution, turn your tech data into knowledge and access it with a few keystrokes, find trusted providers in minutes, and surface risk autonomously, you know a new way has arrived.
So, why wait to game-change? Teams can be up and running on the product in less than a day.
Tech Success by Design — Not by Chance
As technology gets ubiquitous and transforms industries, the roles of the enterprise technology leaders have gained enormous importance. The CTO, CIO functions are now seen as critical to the long-term strategy and success of the enterprise. This phenomenon is now mainstream irrespective of the size of the enterprise. The CIO / CTOs are now grappling with this new reality which expects them to deliver value across the dimensions of business agility, operational efficiency, security / compliance and innovation. The implications of these expectations are compounded for small / medium tech organizations which do not enjoy the luxury of a large tech budget, mature partner ecosystem and manpower to deploy across these functions.
The Key Question
If Finance has ERP, Sales has CRM, HR has HCM — what platform does the IT function have to manage and master their complex agenda?
A Day in Jane’s Life
Jane is the CIO of a $50M CPG company. Today, she has to rely on Excel spreadsheets to understand how she is doing on her quarterly budgets, get weekly tech project status on ppt via emails, tap into her own network in the hope of finding the right tech service provider for new projects and have her own to-do list to manage business risks and compliance requirements. She feels that delivering success for her business is a lot down to chance and super heroic capabilities of her and her teams. And curiously, it is reinventing the wheel each time!
The ITIL4 Lens
To understand Jane’s conundrum better, we refer to ITIL4 — a framework commonly adopted for the entire spectrum of IT governance from demand to value. Most of the products and toolsets that Jane and her team use today (if at all) are in the areas of Service Management. However, general management practices are equally if not more important and have an outsized impact on overall value delivered. Practices like Strategy Management, Relationship Management, Portfolio Management, Supplier Management, Risk Management, Service Financial Management and Knowledge Management are way too important, interconnected and complex to be managed manually or in silos.
A New Category: Tech Value Management
As we thought of building trmeric, we figured we had this broad problem space to solve. Hence, we set out to create a new category of software — something that brings together people, processes and technology all together. We call trmeric a Tech Value Management software. It is an AI platform that helps IT & Tech teams to reimagine how they plan, mobilize, deliver and realize max value from all their tech investments.
A New Way to Tech
Leveraging the 3 super-powers of GPS (Generative Process System aka AI infused workflows), Tango (genAI copilot) and Network (curated provider ecosystem), trmeric creates a “new way to Tech”. For someone like Jane and her team, this will not only be a productivity game changer but more importantly, empower them to amplify the business value they can deliver.
Sounds interesting? We look forward to having you on the journey.
The Sum of All the Whys
“One year!!!”
Introspections beckon as I complete a year of starting-up.
Did I get enough done? Did my assumptions play out? Did I meet my goals? Did I do ok? What more / better could I have done?
No simple answers here.
Surely, I could have done more and better. Some assumptions played out, many didn’t. Despite all our plans to the contrary, starting-up tipped the scales on everyday personal decisions.
It has been a grueling year. So, how do I really feel?
I feel that I had the time of my life! I would never trade this experience for anything else.
But ‘why’ am I loving it, if it has been so grueling? As an entrepreneur I felt the answer to this question is consequential. I dug into the ‘whys’.
A Mission That is Dear to Me
I am pursuing a mission that is very dear to me. It’s serendipity that I have found myself in challenger roles &/or companies for most of my professional life!! Beating the odds has been thrilling. But, turning that experience into a mission that can level the playing field for hundreds, maybe thousands of challengers… is the opportunity of a lifetime!!
Living the Metamorphosis of an Idea
Living the metamorphosis of an idea into a product. Oh, what a beautiful experience this is! The first business plan, the lightbulb moments, the inevitable ‘re-pivot’, testing the first feature, the child-like joy when pilot users get their hands on the product!! I am thrilled to be on this fulfilling journey of creation; it’s dotted with action, drama, suspense, frustration, heroics…
The Learning Never Stops
The transition from a senior corporate role to a startup founder feels akin to going back to school. The learning is both on the job and from ace ‘practitioners’. The ‘course curriculum’ is diverse — from the skills to build a category creating product to the building blocks & tech to build it on, to the functions a fledgling business needs. This back to school is liberating. It’s as if a new world has opened up!
