Innovate

Business case analysis is a systematic effort to estimate the rate of return on an investment made to improve business operations. It is required for numerous types of investments made as part of Federal and State government operations to demonstrate to stakeholders that proposed investments will provide a satisfactory return on investment and improvement governmental decision making.

Innovate’s business case and ROI staff have performed literally hundreds of business case and ROI analyses for Federal, State, and local governments. Agencies for which we have conducted business case analyses included EPA, DOE, DoD, the Post Office, USAID, the State Department, OMB, and VHA. The results of Innovate’s business case analyses have been cited in Congressional testimony and repeatedly praised by senior Departmental, Agency, and other governmental managers.

Innovate believes in demystifying business case and ROI analysis. We believe that business case analysis should be transparent and easy to understand. It should be tailored to the needs of the client and stakeholders. Thus, we offer a range of business case offerings varying from a quick “sophisticated-back-of-the-envelop” 48 hour analysis that estimate benefits using to industry benchmarks and typical costs and benefits to an in-depth five to eight week analysis that explore costs and benefits in detail. Critically, we believe that apart from in exception cases, business case analyses do not need to take several months or years. Many big firms, driven by the need to support excessive overhead, will typically inflate their costs for business case analysis by claiming the analysis should take several months or even more than a year. We do not believe this featherbedding is necessary. We aim to resolve the client’s business case problems and challenges quickly and completely within the shortest possible time with the minimum of disturbance and cost.

An Example of a Business Case Success

The Customer’s Challenge: EPA Needed to Demonstrate Benefits to Stakeholders of a major IT investment

Our Solution: Innovate worked with program staff for one hour a week for 4 weeks to identify potential benefits and process improvements. Innovate translated customer-identified benefits into dollar benefit benefits and developed a series of high-impact, visual management communication benefits to senior EPA management.

Benefits to Customer:

• The Assistant Administrator used our results to defend the IT investment in front of Congress
• Our results have been used to expand and defend the programs budget

Below, we describe our typical business case approach and its major outputs for an extensive, eight-week analysis:

• Week 1: Meet with study sponsors, clients and senior stakeholders to define scope, schedule, approach and outputs;
• Week 2: Meet with clients and stakeholders to define the problem/challenge and key alternatives being considered;
• Week 3: Meet with stakeholders and affected parties to identify costs of alternatives (e.g., hardware/software cost, implementation costs, supporting analysis and design, process redesign and re-engineering, change management and training);
• Week 4: Meet with stakeholders to identify key benefits (tangible, dollar benefits and intangible benefits) including administrative savings, timeliness improvements, satisfaction of legislative mandates and regulations, quality improvements, and customer satisfaction;
• Week 5: Comparison and analysis of benefits and costs;
• Week 6: Development of summary report, conclusions, and recommendations;
• Week 7: Development of final report (background and problem statement, the business case, description of costs and benefits, economic analysis, and conclusions), briefing, and presentations; and
• Week 8: Brief senior management and communicate results to senior management.