Business Case Assurance Resources

How To Present A Business Case In Person

The information in this guide is intended for general purposes only. For more specific guidance around your organisation’s projects, please get in touch with our team.

In this section, you will find:

Making a presentation around a big investment that you believe will benefit the business is no small task. Business cases themselves will live as a detailed document that touches on the strategic, financial and management elements of a project or programme. It usually takes months of work to fully build a compelling business case. Whether your audience has read the business case when you’re presenting it in person, or indeed your meeting is the first introduction to it, the in person communication of a business case is crucial to its success.

In this guide we talk about some of the elements of in person business case presentation that you should think about, and how these may help the chances of a business case being accepted.

Managing risks in a project portfolio IQANZ

Has the ground work been done before the meeting?

Meetings with decision-makers over large investments can be hard to pin down. Often those in the room are very busy and are involved in other commitments across the week. Aligning everyone will take some runway in the calendar.

So the last thing you want to do as the team involved with the business case is to skip over aspects of the business case before you meet. Chances are the questions will be asked about all elements as the business does its due diligence. If the business case has not considered things like the following, you could get caught out in the meeting:

  • Strategic case – why is this investment important now
  • Financial considerations – how can we afford it
  • Commercial viability – can the market supply what we need
  • The management of the proposed investment – have we done this before, how will we manage it
  • Who will be involved
  • A thorough risk analysis – how risky is it, what can we do to reduce that risk
  • Other projects or activities that this proposed activity may impact

Do the groundwork. Ensure the hard questions of the business case have been asked by everyone involved in its development and even some future stakeholders for their input. The saying ‘throw rocks at it’ in the corporate world is indeed apt for a business case. The more critique of the thinking before the business case is formally presented, the better it should go.

Do you know your business case well enough?

Once the business case has been formulated, it can be tempting to quickly set up the meeting to go through it all. But even working on a business case might not be enough to speak to it naturally from all angles. Once it’s been completed, the senior responsible owner (SRO) and all other attendees of the meeting who’ve developed the business case should spend ample time to read through it, discuss it and feel confident speaking to it naturally in a meeting.

Think of the business case presentation as a musical performance. You don’t want to turn up and simply read the sheet music; you want to have learnt the piece to a place where it’s almost natural and you don’t require close reading of the music to play it well. The business case (sheet music) is there to prompt deeper conversation where you can talk to the proposed investment with real authority and confidence.

Take your time, learn the music and play it well when it counts.

Establishing who needs to be in the room

Setting up a meeting with decision makers in a large organisation can be hard – you want enough subject matter experts in the room to do the business case justice, but also don’t want to crowd a boardroom to the point where no real conversations are able to take place.

First, work out with the help of senior leadership who needs to be in the room from the decision maker perspective. This will usually include a financial senior leader, and may involve technology, operations, people/HR, innovation, marketing or whomever else would be a) affected by this proposed investment and b) responsible for its success at the senior level. If the business case is in the public sector and requires ministerial sign off, there may be a separate meeting after the SLT has approved the approach. This will depend on the nature of the business case.

In terms of who should come from the group who developed the business case, there’s likely to have been dozens of people either directly or indirectly involved with its development. We’d suggest distilling this down into the key people who were responsible for each part of the case (risk, management, financial etc). There should be a degree of comfort by each of those people to speak to the business case proactively with decision makers, and also field questions as they come up. The SRO should know who to defer to in the room for certain questions.

Has the decision making group read the business case closely?

Business cases are often provided to decision makers prior to meeting. This is a really efficient way of going about things as they’ll already have some thoughts coming in. Consider circulating the business case ahead of time if you’re confident the material itself and the proposed activity can resonate without supplementary discussion. If there is context that really needs to be set alongside the business case, you may wish to simply provide a high-level brief/overview of the business case ahead of time, present it in person, then circulate the full version after you’ve met.

Either way, it’s important to understand the meeting you’ll have when going in fresh vs. meeting decision-makers who’ve had time to digest the business case.

Have you gained any initial feedback to address prior to meeting?

If you have provided the business case ahead of time, consider whether you want to get feedback or thoughts before the meeting. If there is ample time between providing the business case and the meeting, then you may be able to benefit from this initial feedback; concerns or questions can be researched and answers prepared (or even embedded into an updated version of the business case).

This has a number of benefits. First, you’re getting on top of concerns before they grow. Second, your meeting will likely run more smoothly knowing that some of the initial feedback has been heard and addressed. And finally, it’s showing commitment to the business case and the organisation by proactively finding answers to key questions.

Establishing the goal of the meeting

A business case meeting might be one of many that you have in order to get approval on the investment. For that reason, it’s important to understand exactly what the specific outcomes are of the upcoming meeting before it kicks off. The first time you meet with key decision makers might be to introduce the business case and the strategic outcomes it will deliver.

If you’re already met before, the meeting might be to address and show resolution of concerns raised previously. Or, it may be a final meeting to firm up some details before the business gives the go-ahead.