New ‘Sources of Energy’
I discovered new ‘Sources of Energy’. I knew a big mission would take a village. I was humbled by the help I got. Our investors rallied behind us. Pilot customers & partners became part of the solution from the get go. Providers went the extra mile. Friends & mentors were generous with their time and expertise! In them I have found a powerful, new energy source that continuously charges my conviction!
The ‘Transformers’
Our team packs some serious punch. Each one learning at lightspeed, each one pulling off in days, sometimes even overnight, what would typically take weeks / months. Each one digging really deep to translate their strengths into constraint defying miracles. As all this plays out, I can see a culture build that is so special that I wish I could freeze in time!
The Sum of My Whys
Those are the sum of my whys!! And I am sure the team discovered, as I did, that the unwavering support & the sacrifice of the family is the foundation of all this.
The journey is just starting, and I couldn’t be more excited & inspired about the future! Stay tuned…
The Sum of All ‘X’
“How does it feel?” Ever since I turned entrepreneur (again), after nearly two decades in the corporate world, this is the typical first question I get asked.
I have struggled with this response. I am enjoying every moment (nearly!) of it, I find it immensely fulfilling, I feel very purpose driven, every day. But there is the other side that weighs on my mind — it’s daunting, it’s lonely, it’s too early to say anything, you feel like a fish out of water sometimes, it’s a long haul to success, and that success — as traditionally defined — is tough to achieve. And so on.
So, how do I really feel?? I felt compelled to find the ‘right answer’ for myself. Now, don’t ask me why I felt this answer was important, it just was! Perhaps because it would help me connect seemingly disparate dots, make sense of emotions that I confront every day.
Some History
There is some history here. I have done a start-up once before. It was different then, to say the least. I was half the age, half the family size (my two college going kids had not even appeared on the scene!). Startups weren’t ‘the thing’ they are now, it was more like ‘what is this guy even upto’! Those nearly 6 years of start-up experience, in the most difficult times (post the dotcom bubble), shaped an incredibly fulfilling journey in the corporate world.
Starting Up is ‘The Sum of All X’
As I combined that history, with the experience of the last 4 months, an idea began to form about how starting up feels for me. Starting up is ‘The Sum of All X!’
X here represents the incredible array of emotions / response mechanisms that have characterized my starting up experience. What makes this ‘X framework’ even more fascinating is this constant dance of seemingly conflicting forces and emotions:
- The sum of all the learning | The sum of all the unlearning
- The sum of all the courage | The sum of all fears
- The sum of all your network | The sum of all the restraint (so what if you know someone!)
- The sum of all the support (family, friends, network) | The sum of all the support (yes, this is a repeat)
- The sum of all the freedom | The sum of all constraints
- The sum of all the vulnerability | The sum of all the urgency
- The sum of all the patience (your priorities are not others’) | The sum of all possibilities
- The sum of all expectations | The sum of all compromises (those personal plans will have to wait)
I am sure there are many more!
The Sum of All I Can Be
So, that’s really how I feel. The sum of all I can be! Starting up makes me dig really deep. I feel comfortable without the trappings I had gotten accustomed to. It helps me let go of my hesitations. I feel like going full throttle on every strength I got. Failure, rejection, and conflicting emotions feel like part of the script.
Starting up is the Sum of all You can be. It is you discovering yourself in the most un-filtered way. In a professional set-up it is perhaps the best way to discover your superpowers. I recommend a stint for everyone.
Succeeding in the Digital World… the Answer Lies Within
Over the last 2 years I’ve had the opportunity to meet 75+ senior leaders from some of the most outstanding organizations in the world. CEOs, CFOs, CIOs & other senior leaders from a cross section of industries. Given that we live in a ‘Change Economy’ these discussions invariably hover around how these companies are transforming to new market realities… using digital technologies.
