The annual decision
Which requests are funded inside this year’s capital envelope.
Solutions by challenge · Portfolio prioritisation
Portfolio prioritisationyou can defend.
The criteria hold from one cycle to the next.
Before the ranking
Which projects get funded dependson what the site is for.
Once a year the sites submit and finance decides what gets funded. Forty requests, a budget that covers fifteen, a list that has to be cut and signed.
The long-term decision
Which sites grow, which are held where they are, and which run to the end of their life.
That is what settles whether a new press at one site matters more than a roof at another.
Where the two come apart
Why the long-term plandoes not reach the budget cycle.
In most groups the long-term plan and the budget cycle are not connected, so the basis for ranking is rebuilt every year.
The plan is agreed and filed. When the cycle opens, finance settles the weights, the thresholds and the categories again, with a partly different group in the room.
What connects them
Where capex rankingcriteria come from.
In Weissr Capex, prioritisation starts with strategy, not with incoming requests.
Each investment is tied to an asset and evaluated against the direction already set for that site. If a request conflicts with that direction, it becomes visible at submission, not later in the review process.
The directives are set per site: the site strategy, the maximum payback, the exit year and the average cash flow. A strategy held only at market or product level does not give each site these parameters, and without them the ranking lacks critical data.
Those directives stay in place until the strategy changes.
With Weissr Capex Strategy, those directives are backed by a long-term plan across the full asset base, so funded investments can be traced back to the strategic decisions behind them.
Read more in Weissr Capex Strategy01
One intake
Every site submits into the same structure, with the same fields and definitions. Requests arrive comparable instead of being made comparable afterwards.
02
Comparison inside a scenario
A scenario holds one version of the plan and its assumptions. Requests can be compared on requested amount, budgeted amount and NPV, while alternatives are compared side by side.
03
Capital allocated by level
Planning limits are held in pools at group, division, business area and business unit level. Each level knows what it has to work with before ranking starts.
04
Mandatory work identified
Compliance and safety investments are flagged as mandatory, so they are recognised as obligations rather than ranked against growth on the same scale.
What the next cycle starts with
What the next capex cycleinherits from this one.
Nothing has to be rebuilt next year.
01
Once the budget is approved
The chosen scenario is stored with the numbers, conditions and assumptions in force at the time. If an assumption moves, the scenario is re-run against the existing model. What was approved stays as it was, and the change is visible against it.
02
When projects close
What each project actually cost is written back to the asset it belonged to. The estimate, approved amount and outcome sit together, so the next request starts from that figure.
03
When requests are turned down
They stay attached to their assets, with the case that was made for them. A request outside the approved budget remains in the system, ready when the next cycle opens.
Part of the Weissr Capex suite
Strategy, budgets and executionon one asset base.
Guides and reports
Go deeper onportfolio prioritisation.
Report
Maximising Cash Flow from Capital
Why ranking projects one by one leaves cash on the table, and how comparing the whole portfolio against strategy frees up capital.
Download the report →
Report
5 Levels of Capex Maturity
A framework for assessing how your organisation plans and prioritises capital, and what the next level looks like in practice.
Download the report →Capex Maturity Assessment
What's yourCapex maturity level?
Answer a short set of questions on process, data, visibility and cash flow, and get a report showing your level in each area.
Take the assessmentCapex prioritisation FAQ
Questions financeteams ask.
What is capital rationing, and how is it handled?
Capital rationing is where every capex cycle starts: more requests than the budget covers. Handling it well depends less on the method used to rank and more on whether the basis for the ranking is still there when the next cycle opens.
Who decides the criteria for prioritising capex?
Each group configures its own. What Weissr Capex settles is where they are held and when they are set, not what they are.
How do you justify which capex projects were funded?
By showing what the ranking was built on and that the basis was set before the requests arrived. Weissr Capex holds the criteria against the directives the strategy set, not against the cycle, so a ranking built this year can still be explained next year.
Is a scoring model enough to prioritise capex projects?
A scoring model compares the requests that have been submitted. It gives you a consistent ranking of that list, which is useful. What it cannot do is tell you whether the list is the right one, because the requests follow from the structure you already have. Change where volume runs or which sites stay open, and some of the requests stop existing. That question sits above the scoring model.
What happens to capex requests that are not funded?
They stay in the system, attached to the asset they were submitted against, with the case that was made for them. When the next cycle opens they are already there rather than being written again.
What happens when an assumption changes after the budget is approved?
The scenario is re-run against the existing model. What was approved stays as it was, and the change is visible against it.
How do you explain to a site why its project was not funded?
The position traces back to the directives that applied to the asset and the criteria that were set before submission opened. The discussion moves from the weighting to the request itself.
How is portfolio prioritisation different from capital allocation?
Capital allocation asks which strategic direction the business should pursue, comparing alternatives against each other on company-wide cash flow rather than approving investments one at a time. Portfolio prioritisation asks which of the requests now on the table are funded inside the envelope that allocation produced. Weissr supports both, in Capex Strategy and Capital Budgeting.
Rank once.Explain it three years running.
See how Weissr Capex carries the basis for portfolio decisions from strategy through every budget cycle.
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