Business Case Success

What does a £30 million hospital refurbishment project
have in common with Crossrail?

Frustrations about delays aside, the answer to this one is that both require a Treasury Green Book Business Case. 

This is based on the Five Case model, which seeks to answer the following questions:

The model can sometimes feel like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, as the commitment of time and energy to complete this process can feel disproportionate to the size of your project.  What can be helpful is to treat the business case development process as an opportunity to clarify what you are seeking to achieve and to ensure that the benefits that you are hoping to achieve are realistic and backed by robust plans.
 

The top reason for large projects failing is that they are the wrong project, the ‘white elephant’ that fails to deliver outputs that people want and adds little real value[1]. The business case process should help to ensure that this is avoided, provided that it is completed with sufficient rigour.
 

Our top three tips for developing a winning business case are:
 

• Build a really robust case for change: Can you articulate why you really need to make the changes? Who will benefit? What problems will you solve? What will be different (better) once you have made the changes? Ask yourself the difficult questions and rope in some ‘critical friends’ to help you build your case and challenge your thinking.
• Be realistic about benefits: A surprising number of business cases suffer from what could be described as ‘magical thinking’ where benefits are concerned. Start the benefits process by developing a realistic list of constraints and dependencies (such as a workforce) and apply an ‘optimism bias to any cost-saving calculations. And involve operational colleagues in the benefit identification process.
• Don’t be afraid of the ‘quick no’: It’s not uncommon for somebody to be asked to produce a business case because it puts off making a difficult decision. Business cases take time and money to produce, and a simple 1-page  assessment of the likely benefits and risks of a potential project prior to embarking on a business case will save longer-term costs and frustration [and hopefully help to avoid white elephants]

Our team has experience developing Green Book Business Cases, ranging from NHS major capital projects to innovative multi-agency regeneration projects involving social care, health, housing, and arts organisations. We can work alongside you to develop business cases, support financial and benefits modelling at pace, and navigate the HM Treasury or Welsh Government approval processes. We even have the Better Business Case brownie badges to prove we know our stuff!

If you need support with a business case, large or small, please do get in touch and lets talk about how we can support you.

[1] ‘Why big projects fail and how to give yours a better chance of success’, Harvard Business Review, November 2023