Researching before business case writing

by Nicki Carruth | Oct 25, 2022 | Business Case Assurance

It’s the same with many aspects of work done in organisations; the time spent on thinking, research and exploring can greatly improve the quality of the output and reduce the time it takes to create it. In this fast-paced professional environment with deadlines aplenty, it’s understandable why the research phase gets skipped. A business case to secure investment for a change in the business – such as a project – involves hundreds of thousands of dollars in many cases. Skipping over the all-important research stage is a recipe for disaster. Research and discovery make business cases much stronger and more considered and lead to better quality of project once accepted. In this article we’ll talk about business case research in a bit more detail and what you should look to get out of this vital phase.

What are the business’ strategic objectives?

Any investment made by the organisation needs to have some discernible link to the overall strategic objectives. While these will be broader, transformational outcomes as compared to more functional day to day outcomes of a project delivery, there should be a direct correlation. This is not only to get the business case through the approval stage, but is critical for the project to deliver outcomes that drive the business in the right direction. In our work we sometimes come across projects that fail to clearly state how they help the business strategy, or make tenuous links in order to try and get approval. They usually need to have changes made to better connect the two.

In your research phase, building a clear understanding of the organisation’s strategy and objectives is one of the first reference points to put in place. Any activities that the business invests capital expenditure on (or operational funds for that matter) must deliver back a measurable positive impact on these strategic goals.

There are a few ways to obtain and understand the business strategy and objectives.

Seek out written strategic documentation such as board reports, leadership team comms, vision, or any other materials that provide a complete picture of where the business is looking to go. With this, the team working on the business case can distil down the key objectives and start to build the proposal around affecting these. Oftentimes a business case will materialise out of a transformational imperative; it’s still worth taking the effort to understand the strategy goals in detail before writing anything down.

Consult with leadership team members to better understand the practical initiatives in play to affect these goals. There will be existing projects, programmes and other KPIs in place throughout the organisation, along with a number of planned activities that may not be immediately known by your team. Having a direct line of communication with those responsible for delivering on strategic goals is arguably the most valuable source of information you can get in this phase of the business case development.

Relationship Between Programmes and Projects IQANZ

Determining the everyday challenges the business is facing

Once the strategic objectives are understood, the research should move down a level of granularity by consulting with various business units and the leaders within each to understand what challenges exist that relate to the topic of your business case. There will be an initial rationale to stand up a business case, and the strategic relevance, but it’s not until you get a sense of the problems in the business related to this topic that you can contextualise and demonstrate the practical necessity of such a change. For example a strategic outcome might be moving public-facing systems to a modern platform. The business challenges would go into detail like the speed of systems causing negative customer service ratings or identified security flaws in legacy systems. Gathering this research helps not only to justify the business case’s existence, but will uncover a myriad of BAU challenges that can be addressed in the resulting project. When these challenges are surfaced, the project plan, scope and budget resembles the real needs of the business much more acutely than the often aspirational language of a strategic objective. Both big and little picture are essential to understand when developing the best possible case for investment.

Are there projects already looking to solve these issues?

Research isn’t just about being more thorough in the business case; it can avoid spending effort in the wrong places. As your team works through the initial discovery, take the necessary steps to understand the organisation’s entire project portfolio and what their deliverables are. This may not be so much of a risk in a smaller business where all projects are generally visible and understood, but large enterprise and government agencies will often have a considerable amount of initiatives running concurrently and it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to know what’s going on at all times.

As the person or team responsible for building a business case, you need to see the portfolio of projects and start to unravel any potential overlap with what’s being proposed in your case. This may require you to dig a bit deeper into each project. This can be helped if your organisation maintains good practices around governance and reporting; you can efficiently access deliverables, scope and even the initial business cases for these projects. It’s unlikely that an existing project is doing the exact same thing by the time a formal business case is being developed, but this process can help give more guidance around what does and doesn’t need to be done. There may even be rationale in moving certain deliverables off one project and into the proposed one – but this is something that would be determined by roles like programme management, steering committee and senior leaders.

Consultation with the business about the potential business case

Sounds obvious, but nevertheless is important in order to produce a business case that will have organisational buy-in. This is particularly useful for projects where FTE staff will be involved in the delivery of the project. Hearing the requirements, pain points or wish list of those in the business during the research and discovery phase can help the business case and project be framed in a way that’s easier to deliver on. During this phase you may encounter resistance or different opinions on what else is a priority. This is very normal and such feedback can be referred to the necessary party (often someone outside the group developing this business case).

Deciding the right team to work on the business case

It’s worth mentioning that the group assembled to develop a business case really matters. In normal circumstances, a business case will be led by a senior responsible owner or SRO. They can come from any part of the business but will often be in a reasonably senior position. However, pulling a comprehensive business case together requires a range of expertise: analysis, writers, legal input, financial, procurement and project knowledge to build coherently. Some people may get involved later through the process for certain aspects only. For some projects one person (maybe the project manager or BA) does the bulk of writing after compiling information from across the business. Other, more complex business investments will typically be a collaborative effort in terms of writing the document, still overseen by the SRO to ensure it’s cohesive. Investing in an experienced business case writer for large business cases can help streamline the process.

When you engage personnel in the business to create the business case, it’s worth making sure that:

They’ve got the skill and knowledge to provide what you need for the business case.
They have the time to commit to providing what the document needs.
They have some connection with the resulting project and/or the business unit(s) it impacts.
Their input is complementary, not conflicting with those of others in the business case group.
They have the ability to go and retrieve information or input from other stakeholders as needed.

Pre-emptive checks about financial viability

Researching a business case must involve assessing the cost aspect of the project. This may come a bit later after building a clearer picture of the business’ needs from the project, but shouldn’t be left too long after this. There are some initial checks that can be done, such as speaking with the financial controller on the budget possible for a project. This information may be passed down from the senior leadership team, making the business case an exercise of creating a plan that is effective and within that set budget.

Other business cases may be approached from the perspective of a clear need, but unlocking the budget may indeed become part of the initiative itself. Remember a business case is about putting forward a compelling argument. This can extend to how much budget it’s allocated, even if that sits outside what’s initially earmarked. As the business case takes shape, it’s important to keep liaising with finance, procurement and other leaders to refine the budget estimates as accurately as possible.

Is the business equipped to take action on this business case?

As you speak with stakeholders in the business and explore the various deliverables and costs involved, the business readiness will start to pull into focus – if the business is not ready to deliver the proposed activity now, that doesn’t mean it will never be; it simply requires those changes to be part of the business case’s dependencies or even early stage deliverables. With that said, if the organisation appears to be significantly ill-equipped, the SRO should consult with the leadership team or steering committee for guidance. It’s a sure recipe for more cost and less output to start on a project without the right people and experience to deliver it.

Need help with your business case research?

In our work helping organisations with business cases, we don’t simply review the final draft, we get involved throughout the whole process. We can provide your team with guidance before the business case is written, offering direction on the best way to research for the business case. If you’re interested in getting this kind of help , Chat to our team to learn more about how we approach business case assurance.