Sonali Shah has a long history of leading product management, marketing, and strategy at leading cybersecurity businesses, including HUMAN, which specializes in defending enterprises from bot attacks, and Veracode, an application security company. Currently, she is Chief Product Officer at web application and API security innovator Invicti and serves on the Forbes Technology Council.
Sonali recently joined Shibumi’s board of directors to support the future of creative, effective portfolio management and enterprise-level transformation. She was kind enough to share some of her thoughts on the current business and economic climate, the road ahead, and her decision to devote her time and talent to Shibumi.
What drew you to Shibumi?
I think of Shibumi as the operating system for agile enterprises. In today’s environment, where change is the only constant and every dollar spent must be spent wisely, nearly every large company is undergoing a transformation, and failure to achieve the intended results can lead to significant financial loss. Shibumi provides the visibility, transparency, and data enterprises require to continuously manage risk and optimize work to successfully execute on their strategic investments.
Tell us about your professional experience and how it has led you to Shibumi.
Over my career, I have seen countless strategic projects that would have greatly benefitted from a solution like Shibumi. Two specific examples are managing cybersecurity readiness and integrating acquisitions.
Cybersecurity is a topic on every CEOs mind today. Mitigating this risk is a company-wide initiative, and especially difficult in global organizations that must adhere to different regulations. Many stakeholders are involved, and risks are continuously evolving. Chief Information Security Officers (CISO) struggle to understand and mitigate the risk of a cyberattack. Shibumi makes their jobs much easier, since it provides organizations with a holistic view of all their initiatives around this topic and a single source of truth. With Shibumi, CISOs can source ideas, prioritize and allocate resources effectively, plan their response to a potential breach, and maintain compliance with industry regulations and standards.
Another area where using Shibumi helps achieve better outcomes is in integrating acquisitions. Successful integration requires the integration of products, technology stacks, processes, people, culture, customers, offices, brands, and more. The need to coordinate work within and across divisions and geographies to track progress, get visibility into early indicators of risk, and plan out various scenarios is critically important. Spreadsheets and project management tools are just insufficient. I know that I would have been more successful integrating previous acquisitions if I had a tool like Shibumi!
What’s your take on the current climate for enterprises?
The past few years have been tough for enterprises across the world for so many reasons, but mainly because of the continuous pace of change. In the last few years, labor shortages, geopolitical unrest, natural disasters, pandemics, and cyberthreats have disrupted supply chains, increased expenses, and generally caused havoc. It’s no surprise that PwC’s 2022 Global Risk Survey found that nearly 80% of business executives surveyed say keeping up with the speed of digital and other transformations is a significant risk management challenge. “Business resilience” was a key topic among CEOs at the World Economic Forum earlier this year. Unfortunately, I don’t see the pace of change slowing down anytime soon.
Any advice on how businesses can manage the year ahead?
One of the biggest determinants of success for global organizations will be how resilient they are to constant change. Whether it be a pandemic, war, supply chain disruption, or new ESG regulations, companies that can quickly adapt their strategic plans to new risks and opportunities will be the ones that survive.
Yet, most companies are ill-equipped to face this challenge. They lack the tools to align strategy and execution and adapt as new risks and opportunities emerge. Enterprises need digital solutions that provide the real-time information needed to see early signs of risk, the ability to conduct dynamic scenario planning, and prioritize initiatives based on cost and impact.
How do you see Shibumi supporting businesses now and in the future?
While no one knows what 2023 will bring, we can say with certainty that it will bring change that enterprises must adapt to, and that the pace of change will not slow down. Having strategic portfolio management (SPM) software to take large transformative projects from idea to impact is a must for high-performing enterprises.
Shibumi has the right technology, vision, and people to lead the SPM market, and I’m looking forward to working with the management team to help organizations turn their strategy into realized value.