Frequently Asked Questions

What you get

• APO replaces politics and gut feel with transparent, criteria-driven prioritisation.
• That cuts financial, reputational, and delivery risk because choices are justified.
• You can show exactly why something was or wasn’t funded.

Security model

• Username/password + optional MFA.
• Role-based access, down to “who can even see this project”.
• Least-privilege control for both data and functionality.

Data residency & handling

• Hosted in a high-security Sydney data centre.
• Encrypted at rest and in transit.
• Backed up frequently, kept sovereign.

Yes, natively

• You can treat ESG, climate, WHS, compliance, regulatory exposure etc. as explicit value measures.
• They’re then weighted alongside financial return — not bolted on as an afterthought.

It actually protects you

• APO captures criteria, weights, rationale, who was involved, options considered, and final management action.
• That gives you a defendable audit trail for FOI, audit and board challenge.

Commercial stability

• You pay a year in advance.
• Multi-year options (up to ~10 years) exist with discounted rates.

Value model

• You define what matters (financial return, strategic alignment, ESG impact, service impact, risk reduction, etc.).
• APO applies that consistently to every proposed investment.
• Every option is scored against the same definition of “value”.

Bluntly: which work is worth doing first

• APO rolls up benefit, disbenefit, tangible and intangible impact into one defensible score.
• You get a ranked list in business value order.

Yes, that’s the point

• It’s designed to compare totally different investment types on equal terms.
• That’s what makes it defensible at exec/board level.

Executives normally complain about two things:

• “We can’t see what’s actually valuable.”
• “We can’t compare like-for-unlike.”

APO solves both by surfacing true value across everything competing for budget.

Shared language

• APO uses value models (measures + relative importance).
• It can blend multiple stakeholders’ views into an agreed weighting.
• It standardises the conversation: “this is what we as an organisation actually value”.

It fits in alongside what you already run

• APO ingests data from project / portfolio / asset systems.
• It publishes prioritised results back out.
• Most customers do this via lightweight API links — not ripping anything out.

Fast start

• Once access is provisioned you can start immediately using the Value Model Library.
• One capable person can usually configure APO for your organisation in about an hour.

No PhD required

• The maths lives in the black box.
• Users just provide value measure inputs in normal business terms.

Prove value, then scale

• Use APO on the high-value calls first.
• Then widen usage to mid-tier work once execs trust the output.
• Below roughly ~$1m decisions, you often don’t even bother running APO because effort > benefit.

We speak business, not maths

• End users don’t have to understand multi-criteria decision analysis.
• They just answer: “What’s the tangible / intangible value of this thing?”

Commercial model

• Pricing is tied to organisational size — revenue for commercial, total expenses for government.
• Exact figures are shared under NDA.

Proof of concept

• You can run APO to produce a proof of concept without software fees.
• People time from Kepa / partners / APO Accredited Professionals may be billable.

Short answer: no

• Your subscription entitles your org (or agreed business unit) to use APO universally.
• It’s not “Starter vs Pro vs Enterprise” feature-gating.

After setup

• Annual subscription for SaaS delivery.
• You’ll typically engage an APO Accredited Professional internally/externally to run APO well.
• Extra help from Kepa, partners or other APO Accredited Professionals is optional/additional.

Yes, easily

• We’ll share commercial detail, methodology proof, and case evidence once under NDA.

Talk to an APO Accredited Professional →

Yes — and white-label it

• You can control access, billing and usage.
• APO supports current consulting engagements and creates new revenue lines.

It’s built on 40+ years of decision science

• Rooted in AHP (validated academically, cited by UNSW for portfolio ranking).
• Extended by Kepa so a single value model works across all investment types — “universality”.
• Supports strategic alignment, consensus-building, and time-to-value.

No, it’s templated

• Proven templates mean you’re not starting from scratch.
• Partners / APO Accredited Professionals accelerate setup if you’re stretched.

Weeks, not quarters

• Most organisations have a prioritised portfolio within weeks.

Support model

• In-app contextual help (AI-assisted).
• Kepa Software support (typically responds within 4 business hours; most issues resolved in ~3 business days).
• Partner network, APO Accredited Professionals, and user community.

Readiness check

• If you already have an APO Accredited Professional, odds are high you’re ready.
• If not, Kepa can assess people, governance/gating, strategy delivery maturity, exec sponsorship, and systems.
• They’ll produce a plan (status, risks, next steps). Typical elapsed ~1 month depending on stakeholder availability.