Whatever the outcomes, we’d suggest you circulate these with all attendees of the meeting. No agenda or outcomes, and these meetings run a serious risk of becoming winding discussions with no tangible actions at the end. Given everyone’s time is precious, a wasted meeting can push the business case’s approval back by weeks or even months.

Which parts of the business case need to be a topic of discussion?

A comprehensive business case will cover a fair bit of the ground. Whilst it’s important to touch on each aspect of the business case, your organisation and key stakeholders may be mostly concerned with a few elements. For example, if your business has well-established governance and project management practices, that variable may be less of a discussion point in the meeting. Perhaps there are some tight financials the organisation is navigating through; this will likely mean the costs and viability of the proposed activity will need careful unpicking and discussion. How has this business case effectively considered the needs of the business and the parameters in which it needs to operate within to make it affordable?

It’s a good idea to pull out or at least mark up the parts of the business case that you know will need more discussion and prepare some key commentary on these. If you’ve circulated the business case to the decision-makers, you may wish to get an indication from them as to which parts they’d like to talk about in detail.

Prepare for questions to be asked

The presentation of a business case needs to be choreographed in a way that allows enough time for tricky questions and good answers. If you take up a full 90 minutes or two hours talking through the business case, it might not be refined enough. Together with a tight presentation and thorough business case, the floor open to Q&A gives your audience more faith in the proposed investment.

It’s really hard to anticipate questions that will be asked in these meetings, but you can get some clues by running the business case past other stakeholders in the business. Of course you’ve got the ability to share the business case and invite questions ahead of the meeting, but in our experience this doesn’t always prevent ‘curveball’ questions in the meeting. This is simply a fact of how some prefer to discuss big decisions – in the moment, in person.

When asked a question that needs some time to answer, don’t be afraid to capture this and commit to a timeframe that this will be answered. Ideally you’ll have questions that can be answered in the moment, but there are times when in order to answer properly, you need the thinking space and potentially do some additional analysis.

The questions that you want to try and not be caught out by or need to delay your answer on, are the big commercial, financial, practical questions. You also don’t want to be caught on the hop not knowing about big business risks that the project could be derailed by. So spend plenty of time building a detailed risk analysis.

Getting commitments at the end of the meeting about next steps

The meeting has gone well, you’ve explained the business case and its outcomes and there’s been positive discussion. It’s uncommon for there to be no further actions out the back of a meeting like this. Ensure someone on your team has captured actions and reiterate these at the end of the meeting. There may be some things that decision makers need to provide, and there may be additional elements to include in the business case based around the discussion.

Talking about next steps keeps the flow of the business case process moving. Without these, you’ll need to try and restart things via email or 1-1 meetings which is much harder than in these group settings.

Addressing concerns or providing supplementary information ASAP

If there are questions that come up or gaps in the business case that you’ve committed to fill, try and prioritise this. It’s a good idea to leave your calendar open for a day after the meeting to jump on these straight away. This might be finding out some additional information about procurement, investigating a risk further, or clarifying an element of the business case in an updated version.

Decision makers might need extra information to accurately commit to approval, so get onto this as soon as possible. The momentum from a good meeting can disappear quickly, so jump on these items and get things progressing to the next stage.

Getting feedback

Once the business case has gone through the process and a decision has been made either way, it’s valuable getting feedback about how the presentation went, and the business case itself. These learnings for everyone involved are golden for future business case development; from the senior responsible owner to individual accountabilities. It’s rare that a business case is perfect, so invite this feedback once the dust has settled.

Discuss your business case with us

We’re experts at both the BBC framework and general business case development. This is just part of our wider assurance offering, where we assist projects, programmes and portfolios to succeed through our proven methodologies and experience. Start by contacting our team to discuss your business case.

Where to next?

Read our other business case resources:

Managing risks in a project portfolio 1

The Better Business Case framework explained

What is the Better Business Case Framework? We explain this in our guide.
Learn More >>

Designing a portfolio delivery plan IQANZ

Business Case Sign off process

Progressing a business case through approval involves a number of stakeholders and considerations. We discuss these in our guide.
Learn More >>

Guide to portfolio governance IQANZ

Guide To Writing A Compelling Business Case

Writing a business case should provide a clear, engaging argument for business activity that will drive positive outcomes.
Learn More >>

Business Case Checklist IQANZ

Business Case Checklist

Download Business Case Checklist.
Learn More >>

Building a balanced project portfolio IQANZ

How To Present A Business Case In Person

Presenting a business case in person is usually a part of any proposed investment for an organisation.
Learn More >>

Secret to successful portfolio delivery IQANZ

Why Business Cases Get Denied

Sometimes a business case doesn’t get through the proposal stage. We share some reasons why.
Learn More >>

Prioritising projects in an organisation IQANZ

Reviewing A Business Case

Checking a business case is ready for presentation and approval is more than crossing t’s and dotting i’s. We suggest some ways to ensure a thorough check.
Learn More >>

Latest Business Case Articles