Opening Bell Ventures

Use case · Budgeting and Prioritization

Spend your planning cycle deciding, not chasing.

Shelly runs intake for your annual plan. She interviews every budget owner, pressure-tests each request against your data, and gives your committee one ranked, sequenced view with the reasoning behind every call.

Talk to ShellySee the process

Ranked portfolio

Illustration
#InitiativeStatus
  • 1CRM consolidation84Fund now
  • 2Claims intake automation79Fund now
  • 3Data platform modernization71Next quarter
  • 4Vendor portal refresh58Needs follow-up
ROI
40%
Strategic fit
35%
Risk
25%

You set the weights.

The reality

You know how planning season really goes.

The process isn’t broken because people don’t care. It’s broken because the work of gathering, challenging, and normalizing every request lands on a small finance team at the busiest time of year.

  1. 01

    You send out the template. Half the owners miss the deadline, and the rest fill it in five different ways.

  2. 02

    Benefits are optimistic, costs are vague, and dependencies on IT or data are missing entirely.

  3. 03

    FP&A spends weeks chasing, clarifying, and rebuilding cases just to compare them.

  4. 04

    The steering committee debates whoever pitched best, not what’s worth funding.

  5. 05

    Six months later, nobody can explain why one project got funded and another didn’t.

The process

Your planning cycle, with Shelly.

Step 1

Launch intake

Today

A template goes out by email, followed by weeks of reminders.

With Shelly

You set the planning guidelines, the scoring rubric, and the list of budget owners. Shelly calls each owner, or they call her, whenever it suits them. She follows up on her own until every request is in.

Step 2

Build every case the same way

Today

Every spreadsheet has different assumptions and different levels of detail.

With Shelly

She asks every owner the same core questions: the problem, the expected benefit, cost and effort, timing, risks, and what it depends on. A vague answer gets a follow-up, just as a good analyst would ask.

Step 3

Pressure-test the numbers

Today

FP&A challenges assumptions one by one, if there’s time.

With Shelly

She checks each request against prior spend, actuals, and past business cases. She flags benefits that don’t hold up, double-counted savings, and overlapping requests from different teams.

Step 4

Score and sequence

Today

Prioritization happens in a meeting, often on gut feel.

With Shelly

Every request is scored against your rubric, weighted the way you set it. Shelly proposes a priority order and a delivery sequence that respects dependencies, capacity, and your budget ceiling.

Step 5

Brief the committee

Today

Someone builds a 60-slide deck the night before.

With Shelly

Leadership gets one ranked view with an ROI summary for every request. Shelly can join the steering meeting on Teams or Zoom and answer questions on the spot, such as “What did Operations say about the dependency on this?”, with the source attached.

Step 6

Stay current after approval

Today

Priorities shift mid-year, and the whole exercise starts over.

With Shelly

She checks in with project owners on a schedule, tracks whether funded initiatives are delivering, and re-runs the ranking when a new request or a cut comes in.

The deliverables

What lands on your desk

Ranked portfolio.

Every request is scored and ordered against your rubric.

  1. 1CRM consolidation84
  2. 2Claims intake automation79
  3. 3Data platform modernization71

One-page case per request.

Cost, benefit, effort, payback, risks, and dependencies.

Proposed sequence.

What goes first, what waits, and why.

Red flags.

Weak assumptions, overlaps, and missing numbers are called out before the meeting, not during it.

Decision record.

Every score traces back to what the owner said and the data behind it, so you can explain any decision months later.

You stay in control.

Shelly recommends. Your leadership decides. You set the rubric, the weights, and who she talks to. Every conversation is logged, and the data stays isolated to your organization.

See how Shelly handles security →

Sample output

Every request, on one page.

This is what your committee sees for each initiative. Illustrative example.

Claims intake automation

Requested by: VP Operations

Overall score: 79 / 100·Rank 2 of 40·Recommendation: Fund now

The ask
$420K one-time, $60K annual run cost
Expected benefit
30% faster claims intake, 4 FTE redeployed
Payback
14 months
Effort
2 quarters
Dependencies
Data platform modernization (Rank 3)
Risks
Change management in regional offices

Shelly flagged: Projected savings overlap with the CRM consolidation request. Benefits may be double-counted by about $90K.

Sources: Interview with VP Operations, Oct 14 · FY25 actuals · 2024 claims process review

Getting started is simple.

1

What you provide

Your list of budget owners, your scoring rubric, and your planning guidelines.

2

What Shelly works with

Spreadsheets, shared drives, prior business cases, and exports from your planning tools.

3

How fast

Shelly can start interviewing within a week of kickoff.

Questions finance leaders ask

Built for

CFOs and FP&A teams running annual planningPMOs and portfolio offices managing an intake pipelineCIOs and CDOs prioritizing technology and data investmentsTransformation leads sequencing a multi-year roadmap

Try it on one real decision.

Tell Shelly about an initiative you’re weighing for next year. In about 10 minutes, she’ll show you how she builds and challenges the case.

Talk to Shelly

Request a conversation

U.S. phone numbers only.

As Seen In

  • Business Insider
  • Yahoo! Finance
  • Associated Press
  • Benzinga

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