Can you build it? Yes you can!

After some consideration, planning, and some confidence in yourself, you’ve come up with what you believe will be an exciting new business idea. You’ve considered the options and drawn up a plan of action. All you have to do now is present it to some leaders in your company or field and convince them of what you already know in your heart of hearts — this idea could work with enough support.

However, it’s not going to be as easy as briefly pitching your idea and expecting to get all the help and funding needed to get off the ground. If you’re to get things rolling with the right backing in hand, you’re going to need to not only build a case for your idea, but also present it in a way that makes sense and shows you’ve already considered the potential successes and pitfalls.

You may only get one shot at this, so it’s important you make it count. By thinking ahead and preparing a knockout presentation, you can increase the odds that you’ll get the support you need. To that end, here are some tips and tricks that may tip the scales in your favor.

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Why do you need to build a business case?

The Association for Project Management defines a business case as the “ justification for undertaking a project, program or portfolio. It evaluates the benefit, cost and risk of alternative options and provides a rationale for the preferred solution.” At their core, business ideas and plans exist to make money and advance a company’s goals. These projects usually serve to fix a problem, whether that’s a customer issue, an operational issue that needs addressing, or simply just the ever-constant “problem” of having to grow year over year.

To that end, you’re going to need to make your case for why your project will benefit the company. According to the Project Management Institute, failing to lay out your case and just accepting a potential project without careful consideration can lead to some serious issues, including:

• Potentially wasting company resources and time that could be more effectively spent elsewhere.
• The inability to properly prioritize which projects deserve more attention and resources over another, more valuable, project.
• Results fail to meet expectations, or even worse, expectations were never properly set.

Ultimately, a business case serves as the road map for your project. As you present your case to your company or field’s various “decision gates,” you’ll have to consider different elements of your plan. One way to do that is to use the five common elements of a business plan or business case: the strategic context, the economic analysis, the commercial approach, the financial case, and the management approach.

The strategic context of a plan encompasses the fundamental “why” behind your project. It explains the changes and impact you think your project will bring about to push the entire business toward success. This is also where you explain that you considered multiple options before landing on this one. By explicitly stating that you explored multiple options, you convey a sense of due diligence and demonstrate a commitment to finding the best fit for your organization’s objectives. This reassures stakeholders that your chosen approach is not merely a default or a result of limited consideration, but rather the result of careful consideration, analysis, and comparison.

An economic analysis looks at the potential cost of your idea. This is based on a number of factors, including potential time and funds spent versus potential for increased revenues, or its return on investment. With regards to time, craft a projected timeline to ensure overall feasibility of your idea or plan. For funding, be sure to capture any capital expenses, operating expenses, marketing and promotional activities, and more. Taking both time and money invested, you can then make a case for ROI resulting from the plan’s implementation.

The commercial approach highlights how the project will play out on the market. By making this case, you’re explaining how it will become a commercial success by coming up with strategies to best market your project. This may require analysis of market demand, pricing strategies, defining a potential customer base and estimating anticipated market penetration.

The financial case outlines how much investment will be needed. This should always be done with the intent of proving your option is the most affordable one on the table after looking at available funding and the costs it could incur while it’s active. A detailed breakdown of costs will add credibility and accuracy to your business case.

The management approach provides a detailed overview of how the project team will be structured. It is vital to showcase a well-thought-out plan that highlights the level of input required from each team member to ensure the project’s success. This may include setting clear deadlines for specific tasks and establishing a well-defined hierarchy and reporting structure for efficient project management.

By properly building your case, you prove to the “powers that be” that you’re serious about the task at hand and have considered what may work and what may not. You’ve done the research, so they don’t have to.

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How to write your business case

Once you’ve done all of your research, you should commit the plan to paper in what’s also called a project plan or charter. Writing out your business case can be a great way to keep the project’s goals in mind and to ensure it remains in line with the company’s overarching needs.

When writing out your business case, it’s best to be as concise as possible while still going over the plan in detail. Remember that this document should ease communication, not just between you and the people who will ultimately decide the plan’s fate, but eventually with your team as well so everyone knows what their goals are. And just like anything you write, it should be interesting, clear, and clearly outline your intent.

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What needs to be in your written business case?

When writing out your business case, once again remember that you want to be to the point and concise with your information.This should only be a few pages for smaller projects, though larger endeavors can potentially be significantly larger. As such, you really can focus on just four main sections or concepts when writing your business case out.

Your executive summary should be a short summary of your business case and very likely will be the last thing you write. This should be to the point and quickly convey the most important, high-level bits of information that can quickly be scanned by the reader and understood. A succinct overview allows decision-makers to evaluate information, understand implications and make well-informed decisions based on summarized insights.

The project definition will explain the “why” of your business plan. It should be detailed almost to a fault, since this will explain to potential sponsors, stakeholders, and the team potentially involved in the project to better understand what it is you’re proposing. This section should be large and leave no questions unanswered if possible.

The finance section should outline the dollars and cents that make up your project. This section is largely for anyone that controls the company’s purse strings, so you want to explain the project’s financial impact, assure that it’s affordable and you’ve weighed other potential options, and assess things like the project’s potential value and revenue gains.

Finally, the project organization section is intended for the project manager, team, and other managers to understand how the project will be organized. This will explain the different roles and responsibilities within the project, along with things like how decisions are made and how progress is reported and measured.

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Presenting your case

Finally, you may have to present your case to a group of decision makers, stakeholders, and other leaders. Don’t stress out, as you’ve already done the hard part by conducting research and considering all of the options!

When it comes time to present your case, remember that you don’t necessarily need to stand before those people and rattle off facts and figures. According to the Harvard Business Review, it’s sometimes best to hook your audience in with a story. Doing this will “present what’s at stake through a clear arc.” By adding an emotional appeal or human connection to your proposal, you can create a “stronger and more memorable” business case.

You should also have a quick pitch prepared, since you don’t know how much time you’ll actually have for your presentation. Practice succinctly explaining the who, what, when, why, and how of your proposal. Focus on the business need you’re looking to address and explain how with some assistance and trust, you can create something that will benefit the company at large.

Furthermore, you should be ready for potential questions. If you expect someone with financial sway having doubts about the costs, be sure to quell those fears with the data you’ve collected. Their concerns are concerns that you’ll have to address. Be sure you can explain the different options you considered and be ready to outline why your plan is the right one.

Look at past presentations and find out what worked so you can tailor your presentation to the individuals you’re trying to persuade. Some individuals respond to in-depth charts, while others want to be able to connect to the idea behind your project.

Oh, and never spend the entire presentation reading directly from your slides or notes. No one likes that.

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Bottom line

Great ideas take time and preparation to come to fruition. Without taking the proper steps to lay things out, you could only be setting yourself and your company up for failure. Yet by looking at all the angles and properly presenting your case to the right individuals, your business case can turn into a new endeavor that elevates your success and highlights you as someone with enough business wherewithal to get things done.

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