Benefits realisation
No organization should embark on an information management project unless it can realize significant benefits. The questions are: what benefits can be achieved, what will be the value of these benefits and how can they be achieved?
Whilst benefits realization is a key component of the MSP programme management method (and advocated by the Office of Government Commerce, OGC), actually identifying and measuring the benefits of information management initiatives can be difficult.
Bramble.cc regularly finds as many as 25 distinct benefits to support business cases for information management projects, and has a checklist of over 50. Every benefit is measurable and almost all are expressed in monetary terms – the value that the project will deliver to the organization.
The discipline of benefits realization ensures that projects and programmes deliver what they promise: it provides focus, demonstrates value-for-money, reduces the risk of failure and maximizes the benefits eventually achieved. It starts with an honest assessment of the expected outcomes of the project or programme, the identification of the benefits, the quantification of their value and an understanding of how they will be achieved. Balanced with an analysis of the costs and risks, this assessment provides the essential input to a business case and committed decision-making.
vReal method
Bramble.cc has evolved a tried-and-trusted method for benefits quantification and benefits realisation: vREAL. Using this method both public and private sector organisations can:
- Steer project effort towards activities that will deliver results
- Provide value-for-money criteria for supplier/product selection
- Define business-driven performance criteria for acceptance testing
- Reduce the risk of poor ‘adoption’ and project failure
- Guide business change management to maximise adoption and the benefits achieved.
As well as taking standard practice from MSP, our vREAL method encapsulates the real-world experience of our consultants in implementing information management best practice.
The management of information may be improved in many ways. Commonly it is assisted by the implementation of new technology, e.g. case, document, records, content or knowledge management applications. The benefits are not directly dependent on such technology, but on changes the ways of working that the technology enables.
Specialist techniques
vREAL incorporates the following specialist techniques:
- Benefits identification
Combining information mapping with ‘systems thinking’ defines benefits unambiguously. It clarifies the components of the system (information, functionality and people) and their relationships to each other to facilitate the discovery of the impact of change. [More...] - Benefits quantification
A massive spreadsheet of pre-populated parameters and calculations provides a ‘value model’ and enables the rapid calculation of the value to be delivered by planned business changes, staged to show annual return on investment. Scenario planning with this tool allows selection of the approach that will maximise benefits. [More...] - Benefits linkage
Understanding how the benefit will be achieved is assisted by mapping the complex dependencies between features of the project or solution and the benefits it is expected to deliver. The vREAL method approaches this both with benefits linkage diagrams and with a database to calculate the value contributed by each feature of the project or solution. [More...]
The informed support of senior management is critical to the success of benefits realization, starting with the identification of benefits perceived to be of value to senior management. Consequently we aim to start every assessment of benefits by engaging with senior managers to ensure that the benefits will support a successful business case.
Downloads
Download our exclusive White Paper, ‘Realize the benefits of information management’
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