Every technology decision is a capital allocation decision.
Most companies have never managed it that way. It shows on the balance sheet.
You manage your capital as a portfolio. Your technology is a portfolio you have never scored.
Return, risk, ownership, total cost. The same discipline a board applies to capital, applied to the systems the business actually runs on. When the portfolio is unmanaged, the misallocation is invisible until it is expensive.
I have made this case in public.
The Technology Capital Audit
A structured read on where your technology capital is creating value and where it is sitting idle. It produces a score a CFO and a board can act on, and a reason to talk. Output rendered as the Ledger.
- Core systems of recordStableAllocated
- Data and AI capabilityHigh, unfundedUnderweight
- Redundant toolingNegativeOverweight
- Integration and middlewareContestedUnderweight
DAAEG™. Judgment made repeatable.
The thesis is only worth as much as the discipline behind it. DAAEG is how the capital allocation view becomes a method a team can run without me in the room: five stages, each tied to the question of where the return is real.
- 01DefineName the business outcome the technology must produce.
- 02AssessRead the portfolio against return, risk, ownership, and cost.
- 03AlignSet priorities and capital where the return is real.
- 04ExecuteDeliver against the plan, not the activity.
- 05GovernMeasure the outcome and hold the allocation to account.
An operator who ran it, not a consultant who read about it.
Three-time CIO across HEB, Kroger, Lowe's, Haggen, and Northgate González. The work was running the systems a multibillion-dollar business depends on, through the inflection points where the wrong call is permanent.
That is the vantage point behind Jacob Meadow Associates and behind the Technology Capital Audit: capital allocation seen from inside the operation, not from the outside looking in.
Read the full story →The audit reveals the gap. Jacob Meadow Associates closes it.
For boards and executive teams ready to manage technology the way they manage capital. Bring me in to run the audit, set the method, or take the stage.