subject: Putting Together The Erp Business Case [print this page] Building the ERP Business Case is all about communication. It's about creating a case that is compelling, clear and understandable, well-rounded, comprehensible and most importantly, convincing.
Visualize your ERP business case like a motion picture producer or director would imagine their movie pitch when they present to the studio. The initial step is always ensuring that you have thought it through, that you know where you are going with it,and you've addressed everything. For a motion picture producer, this means that every thread in the plot has been tied up, that there's already a sound concept behind the movie to drive the style, casting and marketing of the film. For an ERP business case, which means you have covered each thread when it relates to business, when it concerns management, that you are clear about how the whole project will fit together and that you're not just "throwing ideas around".
The next thing is to be sure that you've structured the case well enough so that any individual can comprehend it when picking it up, even if the person picking it up doesn't know anything at all about Enterprise Resource Planning. You need to write it in plain english because, chances are, you'll be selling this case to a number of people with varying levels of experience in ERP.
This is often probably the most important step. In fact, if you can't clearly translate your business case into plain english, into something that just about any individual could pick up and comprehend, then find another person who can convert it into layman's language for you, since this is often very key. Regardless how great your ideas, the fact remains that if the Decision Makers don't comprehend it, then they will not give the green light.
If you need to be sure that your ERP Business Case will get the idea across and make a powerful case, then what you will want to do is give it a sort of a "test run". Which means, soon after you've been through the steps and put it all together, you must show it to a number of people. Involve no less than one co-worker and one outsider - another person posessing no notion what the project is or even a base familiarity of business processes or accounting.
When your co-worker reads it, tell them to pick it apart, tell them to be uncompromising and pull no punches. If a member of your team can find holes in it, then the people who give the go-ahead for it can as well. Now, no business case is totally devoid of any item that can be critiqued or improved upon, so adjust your case until you think that it's as good as it can possibly get, and move foreward.
When you are showing it to an outsider, just be sure you are able to fully grasp it. Again, lots of the people in your organization have probably won their job due to great business acumen or merely due to the fact they had the money to finance a project, but not all of them will have the same business knowledge that you possess. So make certain that your friend, your neighbor or your cousin can actually get the gist of what you're trying communicate with your business case (remember that the business case may be confidential though!)
Thorough and understandable: These are really the two key aspects when it concerns putting together a business case. It's about, most notably, getting your point across, and then, to ensure that you're making a point worth making, that you have covered your bases and are presenting what you might call the final draft of your business case.
It's not extremely hard. So long as you have a sound understanding of your ERP, as long as you know how to get your points across, you should be able to put the final case together in two or three drafts. Expect to reword your case at least once or twice, and then to give it a handful of tweaks along the way (in truth, there's no failure in continuing to fix it bit by bit right until you present the case for approval).
As the old saying goes "Writers don't write, they rewrite". For the first draft, just throw all of your recommendations down on paper. With the second, make certain that they're prepared and comprehensive, that you're not spending a lot of effort on aspects that scarcely need talking about, but that you ARE investing enough effort on the details that need to be made. For the third version and fine-tuning, just ensure that you're making your point clearly and concisely.
by: Philip Greenwood
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