An Effective (and Complete) Business Case Template

As technology decisions come under increased financial scrutiny, business cases become more important.   Most enterprise buyers could use a lot of help in building business cases.  This goes beyond providers giving them input and numbers to use.  It really is about how to create an effective one.   This is particularly true for more inexperienced buyers that are more and more common in technology decisions. One of my colleagues, David Yockelson, was looking around and found a great tool for this.  And it is from Gartner.  Clients can check it out here. When David shared it with us, he had grabbed a screen shot of one element of it, the Business Case on a Page: That was interesting and valuable, but I let his message sit in my inbox for a while before I checked out the whole document.  What I discovered was much more than a tool to create business cases. It actually goes a long way to  guiding a customer on an effective buying process.  It includes elements like: Value Assessment Risk Assessment Constraints Stakeholders Alternative Investments Explored Objectives and KPIs (hooray) Within these it explores how to think about these things.  It helps formulate the questions buyers should be asking, the people they should get involved, and the clarity they need to establish.  Any customer that uses this--truly uses this (vs. paying lip service to it)--is highly unlikely to experience regret. That also means they are likely to buy faster. I'd recommend that EVERY Gartner client check this out now, whether you are buying or selling.   For vendors and service providers, we plan on creating a wrapper that breaks these ideas in more detail, discussing how you can use it to create a better buying process and accelerate opportunities.  But don't wait for that, start your own exploration now.  You'll be glad you did.