Business case writing: the budgeting time of the year

The need to build a business case for investment in talent management software seems to be on the increase.

Our research in 2012 showed that nearly half of those moving to on-line 360 degree feedback or performance management developed a business case to support the bid to obtain budget for investment.  44% commented that whilst they didn't prepare a business case, they thought it would have been interesting to go through this exercise.

In our research,

• one third of those writing a business case for 360 degree feedback include no benchmark against current processes.
• 47% of respondents included an estimation of the HR time spent administering the process.
• 41% included material costs eg paper, printing.
• 34% included an estimation of time spent by HR on analysing the data.

It's interesting that these were estimated times; only 28% looking to include actual time taken by the HR professional - and only 25% include the actual time of line manager involvement in the activity.

It's a similar picture when writing a business case for a performance review system – although greater emphasis is placed on the line manager.

• 65% of business cases include an estimation of time spent by the line manager within the process.
• 50% include a calculation of the actual cost of the time a line manager spends working within the performance review process.
• The HR professional’s time for administration and project management is included as an estimation in 54% of business cases
• Only 35% include an estimation of the time spent synthesising data and creating reports.

We've put together some guidelines when writing a business case and our Guide to Writing a Business Case will give you some pointers on the steps to take.

If you'd like to talk you through how you can take your business case further for performance management, our Return on Investment calculator can give you an indication. All you need to do is collect some readily available company and HR information and schedule a call with us.