From Budgets to Business Cases

Budget season is a busy time for BRMs looking to shape demand with business partners who need to review new and existing projects to ensure strategic fit and value, along with any next phases. So how does the BRM move from the budget to the business case?

BRM involvement in the budget process does depend largely on the business maturity and relationship with the business function. If the business function needs to use your services (such as enabling new technology or upgrading existing technology for specific business outcomes), though, then they will definitely need your help in the budgeting process.

Here is where BRMs play a pivotal role in shaping demand and developing interest to move to a business case.

From a budgeting perspective, it may be a little easier to begin with in-flight projects, as they’re likely to have a very finely tuned budget request for the following year/s. With help from the Project Manager, tight costs and total capex or project costs can be forecasted fairly accurately, and spend so far in the project will help predict additional spend and following year outcomes.

An important first step, though, is to ensure the relevance of these in-flight projects—in other words, are they in line with corporate and business strategy? Have they been assessed against current deliverables? Sometimes, you face the hard decision of whether or not to throw more money into a project after an overspend for little or unexpected outcomes, especially if it has veered away from the value expressed in the business case deliverables.

On the other hand, new projects and initiatives can be a bit trickier, especially if scope has not yet been determined. BRMs are often in the position of understanding that business partners want something (and they might even have an idea about what they’d like to do theoretically), but that “something” isn’t quite fully formed yet—or perhaps the impact isn’t fully understood yet.

In these situations, there are many questions that can be helpful when thinking about how you might contribute to the budget process as a BRM.

• Do you have a PMO (Project Management Office) in your business function? If so, is it run in-house (making it less expensive to run projects), or is it largely contract staff (meaning it would be more expensive to run projects), or externally resourced?
• On the business partner side, will they need a project manager, a change manager, a business analyst, or subject matter experts? If so, will those people be internal employees who need to be backfilled or assisted by external expertise?
• How long is the project likely to run for? Is this a small initiative requiring little effort and minimum resources, or is it a full-scale project requiring all project resources and internal expertise?
• Should a vendor be brought on to do some or all of the work?
• Will you need an approach to market for the project?
• How is value going to be measured—KPIs, ROI, efficiencies?

To answer these questions, it’s critical to have conversations early and often around budgets—and what you and your business partner can work on together when the budget process rolls around again.

If you have the business function’s business plan, this can give you the conversation drivers you need to bring new ideas to the table, involve relevant people in the conversations, and look at best possible approaches based on their business plan outcomes. Predictably, if you work these approaches into your outcomes with your business partners long before budget time, it will make the entire budget process easier to discuss while allowing you the time to give advice and guidance earlier.

Additionally, this extra time will allow your business partners to consider more options, making it easier for you to shape demand into the value-added projects. Who knows—it might just help you climb to the position of strategic partner a little sooner, too.