Having a solid business case is critical to the success of any project. The business case justifies the project. This includes the purposes for undertaking the project, options identified for accomplishing the goals, the estimated effort and cost of each, and the preferred option. The requirements and priorities of all stakeholders must be identified. The business case clearly states the benefits to the company, but risks must also be identified. The timescale for completing the project is laid out. An executive summary is given so that everyone has a clear understanding, regardless of their technical background.
Ultimately, the business case not only acts as the key reference document for a project, but it is also the document senior management in an organization will sign off on for the project to get approval to proceed. The business case aligns the company’s management and all business units that will be affected, ensuring they have a united vision.
Without a solid business case, approval is unlikely. If it proceeds anyhow, the project’s odds of success are low. Cost to the company (in financial terms, resource allocation, and potential disruption to services or business units) is high.
XaaS (Anything as a Service) or CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service) implementations are no different than any other IT project in that they require a business case. However, there are unique challenges to building an effective business case around these cloud-based projects. Most companies are looking at these implementations as a way to reduce operating costs while improving services. That involves replacing legacy systems or integrating them with cloud-based solutions. Doing so is a complex undertaking, and while IT departments know their in-house systems intimately, they are less familiar with third-party cloud-based solutions. Often the systems being replaced are mission-critical, while the vendors that supply cloud solutions are unknowns. That’s a combination for disaster if not addressed at the earliest possible stage: the business plan.
Engaging with a strategic partner that has extensive experience in XaaS and CCaaS implementations at the business case stage reduces the risk of failure. The resulting document will be much stronger, more likely to result in commitment and approval from the executive level, and provides a solid blueprint for launching and managing the project.
Tech Republic published a post titled “6 essential elements for a winning business case.” In it, the importance of the business case is summed up succinctly:
“A solid business case leads to well-informed decisions that are most appropriate in a given business setting, while the one that fails to provide adequate level of detail, or disregards relevant data, or makes incorrect inferences, or does any number of other things wrong, leads to suboptimal decisions that are very expensive to any organization, in terms of the time, money and lost opportunities.”
Before your company embarks on any XaaS or CCaaS project, reach out to an experienced consultancy company for the expertise to ensure you get the business case right. With that critical document in hand, your project is on the path to success.
