All you need to know about the Business Case – Part 2 of 2

In this second episode, Ricardo continues to explain the steps for creating a solid business case and how to 'sell it' within the organization.

Download (6 MB)

Episode transcript

The transcript is generated automatically by Podscribe, Sonix, Otter and other electronic transcription services.

Speaker 1 (4s): Hello everybody welcome to the five Minutes BM podcasts today. I like to continue this series about business gigs. If you recall, last week I started discussing what is the business case? I said the business case is not an opportunity statement. Remember, an opportunity statement is when I envision the future, but I don't talk. How do I plan to get there? I said also that a business case is not a business plan. A business plan is a long, much heavier, much more structured set of information with a much more long-term perspective.

So what has a business case, just to recall the business case, it's a way that you use a communication tool, that you use to sell the idea of your project. I said that the business case it's a basic seven-step process. Last week, I explain it in the identification of the problem. Step number one, you need to understand what is your problem. And you need to express yourself in a very clear and compelling way. The second step is about identifying alternatives.

Remember the not limit your mindset, doing nothing is an option. You need to generate ideas. And at this time you will also start selecting the ones. You want to move forward. You don't move forward with 100 ideas, but you move forward with two or three ideas. The third step is gathering data and estimating a timeframe. What do you do is basically a research steppe. You do research on each of your ideas and try to get financial data timelines, risk data.

So you try to understand more how that idea can be implemented. Each is not an implementation plan, but it's being formation, historical information, marketing information. This is the time that you may look for a supplier to understand. So you get all this data on the fourth step is the time that you start analyzing that data. You start trying to create a common area to compare different ideas.

So trying to analyze this idea is very good. This idea is not so good on that. So it's the time that you used, maybe a SWOT analysis maybe you use fish or bond to understand how this address the cow's effect relationship. So this is the time that you analyzed data to become more comfortable to do the selection. And the selection is step number five. So it's time that you choose a solution.

You can use several types of decision-making processes, but the most common is the use of points point scale or the AHB point scales, it's you give a rating for each idea and then you try to analyze it and you try to calculate the sum of points of each alternative on each criterion you want to select. But the best one, of course, I'm, I'm a little bit be as here because I love AHP that what you can do, you can compare two different alternatives in different sets of criteria using the move, the criteria, a process, the analytical Iraqi process.

And this is quite solid INSEAD, quite reliable. If you have your ideas, they will not be very complex. So to be quite simple, to put in place, and it's very, very valuable to understand how much consensus do you have among your stakeholders. So you can use criteria like cost of implementation, a timeline of implementation, risks, quality, and you can have different sets of criteria. Were you born there? The different ideas, as soon as you pick one, it's the time for you to cry?

We can propose an implementation plan. I said about gathering data on step three, about previews implementations. Now you need to propose act two of implementation. What is the idea is you put the main milestones, the main responsible, the main data, the main cost. How do you plan to implement it? So of course it's not the project plan. You will not be built at a thousand of the work package to BS.

Of course not. It's just a high level of an implementation plan to give more to the people who do understand the way you move forward. You want to move forward last but not least it communicates the case. So when you build, the business case, you need to understand what do they care about? What does my audience want to hear? So it's very, very important that I add is which kind of points should I mention on the problem or should I think on that step, analyze data, own the analysis I'm doing.

So it's very important. So when you communicate the case, it's a set of a document plus a presentation. So the document will have all these details and the presentation, my opinion, the personal opinion should be a very small seven slides, one for each one for the problem. One, four, the alternative one, four, the data, one for data analysis, one for the solution and one for the plants, very simple and straightforward, no detail. It's very important that you present in a new, give the supporting information at the end.

What do we want? We want to let people, all the stakeholders comfortable with the way we want to move forward. And then the proof of a charter comes to life. So it's very, very important that you understand it's a very powerful two, very simple to the risk. There are plenty of templates on the web. So make the best use of that to avoid problems and to increase the success

Speaker 2 (6m 23s): Right off your projects. Yeah. Hope you enjoyed this podcast.

Speaker 1 (6m 26s): And so your next week with another five minutes BM Podcast.

Menu

Resources & Insights

Products & Services

More Resources & Insights

Ricardo Vargas

Podcasts

All you need to know about the Business Case – Part 2 of 2

Search in Podcasts

Latest podcast episodes

Book recommendations