Pulling Teeth: making a business case

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Pulling Teeth making a business case

• Sarah Fahy, Allen Overy LLP

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Before you put pen to paper

• Identify key statistics and measures
• Use them
• Test them
• Collect them
• Make sure they make sense!

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Understand the context

• What you want and why
• Who will benefit?
• What will happen if you fail?
• Be clear about
• Your personal objectives
• Empire building?
• Your teams objectives
• Stated strategy? Development?
• The firms objectives
• Competitive advantage?
• Firms stated strategy?

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Preparation Justifying our project

• Define the value
• Aligned to firms strategy
• Saves costs
• Either tangible or intangible
• Extra value to the firm
• Additional support or products
• Future savings?
• Evolution or potential for growth
• To whom - identify the stakeholders
• Who will suffer if you fail?
• Work allocation? Time saved?

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Types of cost

• Tangible costs
• Actual savings
• Have conviction
• Intangible costs
• Time savings, increased opportunities
• Quantify and reduce to
• If you cant quantify in use as a supplementary
  reason

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Measuring value ROI

• Evaluates the efficiency of an investment
• Flexible can include many things as a benefit
• Comparative can be used to show cost efficiency
  of alternatives
• Produces a
• Negative bad investment
• Positive good investment

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ROI example
Gain 500 Save staff time 200 Avoid
buying an alternative 300 Cost
1000 New system/resource 1000
Year one recover 50 of the cost
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Measuring value Payback period

• The length of time required to recover the cost
  of an investment.
• Best investment has the shorter payback period
• Two issues
• Ignores the benefits that occur post payback
  period
• Ignores the time value of money 
• Using same example
• Where savings are 500 and costs are 1000,
  achieve
• 500 saving YR 1
• 500 saving YR 2
• investment has a 2 year payback period

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Putting Pen to Paperremember

• Structure
• Keep it simple
• Keep your audience in mind
• Keep to the point
• Is it relevant?
• Do they care?
• Be careful of
• Too much detail
• Unsubstantiated claims
• ..just because

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Putting Pen to Paperremember

• Always remember
• You are already a cost to the firm
• You need to stress the benefits to the firm
• If you wont save money stress
• Transparency
• Improved ability to control/contain costs
• Increased value to fee earners

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Sample Business Case
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Sample Business Case
.. 2
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Sample Business Case
.. 3
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Sample Business Case
.. 4

• Summarise the costs vs. benefits
• Present as a table
• Costs
• Internal
• External
• Savings
• Quantifiable
• Use ROI or payback?
• Be explicit about when a project pays for itself

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Sample Business Case
.. 5

• Quantify the intangible benefits
• Value the extras
• Revenue generation
• Client services?
• New services for fee earners
• Alerts on new editions
• Ability to request books
• Budget control
• Accountable to users
• Ability to identify areas for discounts
• May not be in - link to strategy

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Sample Business Case
.. 6

• Summary and recommendations
• Dont be afraid to
• Bullet point statements
• Use repetition
• Recommendations
• Assertive
• Reiterate the benefits to the firm
• Be in the language of the stakeholder
• Should mirror those at the beginning

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Final Checklist

• Be clear
• Minimise detail
• Use
• Reference strategic/competitive drivers
• Always assume
• The reader is not concerned with what you domake
  it relevant to him/her
• You are already a cost to the firm - be aware of
  the market conditions

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Overall structure

• Recommendation
• What I want
• Current status
• What happened now
• What is wrong with this
• For fee earner
• For library
• Benefits of proposal
• For fee earner
• For library
• Costs
• Internal
• External

• Benefits/Savings
• Tangible
• Cost avoidance
• Cost displacement
• ROI or Payback?
• Intangible
• Revenue
• New services
• Budget control
• STRATEGY
• Summary Recommendation

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Pulling Teeth making a business case

• Sarah Fahy, Allen Overy LLP