Why is Business Benefits Planning Essential?

Benefits planning aims to deliver the benefits promised in the business case and ensures they are actually realized. Many projects although they complete successfully in project management terms fail to deliver any of the initial benefits that launched the initiative. I have seen countless examples of project teams and managers congratulating themselves with the success of the project, 'how well it went', 'all the deliverables done' and so forth - but with not one penny piece of value delivered for the organization.

I have sat on project boards to go through the business case and been confronted many times with promises of 25% cost reductions or increased production that if taken in the round with all the other things on the go would mean we get a product that costs nothing to make and sell for millions by the millions - forgive me if I am cynical. The failure of many projects to actually deliver any benefit in real terms in part explains the reluctance to give the go-ahead for new projects. Senior management are getting (more cynical) about the benefits and are getting fed up with being confronted with yet another initiative that promises hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings, increased revenue or more customers for example but actually delivers nothing. We have low expectations from any activity and even of the ability of projects to pay for the outlay and our expectations are being met.

Cynicism borne of the experience of hundreds of pleadings from staffers that have come to naught and project's launched that have promised benefits that in the end have failed to come up with the goods. Evidence show's that the majority of projects (well over 60%) in such diverse areas as IT, Outsourcing and BPR fail to deliver any discernable improvement. I have found no Outsourcing project that has delivered anything of value - the only exception being when they closed half the department and we got half the service.

In projects I supervise I always fall back on the six faithful servants:

• What benefits are being suggested and what is the scale and scope being promised and does it look reasonable?
• Why do we need these benefits - what is the driver at this point in time?
• Where will the benefits be realized in what department specifically?
• When will the benefits be achieved? Remember back to the discounted cash flow exercises we did at business school - a benefit ten years away of four pence halfpenny is worth nothing.
• Who is responsible for achieving the benefits? What department and the manager by name? I also ask if she knows that she will be responsible for achieving these benefits.
• How will these benefits be released - what has to happen? For example if we have to cut staff this can take a lot of time and be difficult to achieve.

It should not be forgotten that the whole purpose of a project or initiative is to deliver something of value and if this does not occur then the project has failed completely. So now's the time for a realistic appraisal of where we are. In any assessment of a business activity the expected outcome in terms of cash benefit forms the core of the go no-go decision. Managers must be more critical and evaluate for sure but just as important is to make sure a process is in place that will deliver the outcomes expected. It is simply not good enough to sit back and hope that a new IT system can bring in the money - it has to be planned for and people have to take on their responsibilities starting at the top - they are the ones who are in the end responsible for the money being delivered. I have put together an e-book explaining how to put together a benefits planning process that's available to download for free on my forum - take a look at least we get some way along the road to delivering value for our organizations.

Royston