The situation
Business cases fail for two reasons. Either the option that was chosen was never seriously tested against the ones that were not, or the benefits were written to justify a decision already taken. Both are visible to a scrutiny committee, an external auditor and whoever assures the spend, and both are expensive to discover late.
We write cases, and we review other people’s. The second is often the more useful purchase, and it is a great deal cheaper than finding out at committee.
What we deliver
| Deliverable | What it answers |
|---|---|
| Strategic outline case | Is there a case for change, and is the direction being proposed the right one |
| Comprehensive options appraisal | The long list narrowed against critical success factors, including the options nobody wants on it, so the choice survives the question of what else was considered |
| Economic model | Costs, benefits and risk across the appraisal period: net present social value, sensitivity testing, switching values and optimism bias, in a model somebody else can audit |
| Resource model | What delivering the preferred option takes: the roles, capacity and cost behind the management case, so the plan the decision rests on is resourced rather than assumed |
| Outline or full business case | Green Book compliant across all five-case dimensions, and defensible to the committee, auditor or assurance review that has to accept it |
| Integrated Assurance and Approvals Plan | Every assurance review and approval point across the life of the programme, sequenced so each approval is informed by the assurance before it, and nothing is reviewed twice for the same thing |
| Independent gateway or stage review | Is this programme deliverable, and what has to be true for it to be |
| Critical friend review | A second opinion on a case or plan you have already written |
| Benefits realisation framework | What the investment is expected to produce, and how it will be evidenced |
Departments are already buying software to produce business cases, with AI on top. The mechanical part of this work, meaning the templates, the five-case structure and the arithmetic, is being automated.
What cannot be automated is the option set nobody wanted to test, the benefit nobody can evidence, and the willingness to say so before the decision is taken rather than after.
Tell us what’s on your desk.
If we are the right two people for it, we will say so. If we are not, we will say who is.
hello@votragroup.co.uk