So how do you make a good business case for a project? We recently canvassed managers at enterprises large and small, from diverse industries spanning health care to banking, and found some common ground.
Credibility Building
One key theme permeated our interviews: If your business credibility isn't established, you will have a tough time building any kind of case for projects. Simply put, business credibility means the folks in charge know you're not just a geek, that you have "business value add" (see "Stupid IT Manager Tricks," for a list of don'ts).
First and foremost, you must understand the underlying business that your IT department is serving, says Jim Kennedy, information systems and technology manager for United 1st Federal Credit Union, St. Marys, Ga. "If you don't," Kennedy says, "you're automating things blindly."
Kennedy says he keeps a list of business problems he's noticed. In any organization, of course, this list can be endless; the key is bringing up the problem when you can do something about it. For example, when there's a technology development Kennedy thinks will fill a need, he lets management know he's noticed a business problem and then presents the technology solution. In IT, as in comedy, timing is everything.
One technique typically used by IT managers is the old "save a couple of minutes" routine--that is, save line workers a few minutes here and there, and when you scale it to thousands of workers, you save a huge amount of money. But you must understand the business well enough to know when time savings might not translate into dollar savings.
"People try to come up with funny numbers and save 15 minutes of time booting up to justify a project, but ultimately, that isn't what sells those projects," says John Fuhrman, a project manager who has worked in both the airline and banking industries.
Indeed, you must take any type of measurement like this with a grain of salt. Top managers may look askance at the desirability of "saving time" in the morning while employees are already multitaksing--checking voicemail, making coffee or having their morning meetings--all while booting their PCs. We're all for dealing with staff time problems, but you must do so in conjunction with line managers, who have a good idea of how slack time is used. If you pitch throwing precious IT dollars and resources where there's no clear-cut business problem, you're eroding your credibility.
On the flip side, if numerous errors are causing the workers to stay late at the end of the day, even if they don't get paid overtime, you have a huge business-efficiency problem on your hands, albeit a hard one to measure. If you can solve problems like this, says Kennedy, "It's Tylenol--it relieves the pain. Nobody thinks of the cost of Tylenol when they've got a headache." Noting business problems like this and proposing a solution may not pay the company back big time--at least at first--but it will certainly bolster your credibility.
Here's the easy part: Managers should recognize that IT has business value only insofar as it helps business units cut costs or produce additional revenue. Risk avoidance is simply a variation on the "cut costs" theme: Just ask finance how much it would cost to go through and sanitize all the books if an intruder creatively modified a couple of line items. The hard part is recognizing that we can't do it alone. We must partner with other business units to make those cost cuts happen. For example, before talking about labor savings, partner with the business-unit manager whose labor will be saved, and find out if technology will indeed cut head count. Once you get past that, it's easy to be a hero.
If business success were only a matter of installing a certain type of server or software or management application--or any deterministic tool used in business--we'd all be stinking-rich entrepreneurs. Instead, we as IT managers must come to grips with the fact that business success and, ultimately, IT success involve due diligence, risk and judgment.
Getting buy-in is as much art as science. It has to do with relationships and history, so you must build both. Most of all, as one manager told us, "There is no silver bullet. If there were, we could teach a monkey to do it."
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