Hints and tips for stage five
Consult widely with your stakeholders and sponsor to agree what kind of business case you need to make. If you do not need a full cost benefit justification then you can save some resource and just focus on assessing the likely cost of the solution for budget planning purposes.
Do not to just go to one supplier to obtain solution costs. Suppliers tend to underestimate total costs when asked. Faced with a tight Invitation To Tender followed by a contract they will suddenly remember additional costs elements they had not quoted to you before. Ask existing users of these solutions or seek advice from an independent consultant who can confirm or adjust your estimates for you.
Always define all your assumptions carefully and present the benefits and costs in a spreadsheet so that if certain elements of the costs or benefits need to be changed this can be easily accomplished and the case recalculated.
Recognise and make clear in your project documentation that you cannot produce an accurate business case at the start of a project as part of a PID. The elements of the business case can only be calculated once you have completed your information gathering and analysis and decided on your preferred approach. That is why we cover the business case in stage five. Even here we have to add the caveat that at this stage the business case is based on assumptions and informal quotations. The cost part of the case has to be revisited during stage seven (procurement) when you receive the supplier quotations as part of their tender.
Politically it is always a good idea, where they are published, to link your business case to the stated organisational goals or mission statement. These may be published in a strategic plan or strategy. You should analyse them and then point out how they translate into specific goals set for the EDRM project. One example would be if an organisational goal was to increase student intake by 20% then you could point to how the implementation of an EDRM would help you to answer student enquiries more quickly and efficiently and hence improve the image of the education organisation and contribute to this goal.
