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    Business Cases That Get Results
    Business Cases That Get Results
    Business Cases That Get Results
    Ebook114 pages2 hours

    Business Cases That Get Results

    By Carrie Marshall

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    About this ebook

    A business case is a logical, structured argument to bring about business change, aimed at the decision makers in an organisation. A persuasive, well-written business case can win over your readers and get you the all important approval you need.

    In this book you’ll discover the do’s and don’ts of pitching your ideas through a business case. You'll learn what the essential components of a business case are, including what key questions you should be answering, how to structure your business case, factors to consider when thinking about benefits and risks, and how best to tackle ROI.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBCS, The Chartered Institute for IT
    Release dateJan 31, 2019
    ISBN9781780174570
    Business Cases That Get Results
    Author

    Carrie Marshall

    Carrie is a writer, broadcaster and musician from Glasgow. She’s the singer in Glaswegian rock band HAVR, a familiar voice on BBC Radio Scotland and has been a regular contributor to all kinds of magazines, newspapers and websites for more than two decades. She has written, ghost-written or co-written more than a dozen non-fiction books, a radio documentary series, and more.

    Read more from Carrie Marshall

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      Book preview

      Business Cases That Get Results - Carrie Marshall

      PREFACE

      A business case is a very important document: whether it’s printed out or delivered as a presentation, its job is to persuade an organisation to do something differently. That might require significant upheaval, significant investment or both, and that means even the brightest idea may face resistance.

      Putting together a business case is rather like putting together a legal case, although it’s a lot less likely to be made into a movie. You’re putting forward an argument and providing evidence to back it up. If your argument is persuasive enough, you’ll get the result you want: the green light to go ahead.

      In this book we’ll consider the techniques and tips that get results.

      In Chapter 1 you’ll discover what a business case is and how it’s different from other documents, such as project proposals.

      In Chapter 2 we’ll determine the key questions that your business case must answer.

      Chapter 3 is all about stakeholders, the people who will be affected directly or indirectly by your preferred course of action.

      Chapter 4 looks at the mechanics of putting your business case together and what key sections it should include.

      In Chapter 5 we’ll identify the importance of identifying and quantifying the benefits your business case is designed to deliver.

      Chapter 6 is where we become Eeyore, and consider what might possibly go wrong – and what we can do to prevent that from happening.

      In Chapter 7 we get our spreadsheets out to calculate return on investment (ROI) in different scenarios.

      In Chapter 8 we look at friendly fire, the internal opposition that can make implementing change more difficult and the strategies you can use to avoid and address it.

      Chapter 9 is about presentations and how to utilise them effectively.

      Chapter 10 discusses how to refine your business case to get the maximum effectiveness.

      Chapter 11 highlights the steps to successfully submit your completed business case.

      1INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS A BUSINESS CASE?

      No business is perfect, and no business will ever be perfect. There will always be a way to do things more efficiently, more cost-effectively, more environmentally responsibly – and in our ever-changing, high-tech world, what’s impossible today will often be unremarkable tomorrow. And that means there will always be a need for somebody to put forward a business case.

      A business case is a written argument, a proposal for making things better. It could be a simple idea expressed in a few paragraphs – ‘if we switched to this supplier, we’d spend a lot less’ – or it could be a thick document that’s taken months to put together. But at heart, every business case says the same thing: something should be done, and here’s how to do it.

      No matter how complicated or detailed it may be, or how many appendices it has, every business case addresses five key questions: why, what, how, when and who.

      The answer to the first question, the why, looks at the status quo and identifies the reasons why it isn’t good enough. If everything was just fine, you wouldn’t be proposing to do anything

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