Planview Transforms How Enterprises Prioritize Strategic Investments and Execute Change

In an era where 56 wars rage globally and technological disruption reshapes industries overnight, organizations face an unprecedented challenge: how to prioritize limited resources while navigating constant change. Shalini Shankar, Managing Director at Planview, has spent over two decades witnessing this evolution firsthand—from the Y2K crisis to today's AI revolution.

Her unique perspective spans multiple generations of software development and positions her at the forefront of helping enterprises transform their strategic decision-making processes. Through Planview's strategic portfolio management platform, she's enabling organizations across automotive, pharmaceuticals, banking, and government sectors to not just survive change, but thrive through it.

This isn't just another enterprise software story – it's a blueprint for how India can evolve from a services nation to a product powerhouse while helping global enterprises navigate unprecedented change.

The Challenge: Organizations Under Pressure

Today's business environment presents leaders with a perfect storm of challenges that demand strategic agility. "Companies are dealing with change right now," Shankar explains. "Change is happening because of geopolitical turbulence—imagine 56 wars going on simultaneously. Any organization trying to build a profitable business is going through tremendous change from a marketplace standpoint."

This geopolitical instability represents just one layer of complexity. Technology changes continue to push businesses to operate differently, with innovations like India's Aadhaar system demonstrating how technological shifts can fundamentally alter entire ecosystems. Meanwhile, trade agreements, tariffs, and economic fluctuations create additional pressures on costs and financial structures.

The result? Even the most successful companies find themselves grappling with resource allocation decisions that could make or break their future. "The biggest companies have limited resources, limited capital to allocate," Shankar notes. "The first problem any successful business has to worry about is how do I prioritize my spending, my investment, my people, my resources in the right way?"

The Solution: Strategic Portfolio Management

Planview addresses these challenges through what Shankar describes as end-to-end strategic portfolio management and digital product development solutions. Rather than simply providing software, the company acts as a consulting advisor helping entire organizations navigate transformation.

"We help organizations really run their transformations, run their businesses in a very transparent, seamless way," Shankar explains. The platform enables companies to tackle three critical problem categories:

Investment Prioritization: In rapidly changing markets, businesses must continuously evaluate where to allocate resources. A retail company that once focused solely on physical stores now faces decisions about online presence and business model transformation. "How do I invest in offline versus online? It's a simple problem statement, but that whole investment planning and strategic prioritization is one of the biggest problems Planview helps solve."

Organizational Alignment: Having investment ambitions is one thing; moving an entire organization toward those goals is another challenge entirely. Companies need systems that help them plan, execute, monitor, and pivot continuously. "It's not that I take a decision and move on, but the entire organization has to pivot and keep moving towards it."

Cost Optimization: With margin pressures intensifying, organizations seek productivity improvements without sacrificing growth. "People can't just go around cutting businesses down just to reduce cost because then it's affecting the topline," Shankar observes. The key lies in identifying productivity bottlenecks and bridging the strategy-to-execution gap.

Implementation Across Industries

Planview's cross-sectional approach provides unique insights into how different industries tackle transformation challenges. The company serves banking, financial services, automotive, healthcare, life sciences, retail, government, and manufacturing sectors—each with distinct requirements.

Automotive Transformation

The automotive industry exemplifies the complex balancing act many sectors face. "Automotive today is going through two big pressures," Shankar explains. "Everybody's moving into an EV mode—each automotive company has to transition to electric vehicles while sustainability becomes a major driver. Simultaneously, they must maintain their traditional auto business despite tariff pressures and restricted global market movements."

This dual challenge—investing in future capabilities while maintaining current operations—requires sophisticated prioritization frameworks that Planview enables through strategic portfolio management.

Pharmaceutical Innovation

The life sciences sector presents a different set of challenges with its extended R&D cycles. Pharmaceutical companies like Dr. Reddy's must plan molecular research spanning years, followed by lengthy regulatory approval processes. "How do you plan for 10-year long investment cycles? How do you make sure that what you're doing today aligns with plans for 10 years down the line, considering all the changes that could happen in between?"

Financial Services Evolution

The BFSI sector showcases how regulated industries can embrace innovation while managing compliance requirements. "BFSI is fascinating—it generally adopts anything new fairly well, whether blockchain or AI, but there's always a push and pull because it's a regulated industry."

Shankar highlights how India's government initiatives have positioned the country as a leader in financial inclusion: "India is probably one of those countries where government is a far more creative and technologically advanced entity than the private sector."

India's Product Nation Potential

Beyond helping individual organizations, Shankar champions a broader vision: transforming India from a services-oriented economy into a product nation. "India clearly needs to be a product nation for us to lead forward, and I'm very passionate about that vision," she states.

The foundation already exists: "We have the biggest concentration of IT talent in various formations working across every business in the world. You can't get a better hub for innovation than India." The ecosystem encompasses GCCs (Global Capability Centers), service providers, and startups—forming what Shankar calls a "trinity" that can make India the "digital backbone for the entire world."

However, the shift from services to products requires more than technical capability. "Product operating model probably works a lot in mature businesses because you need some maturity to start really transforming into product-driven businesses," Shankar explains. The key lies in product-based thinking—building solutions that scale rather than customizing for individual clients.

