Looking for the unexpected benefit

To protect the confidentiality of our client and their customer, we have not detailed names

Profile
Sometimes a solution will have an effect on the deployment of staff inside the customer's business. However, this is often difficult to realise for various reasons not least of which the staff affected may be in your sponsor's department! Being creative in identifying the business benefits can allow a sponsor to justify the solution without impacting headcount.

Even if you are dealing with the CIO the benefits may come from general business improvements.

Background
The CIO is often charged with making the technical systems suitable for business to flourish and his only reward is criticism if there is downtime. Also technical experts are rare so justifying a solution on headcount saving is a non-starter. In this case the CIO required a $430k Intrusion Detection System (IDS) which he knew would reduce downtime based on the number of intrusions suffered in the last 12 months but he was finding it very difficult to justify to his CIO colleagues. The other company offices were sure that downtime was expensive but couldn't come up with an acceptable measure.

The company was in the process of implementing a company wide ERP system that would depend on a robust network that has a higher level of availability than was currently experienced. The CIO was able to identify with the help of the IDS salesman that one of the main benefits would be an improvement in debtor days as a result of improved network availability for critical tasks such as invoice production. He agreed to sponsor a one day reduction in debtor days at board level and this would justify the technical solution.

The business case produced by the IDS salesperson was a pessimistic view of likely benefits and ignored the other benefits that were considered but were not valued owing to lack of substantial information were:

Direct savings due to reduced downtime
24 hour cover
Reduction in costs for managing fewer suppliers
Better utilisation of existing network equipment
Reduction in engineering resource
Centralised management of internet gateways (reduced vulnerability of network to attack and / or loss of vital business data)

Result
What appeared to be a difficult justification became very easy once the benefits were closely aligned to the customer drivers i.e. successful implementation of the ERP system. A saving of one day from their current debtor days of 61 was sufficient to warrant the capital investment of $430k

DEAL DYNAMICS	Initial Cost Benefits total	$430k $22k per month
BENEFIT	Reduction in debtor days by 1day	$22k
ROI MEASURES	Payback IRR NPV	20 months 56% + $284k

source : Shark Finesse