Mentor’s Message:
The Advantages of a
Solid Business Case

As a manager, you may often spot opportunities to help your team, department, and even your entire organization meet important business goals. When you identify such an opportunity, you may quickly think of a course of action that you believe would enable you to seize the opportunity. And you may feel compelled to implement that course of action.

That’s understandable—but it’s also dangerous. It means you haven’t considered a wide enough range of alternatives for capturing the opportunity you’ve identified. This is where developing a business case comes in. A business case is a tool for identifying and comparing multiple alternatives for pursuing an opportunity and then proposing the one course of action that will create the most value.

A well-developed business case can help you present a convincing argument for a particular solution to key stakeholders whose support you would need to implement your proposed solution. Preparing a business case also forces you to take a disciplined approach to generating ideas for how best to capture the opportunity and comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the alternatives. When you take the time and care to build a solid business case, you arrive at a better decision with greater impact. You also stand a far greater chance of winning the support you need to put your choice into action.

This book walks you through the steps needed to build a strong business case. In it, you’ll find a wealth of ideas, tools, and examples for defining the opportunity you want to pursue, identifying alternatives for seizing the opportunity, gathering data on your alternatives and estimating the time frames for each of them, analyzing the data you’ve collected so you can compare your alternatives’ pros and cons, selecting the best choice and assessing any risks associated with it, crafting a plan for implementing your chosen course of action, and communicating your case effectively to stakeholders.

All this may sound like a lot to learn—but it’s actually quite manageable. And it’s well worth the time. So let’s get started!

June Paradise Maul, Mentor

President of Advantage Value, a consulting and education company, Dr. June Paradise Maul has experience leading large-scale change as well as line organizations, having been Chief Learning Officer at Qwest and having held senior management positions at AT & T. Dr. Maul has taught executive development programs in corporations. She has also taught graduate-level business and leadership programs—including strategic planning, balanced scorecard, strategic leadership, virtual workplace, decision making, and creative resourcing. She is invited to speak and consult globally on leadership, strategic planning, decision making, and creative resourcing. Dr. Maul is also president of LifestyleK9’s, a small international business that breeds and trains German Shepherds as working dogs (www.lifestylek9.com). Dr. Maul received her Bachelor of Science in Asian Studies and Geology from M.I.T. and her doctorate in Science and Humanities from Rutgers.