Streamline Training & Documentation: Business Acumen III: Business Case How-to

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Business Acumen III: Business Case How-to

One of the most productive things you can do to help employees contribute innovative ideas is to teach them how to draw up a business case.

I am not talking here about an exhaustive presentation of a detailed technical justification for a proposed initiative. Rather, I'm suggesting that enabling any employee to write out the argument in favor of an idea they believe is good will make a real difference in how efficiently ideas can be shared and evaluated.

At a high level, the parts of a business case are:

Executive summary
Business opportunity
Alternatives
Benefits
Costs
Financial analysis
Assumptions
Sensitiviy analysis
Project description (how the project will be carried out if approved)
Implementation plan
Summary of recommendations

A sample business case following this format can be seen here.

A junior employee would not be expected to pull together unassisted all of the information required for the complete business plan outlined above. The employee would sketch out key sections — e.g., Business opportunity and Benefits — and then work with colleagues to complete the business plan if the idea is deemed promising enough for further investigation.

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Labels: Business acumen

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