Business Case Development and ROI Analysis
Building and defending the numeric case that an investment or initiative is worth funding. Covers enumerating one-time and recurring cost categories (implementation, licensing, TCO, lifecycle cost, licence-model comparisons), quantifying tangible and intangible benefits and converting efficiency gains, time-to-market, or risk reduction into cash terms, applying ROI, payback, NPV and break-even to a specific proposal (including choosing a defensible discount rate and phasing benefits over time), build-versus-buy and option comparisons, stating and stress-testing assumptions (sensitivity and scenario ranges, optimism bias, auditing a vendor or customer model), packaging the case for an approver (one-page summary, CFO or executive framing, staged funding), deciding between competing initiatives, opportunity cost, and whether to continue, pivot or stop, building customer-facing and vendor-side cases (a competing TCO claim, a bespoke feature or custom integration, a multi-year discount), and tracking realized benefits against the forecast after approval. Accounting treatment and full financial models are outside this topic.
