Large organisations and the public sector are regularly undergoing change and strategic developments. To get investment of capital or operational expenditure for a non-BAU activity, a compelling business case needs to be put together. Developing your business case typically needs to include careful planning, research and analysis of the benefits and logistics around delivery.

It’s not uncommon for business cases to be turned down. Knowing what might prevent approval can help future business case development. In this guide, we look at some of the common reasons we see project business cases being turned down and what you might do to avoid this.

Treasury has developed guidelines for public sector business cases which is a fantastic resource for ministries and state entities to create consistent, robust proposals. 

In this guide, we’ll talk about the key aspects of the Better Business Case framework that Treasury created, and how you can apply it to your own business case.

It’s not clear how delivery will be managed

The business case doesn’t need to actually create the governance structure, but it should detail the way in which this will be approached. Some organisations will set up a core of the governance to support the business casing process, but setting up too much of the project mechanism before approval could be spending money you might later regret.

Providing decision-makers with confidence in project management helps to illustrate the practical elements to change. We sometimes see business cases that do a great job of the aspirational business impact or strategic imperatives but don’t quite put this into a concrete plan. If you can create this in your business plan, you’re helping the audience envisage how this would look in practice. Otherwise, your audience may make up their own assumption of what it would take to deliver and may even be unable to see how it would work.