How can we assist in helping a company evaluate business cases as part of the overall Business Plan?

• To develop an accurate understanding of the financial results and other business consequences of management actions 
• To prepare you for using this understanding to your best advantage—for decision support, for planning, and for improving the quality of the next business case you build.  

Step 1. Build a Core Team and Set Objectives

We work with you to build a cross-functional core team of key individuals in your organization to provide input in finance, operations, sales, IT & communications, and other areas. When the focus is alliance building, or sales support, the core team may also include key stake-holders from partner or customer organizations. We launch the project with the core team by describing the business objectives behind the proposed action or plan and the information needs of decision makers and others who will use the results. Here and throughout the case-building project, the core team helps extend business case "ownership" and involvement more widely—key factors in building credibility.

Working with the core team, we survey the current environment and create a financial profile of your operation as it is today and as it would be in the near future under "business as usual." This becomes the basis for measuring impacts of the proposed action or acquisition against proposed alternatives. The financial profile is developed from an understanding of your business objectives and business plans, as well as your activities, processes, cost drivers, and resource requirements.

We analyse the likely impacts of the proposed action or acquisition. With technology acquisitions, for instance, this begins by understanding the new functionality and how it can impact business operations, work flow and processes. For proposed alliances, this means developing the business model for each alliance partner, each partner's contributions, and the projected market response to alliance products or services.  In sales support, this means understanding how the proposed solution helps customers meet their own business objectives. All important impacts—positive and negative—are measured in concrete, operational terms. The analysis also considers carefully all requirements and contingencies involved.

We advance the business case design by creating practical cost and benefit models, an appropriate benefits rationale, and clearly defined "boundaries" (rules for determining what belongs in the case and what does not). The cost model defines—in clear, simple terms, for all to see—which cost items belong in the case which do not. The benefits rational provide a solid basis for giving value to the full range of positive impacts, including those that are not easily measured in financial terms. When these design elements are in place, we interview key individuals in your organization for input and work with you to bring together all other required data and information.

•  "How likely are the projected results?"
• "What other outcomes are possible?
• "Where are the major risks?"

We perform a rigorous sensitivity analysis on the financial model to determine which "drivers," contingencies, and other factors control results and by how much. They also perform an in-depth Monte Carlo simulation of the business case scenario in order to help you understand fully the likelihood of different business case results.