If you have ever proposed an IT investment and then failed to gain approval, or failed to deliver expected returns, you may find here just what was missing.

The IT Business Case Dilemma

IT Business CaseProving the business value of IT actions is a challenge.

The World Wide Web is awash with IT business case templates, IT ROI calculators—as you know if you’ve heard from IT vendors or the IT consulting community lately. Yet IT business case projections still fail to “come true,” still raise cries of “Soft Benefits!” and still fail to instill confidence in senior management. Why? What can be done about it?

Drawing on 20 years experience helping IT managers, engineers, and consultants build cases that score high in credibility, accuracy, and practical value, Solution Matrix Limited has just published the 2016 edition of  "The IT Business Case: Nine keys to accuracy and credibility." If you are about to propose an IT acquisition or action yourself,  consider carefully how you would address the issues behind each key presented in the white paper:

  1. Recruit and an Reference Group:  Build-in Cross-Organizational, Cross-Functional Expertise.
  2. Build a Comprehensive IT Cost model: Build-in self evident completeness.
  3. Include All the Business Benefits: Don't Walk Away from the so-called "intangibles."
  4. Turn "Soft" Benefits Into "Hard" benefits: The strategy for  valuing all IT Benefits in Financial Terms.
  5. Understand How Full Value and Incremental Cash Flow Statements Work Together to Show the Results of Your IT Action.
  6. Take the Long Term View: IT Actions Have  Long Term Consequences.
  7. Minimize Uncertainty and Risks and Measure What Remains.
  8. Compare Important Non Financial Benefits Directly With Financial Benefits.
  9. Use IT Business Case for Management and Control

The "IT Business Case" explains and illustrates each key.

By popular demand, our 22-page white paper  now now appears in our online encyclopedia.

Online now with free access: the complete Solution Matrix Limited white paper, "The IT Business Case: Nine Keys to Accuracy and Credibility"

Take Action!

Learn and practice proven methods for building your cases at a Building the Business Case Seminar. Learn more about business case design from one of our books, the Business Case Guide, or the most frequently cited business case authority in print, Business Case Essentials.

By Marty Schmidt. Copyright © 2004-2016.
Published by Solution Matrix Limited.
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