How to Build the Business Case for IBM Content Manager OnDemand
Excuses excuses excuses…
We can all relate to that mantra! Just recently I bit the bullet and cleaned out my small walkout closet – omg. I couldn’t believe all the stuff - junk, clutter, random things - and then all of a sudden I began to find some really great pieces. There were some wonderful items and finally, those possessions that really hold memories or make a difference and can’t be tossed aside.
The closet exercise got me thinking of how clients approach (or rather avoid) building a business case document to justify the migration from their current archaic enterprise report management (ERM) solution to the more modern and strategic IBM Content Manager OnDemand (CMOD) solution.
The business case document should be a formal, written argument that is used to convince your management team to approve the action you would like to take in modernizing your ERM solutions. In most cases this means a migration off the old system to a new one. And it takes time and motivation to put it together… which is why so many people try to skip this phase, making excuses not to do it, like I did with my closet situation. So where do you begin?
Well, like my closet exercise, you have to open the door to the closet and either begin in one corner and work your way to the other corner, or begin from the top down, or from the bottom up. In other words, you need to put a plan in place for creating the business case and then work your plan.
Analyze Your Situation & Assess Your Costs
The first stage of preparing your business plan involves a thorough analysis of the situation including your current environment, skills available, and current strategic requirements that will lead to the initiative for the project. Once the situation is understood and in writing, it is important for you to determine your business and technical requirements for the project and prepare a rough estimate of the costs associated with those requirements. These requirements might include effort, resources required, strategic business deadlines, solution license and maintenance requirements, as well as the deadlines on return on investment (ROI) and an understanding of the required project phases.
Create a Cost-Benefit Analysis
The next stage of your business plan preparation will be identifying the data or sources of data that will support your business case and using it to create a cost-benefit analysis. These data sources could include company financial information, case studies, industry analysis, new solution costs, anticipated cost savings, and so on. You will use the source data to evaluate the costs and benefits of all options, including the proposed recommendation to move to the IBM CMOD solution.
You should also evaluate what will happen if you take no action at all. Ultimately, this cost-benefit analysis should include the anticipated financial benefit to the company and a projection of when the payoff is expected. As you create your spreadsheet or justification document for the move to IBM CMOD, you should gather and include from your current enterprise report management (ERM) solution the following key data points:
- Annual maintenance costs and duplicate per-seat licensing charges
- Escalating cost of customer support volumes
- Staff costs required to maintain proprietary and archaic systems
- Hardware, storage and processing costs: e.g. mainframe modernisation
- Mitigate financial risk of not meeting regulatory compliance
Gathering these key data points can be challenging for many of you, and as such, I am including key performance and environment information which can be used to fill in the blanks in your financial and business case document.
The following key data points represent the average values either measured or demonstrated by IBM CMOD clients (note: enChoice nor IBM guarantee these results).
- You should know your volumes and the print data type from your current legacy enterprise report application by now. In determining storage needed for an IBM CMOD solution, you can use an average compression of 30:1 for AFP or Line Data. If you don’t know the volume or data type details, you can simply assume an approximate average cost savings of 50% for your overall storage costs when migrating from your current ERM solution to IBM CMOD. This cost savings is due to the software compression that IBM CMOD can apply to the AFP or line data.
- For your PDF data files, your current and traditional enterprise content management (ECM) solution will store the documents individually, with graphics embedded resulting in 100 individual 1.3 MB PDF files, which requires ~130 MB total space. The CMOD solution has the ability to dissect, compress and archive PDF files using its unique, patented out-of-the-box PDF indexer. This results in a total of 1.6 MB for those same 100 individual 1.3 MB PDF files. That is a compression result of 81:1, and an anticipated cost savings of 73%.
- For your XML data, IBM CMOD will provide on average up to 75% electronic storage space savings compared with other systems that support a similar faster index of large XML data workloads
- If you are still printing and mailing, you can leverage the IBM CMOD distribution feature for electronic distribution as well as online customer service scenarios. On average, you can assume a cost savings of $1.50 to $4 per bill/statement.
Get Input on Your Plan
Once you have gathered your information, you are ready to review your business case plans with one or more people who will have input into the decision. This is a critical step, as their opinions about the project’s worth and feasibility, and their ultimate positive support will be needed in your next step: getting the business case approved. You should update your business case document with their recommendations, ideas, edits and comments.
Finally, do not forget to include your key recommendations, and in particular, your recommendation for implementation with a reinstatement of your compelling results from the cost-benefit analysis. You should also include a brief statement as to why you believe that your migration project should move forward.
So, just as I seriously entertained the idea of hiring the crazy but fictitious Modern Family TV show’s Closets & Blinds Store owned by Jay Pritchett to solve my cleaning and organization dilemma, you can outsource the building of your business case.
Unlike Pritchett’s Closets, enChoice has very viable and real options – our ERM team has performed hundreds of successful ERM migrations, so helping you create a successful business case is second nature for us. We have a solid success rate of approval on business cases as well as implementation and migration plans. To learn more, visit our website.