I have seen several blog posts and articles written recently around how to build business cases in order to justify buying various products. These are very IT-centric bits of thinking, and are frankly wrong. They follow a too frequently seen sequence of events that is:

• A senior stakeholder/sponsor has lunch (or occasionally sees a demo) with a vendor and buys a product
• Minions are asked to come up with a business case to justify said product
• Minions make up business needs, and apply fictitious numbers, along with many TLA’s to confuse the picture.
• Sponsor feels good about how much money they are going to save/ profit they will make etc
• No-one ever checks the benefits realisation
• The business or “real people” get a system they don’t need, and that doesn’t work for them.

(Ok – it’s a touch cynical, but it happens far too much)

It doesn’t matter what the technology is, who the vendor is, or any other factor. The point is, that THIS THINKING IS BACKWARD AND MUST BE STOPPED! If you are looking to build a business case in order to validate or justify a pre-made decision on technology, then you are the tail wagging the dog, and i would suggest you have bigger problems as an organization.

Here at WaveAdept, we place huge importance on identifying your main business problem and finding a solution to fit, rather than trying to force a product where it’s not needed (or even particularly welcome). Collaboration in all its forms is no exception to this. If you as a company all sit in a room together working on fast moving ideas and concepts, then maybe a whiteboard, flipcharts and post-it notes are your new best friend! If you are a global company spread across numerous offices, platforms and timezones, then your needs may be a little more difficult to solve.

So to summarize, regardless of the scenario, the steps are broadly the same.

• Identify the problem/opportunity, from talking to the real people who actually do the work and feel the current pain.
• Identify the root cause of the problem. (all the tools in the world won’t help if people wont talk to each other for example!)
• Determine what the possible solutions are and then
• Build the business case. (see – you have to do it, just not as the first step!)
• If the business case stacks up – off you go, to fame, fortune, and happiness!

(Of course – you need to keep revisiting the cost vs benefit equations throughout the process – but thats a whole other story…)

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.