In today's economic climate, the process of proposing-and acquiring support for-any project has become a far more rigorous exercise. In this month's Management Insights by Peter Dillon-Parkin, learn how to use the six-step ADAPTS process to build a successful business case for your project that ensures a return on investment.

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Learning Tree
Management Insights
Expert Advice from Today’s Top Professionals
Creating and Proving Business
Benefits in Six Simple Steps
project, so management didn’t fully trust the cost/benefit
Is this a familiar scenario? You need to get management
analysis.
approval for your project to proceed. In a panic, you look for
the last proposal you wrote—or get a copy of the last successful
For the purposes of this article, let’s presume the latter
one—and use it as a template. To be persuasive, you frame the
outcome. In a proposal, tangible costs and benefits do need
benefits of the initiative by advancing “the numbers”, believing
to be compared to each other, but many businesses are also
it’s what the business cares most about.
seeking to achieve benefits that are harder to quantify. For
example, “improved efficiency” is valuable, but how do you
But here’s the catch: You don’t have a clue how to prove your
prove (or quantify) that value?
initiative’s benefits using “the numbers” because there are
intangible benefits that are difficult to quantify in both the short
Rather than start with the numbers, consider the real goals
and long term. You struggle with determining the cash value
of any proposal:
of “increased efficiency” and “improved morale”. Plus, your
• Clearly outline what is being proposed
knowledge of the financial factors affecting the return from this
project is limited—so even the value from the tangible benefits • Demonstrate the ways in which the proposal benefits
is suspect. Your recourse is to invent numbers for the intangible the business
benefits and mix them in with the tangible ones. You do all this,
• Make sure your proposal is understood by all stakeholders
all the while knowing full well that cash is historically the least
(not just those with finance degrees)
effective predictor of project success.
This is what’s involved in creating a successful business case,
On the up side, generating costs for the project is simpler, and
and it can be easily done using a simple six-step process called
once you have your cost and benefit numbers, you can provide
ADAPTS.
a cost/benefit analysis. However, since the benefit numbers you
invented are qualitatively different from your cost numbers,
your analysis is suspect at best.
Nevertheless, you persevere and submit the proposal. One of
Peter Dillon-Parkin
two things happens:
Able Solution UK Ltd
1. Your proposal is approved because the key decision had
already been made. Writing the proposal was simply an Our Management Insights article for this month addresses the
internal process requirement and it was never actually read. fundamentals of creating a clear and persuasive business case. Author
Peter Dillon- Parkin, a documentation specialist and business analyst,
2. Your proposal is read but rejected. While it had many
offers a six-step process for success.
numbers, it never made a strong case for pursuing the
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2. EDITION 009
Learning Tree
Management Insights
Expert Advice from Today’s Top Professionals
ADAPTS: A Six-Step Process for Creating and Proving Business Benefits
Applying the ADAPTS Process to to those factors that the business worries about. For instance,
a cash rich business might not care about cash overruns but
Create a Successful Business Plan care very much about missed deadlines. Using BARs lets you
synchronise the evaluation of risk in your initiative with the risk
profile of the business.
Step 1: Agree on the Scope
Your first step is to harvest the stakeholders’ key perceptions
Step 5: Target Alternatives
and opinions to build a clear set of business requirements.
Now you must ensure that your initiative (and the alternatives
Next, write a clear statement of the problem or opportunity
you generated back in Step 2) are culturally compatible with
that has engendered the proposed initiative and compare that
the way the business, and/ or its management, operates. To do
to the requirements. Requirements that address the problem
this, you must profile the decision-making processes of the key
or opportunity are the key requirements while the remaining
stakeholders and satisfy the selection criteria they use, thus
are “nice to have” and rarely cause the initiative to fail if
establishing that you’re presenting appropriate alternatives.
they’re not met.
For instance, presenting an alternative that stresses “increased
throughput” for a company that values “care and quality” is
Step 2: Develop the Initiative
unlikely to succeed.
Now you can add detail to the key business requirements by
identifying all stakeholders, understanding their goals and
Step 6: Sell the Business Case
activities and getting more detailed information. This step
Finally, pull together the knowledge you’ve collected from the
provides two important insights: First, an understanding of
previous steps to create a compelling reason for implementing
the user scenarios that will be affected by implementing the
your initiative. Remember: Without a strong rationale for
initiative and, second, possible alternatives for meeting the
implementing your initiative, readers will distrust any numbers
business need that engendered the initiative.
you provide. More business cases fail because of this than for
any other reason. To further help your cause, consider writing a
Step 3: Analyze Costs and Benefits
clear, concise executive summary that focuses on the key points
The first part of this step corresponds to a traditional proposal
the decision makers are interested in. It is often the best place to
where you compare tangible costs with tangible benefits.
make your case.
Because you are comparing apples to apples, standard
financial measurement tools such as return on investment,
Following the ADAPTS process, you’ll produce a business case
payback period and net present value are helpful here. The
document that accurately represents the real value that your
degree to which you’ll deal with the financial aspects of a
initiative provides to the business and, more importantly, enables
business case is directly related to the exposure to risk for the
informed decision making.
business caused by the sums involved. If you’re unsure about
this aspect, involve the finance department or an outside
expert for their expertise.
In a business case, you must also go beyond the “the numbers”
to measure intangible benefits by tying those benefits
to business drivers and their Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs). A business driver is one or more of your business’
critical success factors, grouped into areas such as market
attractiveness or operational efficiency. For instance, in the
“customer satisfaction” area, a key business driver might be
“increasing our responsiveness in dealing with client needs”.
Having identified a driver, you can tie it to a measurable KPI.
For “customer satisfaction”, a KPI measurement could be
“average call response time”. If you can demonstrate that your
initiative will result in a measureable improvement in a KPI
tied to one of the company’s critical success factors, then your
About the Author
initiative demonstrates a benefit to the business.
Peter Dillon-Parkin is the author of Learning Tree’s Course 212, “Building an
Step 4: Prioritise Risk Effective Business Case: Analysing and Communicating Business Opportunities”.
Here’s where you help the business recognise areas of Peter is a consultant specialising in documentation, business analysis and
potential deviation in the business case. You should use communication skills, and works in Europe, the USA and the Middle East.
behaviourally anchored ratings (BARs), which are anchored pdillonp@yahoo.co.uk
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