While every leader I met is focused on technology led transformation, the fact remained that their organizations were in different spots in truly leveraging the power of technology. I was intrigued by why some organizations were getting more from digital than others? Could I find the answer to this question from the nature of discussions we were having & the follow-up actions?
Digging Into the Data
My first instinct was to look for anecdotal evidence. But then I introduced the data elements, especially considering I was dealing with a topic which has so many variables and knowing fully well that despite my best efforts there would be subjectivity. Here’s what I did:
- I listed out 50 CXO interactions & the subsequent discussions / actions and rated them on the quality of the follow-up actions
- Quality of the interaction was taken to be a function of speed of action &/or scale of action
- These were cases where we had multiple discussions & hence had the opportunity of building a good understanding of these organizations’ working style
- Finally, I super-imposed the financial performance of those companies around two metrics — stock price movement & revenue growth in the last two years
The Top 4 Takeaways
The result of this analysis was revealing. Here are the top 4 takeaways:
- How decisively companies act is not a function of their size — some of the largest companies in the world acted decisively & boldly (& vice versa)
- ALL the companies that acted decisively were doing very well on the financial metrics. Interestingly, a surprising number of the 50 companies in the sample set did NOT belong to this ‘decisive’ category
- 75% of the companies that took longer to make decisions were laggards in terms of financial performance. They showed low, even negative, growth of both revenues and stock price in two years
- There were some consistent cultural traits with companies that were succeeding. Organizations were empowered (decentralized, but thorough) and hence quick. There was willingness to take bold decisions, like going with a smaller company or investing in less proven IP. These teams / companies were playing to win & not just playing safe. Finally, there were often new leaders in the mix, they wanted to make a point
The SO WHAT?
Firstly, success in digital transformation seems to be significantly correlated to culture of the organization. The Digital Winners stand out not just because they understand the power of technology better (most organizations understand the power of digital quite well), but also because their culture is more aligned to maximize the benefits of technology. Speed of decision making, cushion to fail (making bold decisions), infusion of fresh talent into the organization are critical dimensions. I am sure there are more, what is critical is to establish a few key ones.
Join the discussion, would love to get your thoughts. I am back to the drawing board!
Time for ROTI (Return on Technology Invested) & More on Targets
Companies spend trillions of dollars on technology each year (more than $3.5 Trillion by analyst estimates). Depending on the industry, CIO spends range from 1% to 5% of revenue, higher in industries like financial services and lower in sectors like manufacturing & resources. If you include technology spend outside the CIO organization, this number is likely to be much higher. The business groups are investing in big data, data visualization, analytics, niche cloud applications, BPM and more at a furious pace. Disruptive technologies are emerging every day and companies are more eager than ever to bring them into their environment to deliver transformation they promise.
However, in dozens of conversations I have with clients across industries, I see that the leverage of technology has not kept pace with their potential business value across industries. This challenge of value left on the table is a recurring one and represents a significant competitive risk for organizations.
How much a CIO spends
Depending on the industry, CIO spends range from 1% to 5% of revenue, higher in industries like financial services and lower in sectors like manufacturing & resources. If you include technology spend outside the CIO organization, this number is likely to be much higher. The business groups are investing in big data, data visualization, analytics, niche cloud applications, BPM and more at a furious pace.
Despite all these investments, in dozens of conversations I have with clients across industries, I see that the leverage of technology has not kept pace with their potential business value. This challenge of value left on the table is a recurring one and represents a significant competitive risk for organizations that cannot afford to leave it unaddressed.
Let us understand some key reasons.
First, technology’s power is a lot more transformative today — it is more core to business or it is the business. Imagine your competitor leveraging its data investments to create cross-sell/up-sell opportunities for their sales team in a near real-time manner, while your company despite having made all the investments is not as sophisticated at it. You don’t want to be there!
Second, technology purchase and consumption is ‘democratized’ — almost every function is making investments in technology. While this brings more transformative power to business groups, the governance on value realized from technology investments is often not consistently high.
Third, technology spend as a percentage of revenues is a lot higher now than even 5 years ago and it will continue growing. In an environment where companies are making big investments even to maintain status quo, no company can afford to not assess the return from an important and growing spend.