Problems with the Business Case - Project Series

This part of the project is very dependent on the internal processes within the business, so the things I say here may not be valid for some businesses.

Defining the Business Need

Business requirements have been covered in an earlier post, this is more about the need for the project, what will it achieve in the business.  Another earlier post addressed the requirement to not allow bosses wanting something bright and shiny or IT staff wanting to play with a new technology to drive the business need.

A good Business Case template will of course require you to define the Need, the Drivers for Change and how this project will add value to the business - and that is extremely positive, because if you can't define these qualitative features then the project should not be progressed beyond someone's bright idea.
But often times people look to a technological solution for business process problems.  This results in leaps of analysis, where the new system is the silver bullet that will resolve all of the businesses woes, streamline the processes to produce cost savings, bring about world peace and so on.

There is a saying "you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig" - you can put in a multi-million dollar IT system but if your business processes are broken they will not necessarily be resolved by an IT system.  If your project incorporates a significant change process and addresses the procedural shortfalls then it is likely to produce the improvements, but if you had undertaken the change activities without introducing the technology what would the outcome have been???

Defining Return on Investment

My biggest bug bear with Business Case templates is the financials, and not just because I get no joy from working with numbers.  The main problem is that the projects that I am usually involved in have a negative rate of return due to the inability to adequately capture and define the efficiency improvements per individual. How much money will the business save putting in enterprise search? Well I'm sure I can get some Gartner figures on time per day spent on search and average that out for the business, but what if you company requires you to actually deliver that as a direct cost saving?  If I am saving everyone in the business two hours a week of lost time I am making them more efficient, making them happier in their jobs and able to respond in a more timely manner, but I'm not actually saving tangible and definable dollars.

There needs to be a better way of defining qualitative ROI to the business that does not have to be delivered in actual cost reduction.  I've been thinking of something like a Goodwill Indicator. This would work along the lines of how beneficial the system will be to the staff - those qualitative results that cannot be easily measured and will not see clearly defined savings but will make it easier for people to do their job.  I think it has some merit as a method, but I need to flesh it out a little bit.

What else?

Whilst I understand the need to have a detailed business case it is very disheartening when everyone just reads the Executive Summary and the little bit that they are interested in.  Yes a detailed business case proves that analysis and thought have been put into the project and the need for it in the business, but there needs to be a better way of proving that this work has been done without the need for a 40-50 page document that virtually no one will read.

I think we need to come up with some smarter documents around all of this that make it simpler to create a well thought out business case.  Importantly, even if your business has good templates I think that it is extremely important to develop a clear instruction, a checklist even, about all of the hoops that people must ensure they go through to develop the business case.  Developing a good business case is hard enough without knowing exactly how to do it, who to engage and the standard process.

Functional Classification Presentation

I've been working on a presentation for a few weeks, starting to prepare for the inevitable discussions that will have to occur here on functional classification of documents.  I had a thought a few weeks ago, and a whole stream of explanation started making itself clear in my mind, so I thought I would spend some time at home coming up with a base presentation.

I complete it last night and its now loaded into Slideshare if you want to see it. Because they're having a contest I already ticked that box, not that I think this is one of my best presentations or because I think it's a sexy enough topic to win, but because the option was there in the list :-)

Not surprisingly, my closing advice is the same for everything I talk about in records and information management - train your staff on how to do their jobs and life will be so much easier.