Reality check

• APO stands up quickly because it’s focused and opinionated.
• You don’t have to “big bang” anything.
• Your Customer Success Manager guides you, and if you want, Kepa/partners can literally run the implementation for you.

Lower specialist dependency

• APO bottles portfolio management expertise into a repeatable system.
• That means fewer “unicorn” individuals and a cleaner exec story: here’s the value, here’s the priority, here’s why.
• The doc positions ROI at 400%+ in the first budget cycle due to killing low-value spend.

No, lean is fine

• APO automates scoring and handles the maths.
• You mostly need someone to coordinate inputs and sanity-check the data quality.

Scales with your org

• Kepa, partners, and APO Accredited Professionals can shoulder setup and change management if you’re thin on internal capacity.

Accreditation

• Kepa keeps a register of Accredited Professionals.
• To become accredited, you need broad delivery/portfolio/commercial capability and you go through Kepa’s assessment and training.

APO is designed for scarcity

• It’s deliberately light-touch and doesn’t try to replace every system you already have.
• It just tells you where to focus the time and money you do have.

Then you actually need APO more

• APO’s job is to identify work that should stop so you can redeploy to the few things that actually move the needle.

Target users

• CIOs, CFOs, COOs, CEOs, Portfolio / Program / PMO leadership — anyone who has to defend “why are we spending on this?”
• Consultants can white-label and deliver APO for clients, too.

Direct line of sight

• You build value measures that mirror strategic objectives.
• Every initiative then shows its contribution to those objectives.
• Execs can instantly see which work actually advances strategy vs which is noise.

Real-time reprioritisation

• Rerun APO and immediately see the new “best spend first” order.
• No more 3-month re-budget circus just to respond to one change.

APO solves exactly that argument

• It shows which initiatives actually deliver the biggest wins now.
• The “we’re too busy” excuse loses power when you can prove which work matters most.

Your team

• You get an Account Manager (relationship, escalation, stakeholders).
• And a Customer Success Manager focused on you realising benefits — they’re an Accredited APO Professional, not just “support”.

Yes, in support — not in judgement

• APO uses AI in its onboard help system to surface relevant guidance.
• It does not claim to “decide strategy for you”, because that’d require human-level context that current gen AI can’t provide safely with private data.

Deployment models

• Default: hosted in AWS Sydney.
• Alternative data centres are possible if Kepa signs off on security.
• Commercial delivery: SaaS (you run it), ASaaS (assisted), or SNaaS (“solution as a service”, we run it and hand you the answer).

Yes, with assurance

• If your preferred data centre meets Kepa’s security expectations, APO can live there.

No surprises

• Your Customer Success Manager gives you advance notice of impactful changes.
• You get time to plan rollout internally instead of being blindsided by an update.

Yes, and that’s core to why it exists

• Transformation, maintenance, procurement, risk reduction — APO can rank them all together in business value order.

100%

• Any value measure that matters to you (safety, brand, compliance, customer impact) can be modelled.
• They’re weighted explicitly, not hand-waved.

Decision science, not vibes

• APO builds on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), a 40+ year academic method.
• UNSW research in 2017 identified AHP as one of very few suitable methods for portfolio prioritisation.
• Kepa’s IP extends AHP so it works across all investment types (“universality”).

Why spreadsheets break down

• You can approximate AHP in Excel, yes.
• But every time the value model changes you’re rebuilding logic, re-testing maths, defending formulas, version-controlling chaos.
• APO ships with that rigour baked in, including the “universality” extension that lets you assess totally different investment types using one model. That’s proprietary.

Where the money comes from

• It flags low-value initiatives so you stop pouring money into them.
• It shows where to redirect that budget to higher-value work.
• That shift alone is often enough to justify APO in the first budget cycle.

Board confidence

• APO gives you transparent scoring and a clear rationale for why an initiative is high priority.
• That’s exactly what CFOs and boards ask for when they’re deciding where the money goes.

It’s a value engine, not a cost line

• Most organisations recover the cost by not funding low-value work they were about to approve.
• It’s not “another tool”, it’s the filter that stops budget leakage.

Support model

• In-app contextual help that’s aware of what you’re doing.
• Direct help requests to Kepa (typical response within ~4 business hours, most issues closed in ~3 business days).
• Access to partners, Accredited Professionals, and the broader APO community.

Yes, any time

• Kepa keeps a register of APO Accredited Professionals.
• We can connect you for a fit check or walkthrough.
• Book a short call →