Whether you are planning to upgrade a departmental solution, move one or two solutions from on premises to the cloud, or embark on a full-scale digital transformation, your executives will likely expect you to explain how the company will benefit from investing in this initiative. This explanation is commonly called a business case.

Admittedly, some new projects can launch without a business case. And a business case alone does not guarantee funding approval. But a bad business case will always compromise credibility. Without credibility, your justification for the proposed project is weakened, possibly even damaged. By "bad," I mean a case that is poorly organized, poorly written and does not reach the proper conclusions - one that looks as though it was thrown together. So, if you are going to create a business case for a strategic technology project, it is important that you do it well.

A business case is about business. It's not called a technology case. If it were, you could simply extol the cool, technical virtues of your proposal and funding would be granted. Business is about money - making more than we spend and spending effectively so that we either do more with what we already have or spend much less for the same productive output.