Business cases can be boring. Following a corporate template, the pre-defined gaps are filled in with standard text, and the document goes to whatever committee has to sign it off. Before jumping straight into this, intranet teams can benefit from stepping back to look at the many ways a business case can be created and justified.

Another activity at the intranet strategy workshop we held at a major bank explored this topic, brainstorming all the ways the business case could be created.

This is what the group came up with in just a few minutes:

• Strategy document
• Demonstrate savings
  • $
  • productivity
  • call handling time
• Practical (short-term) roadmap
• What they’re missing out on
  • examples
  • stories
  • scenarios
  • case studies
• SWOT analysis
• Mockups
• Proposed architecture/solution design
• End concept/vision
• Target individual executive motiviations and drivers
• Surveys
• Focus groups
• Video interviews with staff
• Target business drivers
• Usage/search statistics
• Usability testing of current site (with videos)
• “How long could you last without the intranet?”
• Call centre metrics
• Personas
• Emotion
• Evidence
• Risk

There’s a lot that could be said about this, but the clear message is: there are many ways of creating a compelling business case. Go beyond the ordinary, and carefully target the priorities of senior management. Don’t feel constrained to just join-the-dots in a standard business case template and leave it at that.

Some further reading:

• Finding compelling examples to build the intranet business case
• Educating the executive about the intranet
• Planning to demonstrate success
• Target emotions in the business case

What approaches have worked for you?

Alternatively, what are your war stories of what doesn’t work?