Product vs. Project Thinking

Shankar clarifies the distinction: "Product in a simple definition is you build once, you reuse many times. You don't keep building it for multiple people. You don't customize too many times." This fundamental shift affects how companies recruit teams, fund initiatives, and organize operations.

Successful Indian companies like Freshdesk and Fractal Analytics demonstrate this approach. "Fractal is like a 25-year-old business, but Srikanth and his team took their time in the beginning to build it as a product-based business so that what they were building back then is relevant and even more thriving even today."

AI's Transformative Impact

Artificial intelligence represents both the greatest opportunity and challenge facing organizations today. "AI today has made availability of information to everybody as the easiest," Shankar observes. "Till now information was power, information was king. Whoever held the most information was the most powerful. But with AI today, anybody has access to information."

This democratization of information creates a neutralizing effect, opening opportunities for previously disadvantaged geographies and industries. However, it also challenges traditional thinking patterns and creates anxiety as established knowledge becomes rapidly obsolete.

Educational Implications

The education sector must balance AI's benefits with preserving critical thinking capabilities. "By using AI, are we providing more knowledge or are we taking away critical thinking abilities from a child or student?" Shankar asks. "If you're outsourcing your thinking to a machine, then you're giving up your humanness."

The solution lies in positioning AI as an assistant rather than a replacement for human cognition. Educational systems should focus on teaching students how to think and solve problems rather than simply what technology to use.

Shankar advocates for maintaining strong educational fundamentals: "I'm still a strong believer in the fundamentals that we learn through our existing education system. Our education system has the strongest roots—it's still considered as one of the strongest ways of educating in the world."

The Future of Entrepreneurship

Despite AI's capabilities in automating execution tasks, Shankar believes certain entrepreneurial challenges will persist. "I don't think there will ever be a dearth of problems for any entrepreneur to solve because as human beings, we have been genetically predisposed to always look for a higher order of living."

The entrepreneurial journey has evolved from ideas to execution to scale. While AI may ease the scaling phase and prototype development, the core challenge remains unchanged: achieving product-market fit.

"That whole concept of building the product-market fit will still remain as an issue that will take the maximum attention from the entrepreneur," Shankar predicts. The key lies in laser-focusing on what she calls the "triad"—identifying problems worth solving that customers will pay for and that will remain relevant over time.

The Three Stages of Entrepreneurship

Shankar outlines the founder's journey in three stages:

1. Discovery: Creating the problem statement and building initial customer relationships
2. Sales Building: Chasing customers and building up the book of business
3. Scale Decision: Determining whether to sustain and grow or wind down the business

"The scale bit is what probably gets eased out because of the execution ability from AI. The startup of the business—building prototypes before going to market—becomes easier. But the product-market fit discovery won't go away."

Looking Ahead: Multiple Agents Interacting

As AI evolves toward agentic systems, new challenges emerge. "Imagine when you have multiple agents interacting from every startup, and then you have enterprises with their own agents," Shankar muses. "When multiple agents work with each other, how do they interact is today an unpredictable behavior."

This evolution will require new business models and approaches that neither current entrepreneurs nor established companies fully understand yet. The ability to adapt and learn will become even more critical as these systems mature.

Key Takeaways

Shalini Shankar's insights reveal several crucial lessons for leaders navigating today's complex business environment:

Embrace Strategic Thinking: Organizations must move beyond tactical responses to develop comprehensive strategic portfolio management approaches that align investments with long-term objectives while maintaining operational flexibility.

Leverage India's Innovation Potential: The combination of technical talent, ecosystem maturity, and government support positions India uniquely to lead global product innovation, provided companies can transition from project-based to product-based thinking.

Balance AI Integration: While AI democratizes access to information and capabilities, successful organizations will use it to augment rather than replace human critical thinking and decision-making processes.

Focus on Product-Market Fit: Despite technological advances that ease execution and scaling challenges, the fundamental entrepreneurial task of identifying and solving meaningful customer problems remains paramount.

Prepare for Uncertainty: As AI systems become more sophisticated and begin interacting autonomously, organizations must develop adaptive capabilities to navigate unpredictable emerging business models.

Shankar's journey from witnessing the Y2K crisis to guiding organizations through AI transformation demonstrates that while technology evolves rapidly, the core principles of strategic thinking, customer focus, and adaptive leadership remain timeless. As India positions itself to become a product nation and AI reshapes global business dynamics, leaders who can balance technological leverage with human insight will drive the next wave of innovation and growth.

About the Guest

Shalini Shankar serves as Managing Director at Planview, where she leads strategic portfolio management and digital product development initiatives across multiple industries. With over two decades of experience spanning multiple generations of software development, she has worked extensively in investment banking, financial services, automotive, pharmaceuticals, and government sectors.

Shankar is actively involved in industry bodies such as NASSCOM and advocates for building product leadership capabilities in India's technology workforce. She is passionate about India's evolution into a product nation and frequently speaks about the intersection of AI, strategic planning, and organizational transformation.

Planview is a global leader in strategic portfolio management and digital product development platforms. The company helps organizations prioritize enterprise initiatives, execute plans within constraints, and pivot with certainty when changes occur. Serving clients across banking, automotive, healthcare, government, and manufacturing sectors, Planview enables transparent and seamless business transformation worldwide.