The Business Issue
Many organisations struggle to develop effective business cases. This can lead to investment opportunities being missed or benefits from programmes not being realised as planned. The cost to a business can be very high and can result in a loss in confidence in major programmes. There are many potential causes:
- A lack of clarity of objectives, manifested in an inability to clearly articulate what the proposed investment is trying to achieve and why
- The business case owned by the developer rather than the decision maker
- Benefits not owned by the business
- Poorly defined business benefits
- Major benefits described as “intangible or “soft”
- No clear link between business benefits and features of the proposed programme
- An inability to measure current performance, let alone future targets
- A poorly structured business case that over-complicates
- Key assumptions that drive return on investment not documented
- An unstructured financial model that mixes input assumptions with outputs, providing no clear audit trail of calculation methodology, assumptions made or their sources
- Detailed financial analysis that masks the relationship between costs and benefits for alternative implementation options
- Over-selling the benefits without emphasising the effort required to achieve them
- Not acknowledging potential “disbenefits”
- Benefits realisation not being clearly linked to the original business case
- A too detailed benefits measurement framework that is dropped in order to “concentrate on implementation”
- Focusing on justifying previous decisions rather than maximising future potential
- No clear process for capturing and prioritising actions required to maximise business benefits
Key to a successful business case is a combination of hard and soft skills that provide:
- Ownership by the business
- Buy-in and commitment to change
- Structured financial analysis to evaluate and track costs and benefits
- Clear and simple presentation of the implications and risks of alternative courses of action
Our Expertise
Capgemini has a unique combination of analytical and change management skills that are required to develop effective business cases and successfully track benefits throughout a programme to ensure maximum realisation. Some of the key skills we possess include:
- Validating strategic objectives
- Identifying and structuring benefits
- Facilitating benefits ownership
- Financial modelling and return on investment analysis
- Options analysis
- Sensitivity analysis
- Presenting financial information and writing the final deliverable
- Building a framework for measuring and managing benefits
- Knowledge of the Public Sector business case process
Our Approach
Capgemini provides a flexible methodology that is tailored to the business issues faced by an organisation. Typically we adopt a top down approach to gain maximum understanding as early as possible and help focus effort where benefits are likely to be greatest.
Business Benefits
An effective business case delivers increased business value, by providing:
- Improved understanding of the drivers of Return On Investment for alternative courses of action
- Increased understanding of key risks and critical success factors for implementation
- Benefits understood and owned by the business
- A flexible and scaleable approach to ensure that effort spent on developing the business case is in line with the value of investments, and insights are generated at an early stage to allow direction to be changed or re-focussed where necessary
- Identification and management of measures for tracking benefits to help achieve maximum realisation
Diagram of the key stages in a Capgemini business case
Our Experience
Capgemini has a broad range of experience in developing business cases and measuring and managing realisation of benefits. We have case studies from across all main industry sectors (see below).
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Benefits Management
The success of major programmes can depend on the success of Benefits Management.
Benefits rarely happen without major effort. A robust benefits management process can help maximise Return on Investment of major programmes.
Capgemini’s Operational Research team have a proven track record in employing the range of techniques required to identify, measure and track benefits over the full lifecycle of major programmes. We can ensure a smooth transition from business case development, through implementation, and transition of the programme to business as usual.
See also our downloadable Thought Leadership file: PoV Benefits Management.pdf
Related Success Stories
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