In Chapter 2 of this buyer’s guide, we went from a collection of loosely defined challenges, to a diverse team producing data-driven use cases for an urgent and impactful business problem. In this chapter, you’ll use your team’s research as the foundation to build your cloud business case.
What is a Cloud Business Case? For the purposes of this buyer’s guide, we define a cloud business case as a written document or presentation with five essential sections:
Why Do I Need One? Developing your cloud business case is critical to achieving cross-stakeholder alignment and support for your strategy, as well as the overall success of your initiative. This format for a cloud business case ensures that the right people have a shared understanding of how this initiative gets them from the current state to the future state, and what is at stake if they do not change.
From our experience, without alignment around all five of these areas from the beginning, you are leaving openings for new people to poke holes in or derail your strategy later on, putting the whole initiative at risk.
Book time with your working group to have the conversations necessary to draft each section. Have your interview data and use cases on hand for reference. You may also want to do some preliminary research related to section two (business and industry environment) to bring into the conversation.
We recommend assigning someone to facilitate these conversations, either a trusted colleague or a member of the working group, to ensure the conversation stays on track and that all points of view are surfaced. Whether you tackle each section back-to-back in one day, or one by one in subsequent meetings, we highly recommend maintaining this order.
The goal of this section is to describe the business problem as clearly and objectively as possible. Use quantitative data or measurable business cases wherever possible as it will be valuable going forward for generating ROI scenarios and assessing business impact. Answer key questions such as:
Truly staring down the current state can be uncomfortable. It can cause people to get defensive, or you might be tempted to start “solutionizing” to address elements of the problem. Try to call out these behaviors in real time (without judgement) and table ideas to discuss later in the appropriate section.
Understanding what’s happening within this business area at your company is only a partial picture. The purpose of this section is to identify anything that is driving or contributing to this business problem but your company cannot influence or control.
Prior to having this conversation, leave some time for your team members to conduct preparatory research, and to engage your peers on industry working groups or forums you might be a part of. Then you’ll be collectively ready to answer questions like these:
With a clear understanding of the current state and the environment, your working group is ready to consider what’s at stake.
We recommend approaching this question from at least two angles:
If this section isn’t impactful, and clearly convinces stakeholders that a transformation is necessary, it will be hard to gain leadership buy-in and funding to go forward. This is your opportunity to shift the conversation from “should we take this on?” to “how we’re working is untenable, how do we proceed?”
You’ve made it through the tough conversations - congratulations! Take a stretch break, eat a meal, grab a cup of coffee or a drink. Now is the fun part.
Your team gets to imagine, without conventional restrictions, what this area of your company could be like. Challenge your assumptions (we call this “the art of the possible”) so you don’t simply propose to do tomorrow what you did yesterday, but faster. This section should answer questions like:
The goal of this section is to enroll readers in your vision for this business area that covers financial, strategic, people-driven aspects. It should leave them eager to understand how your working group proposes to make this a reality, which brings us (finally) to the strategy.
You’ve been itching to get to this topic since section one, and it’s finally time to talk about how your working group proposes to solve this problem. We recommend avoiding outdated “waterfall” projects that run the risk of trying to do too much at once and accomplishing nothing.
Instead, work with agility to quickly spin up a pilot with a bias for achieving quick wins, and then use the momentum and learnings to expand on what works.
We’ve gone from business problems and use cases to a comprehensive business case that will compel diverse stakeholders to buy into your vision and strategy for this business area. In the next chapter, you’ll take your vision and strategy and find a trusted partner to help make it a reality. We hope you’ll join us for the next phase in the buying journey.
Tips and Key Takeaways