Build a business case you can actually decide on.
Every budget season replays the same scene: dozens of candidate projects, files of uneven quality, a committee deciding on conviction. The business case is the tool that makes the decision possible. Provided it is built to inform, not to persuade.
Projects decided on files that cannot be compared
In most organisations, projects reach the committee in every possible shape. One fits in three enthusiastic slides. Another is a forty-tab spreadsheet. A third promises productivity gains without saying who will deliver them. The committee compares what cannot be compared.
The decision then rests on something else: the sponsor's conviction, the weight of the requesting department, the urgency on display. Profitable but quiet projects wait. Attractive but fragile projects pass. The portfolio fills up without anyone knowing what it returns.
The remedy fits in one sentence: one template for every project, figures that compare, a dated decision.
What a business case contains
Four blocks, always the same, whatever the project. That constancy is what makes arbitration possible.
Costs, complete and dated
A project's cost does not stop at the vendor's quote. Licences, integration, data migration, training, internal time, recurring running costs: everything is priced, year by year. A cost without a calendar allows no calculation.
- Investment and recurring kept separate
- Internal time valued
- A disbursement calendar
Gains, dated and owned
A gain only exists if someone commits to producing it. Every gain has an amount, a first-effect date and a named owner. Diffuse productivity gains are never cashed by anyone.
- An amount, a date, an owner
- Caution on indirect gains
- The cost of the status quo priced alongside
Assumptions, in writing
Volumes, rates, scope, calendar: every figure rests on assumptions. The file states them in black and white, so the committee challenges the assumptions rather than the results. That is where the file's credibility is won.
- Dated and sourced
- Revisable without rebuilding the file
- Sensitivity on the most fragile ones
Comparable indicators
NPV, IRR, ROI, payback: four readings of the same file. NPV says what value the project creates, IRR what it returns, payback when the money comes back. Calculated the same way everywhere, they make projects comparable.
- The same calculation rules for all
- A common horizon
- Automated calculation, not handcrafted
Who writes, who challenges, who decides
The sponsor writes. It is their project, their assumptions, and they will defend the file. A business case written in their place by finance or by a consultant commits them to nothing.
Finance challenges. It checks the calculation rules, tests the assumptions, asks for evidence. It does not rewrite the file: it makes it robust. A file that has not been challenged before the committee will be challenged during it, at the worst moment.
The committee decides, on a fixed date. On criteria known to all, with a recorded decision: Go, No-Go or a motivated deferral. A decision without a committee date is a disguised waiting list.
And one prerequisite that changes everything: a properly framed need upstream. A business case priced on a blurry scope prices a fog. On that point, the approach is described in our insight on framing an ERP project.
Four ways to empty a business case of its meaning
The disguised pitch
A file written to persuade picks its figures. A business case written to inform also exposes what weakens the project. If everything is green, it is not a business case, it is a brochure.
Orphan gains
Announced savings that nobody owns will not materialise. A gain without a named owner leaves the calculation, or the file lies.
The handcrafted spreadsheet
A single workbook, buried formulas, one person who knows how to run it: the file becomes unverifiable, therefore contestable. The template and the calculations must be shared and tooled.
The impossible comparison
Different horizons, different rules, different scopes: the indicators no longer mean anything. Standardisation is not process luxury, it is the condition of arbitration.
The standard template, ready to use
Everything above can live in a disciplined workbook. We tooled it instead: one sheet per project, the financial file calculated automatically, and arbitration campaigns to compare files and record decisions.
Cockpeet: the project sheet and the calculated financial file
One sheet per project, NPV, IRR, ROI and payback calculated, arbitration campaigns to decide. Free, in the browser.