Building the Business Case for AI

I got a great question about how to justify to your company buying or investing in AI tools. For instance, as simple as wanting to have Copilot for your daily business work.? That was the ask. Now those of us actively using AI might feel like this is a “no-brainer” question. I know that those AI tools I have invested in (ChatGPT, Lucidchart, Gamma, Render) have been mostly focused on productivity and the return on investments have all been almost instantaneous. But the challenge becomes in convincing others of your perception.

You have to sell the business case.

This is what makes successful analysts – they craft compelling business cases. And no, not a marketer or salesperson. A BUSINESS analysis professional articulates the BUSINESS VALUE. Whether it is to you, the team, the department, the organization or even beyond, have you articulated the business value? This is simply answering the “What’s in it for me?” question, or the WIIFM. Think about it. When you get rejected when asking for a conference or expenditure or some other supported activity at your organization, ask yourself this:

Did I talk about the business value I get?? Or did I talk about the business value THEY get.

Business cases talk about the value to the business. And it does not need to be a multi-million dollar project that you have to be writing. Every email you send asking for information or for input should be a “mini” business case. The power is that business cases answer the important questions before they are even asked.

BUILDING THE BUSINESS CASE

Let’s go back to our example and asking your company to pay for a Copilot license for you to use in your analysis work. And I’m going to use the following structure. Feel free to use for any of your work. Read through it, and then, when ready, read the next section.

THE COPILOT BUSINESS CASE

Okay, so going back to your business case now, what is the goal? What does the business need to achieve? In this case, Copilot can simply support the efforts to improve efficiency. If you, as the role of an analyst, can get high-quality work done in a shorter amount of time, then that leaves you available to be assigned to more impactful and expert work. Putting it simply, buying Copilot license for you means your analysts will have more time for analysis work on high-priority and critical projects. Reducing errors and issues on a critical enterprise project probably has a dollar figure we could quantify over your time spent manually reviewing documents (that has a dollar cost of a percentage of salary). What you’ve done though is put the enterprise view on your personal activity. In essence, you answered the WIIFM for the decision makers – the “What’s in it for me” question.? So our goal would be:

Ensure business analysis resources are assigned to the highest priority and critical items.

And most organizations understand the value of using the right resources at the right time for the right reasons. So now let’s describe the current and future states.? Currently, you spend how much time doing some of your tasks that you believe Copilot would assist with? If you do not have a measure, you need to get this.

“What gets measured gets done”?

?Is a good saying to keep in mind. So get some sort of measurement.? Time is often the easiest here. Cause then if you know where you are at, where do you want to be? This is the future state or desired outcome. And so your future state may be to only spend XX number of minutes doing the activity (perhaps even no time??). Describe the OUTCOME not what you want. What this means is describing how business analysts spend less time or no time on the activity of say, meeting minutes or document analysis. We did not say how (i.e., automation) – that comes later. Right now, just articulate that you are spending too much time on trivial tasks that should not be taking your valuable time.

Cause now you can give the recommended approach. In this case, you are recommending Copilot.? But your recommendation needs to come with an analysis view. That means while you recommend activating Copilot licenses for your analysis team, it also means you are recommending:

• Costs
• Risks
• Impacts

Your recommendation must clearly state what this approach will cost the organization. You already said what the organization will get (more of your time to be shifted to key projects).? Now you state what it will take to get there. So these are both hard and soft dollar costs. There’s a licensing fee, but you will also need IT’s help to implement/setup/configure. Any time IT spends setting up your account is time taken away from another IT project. See the cost here? And what about your analyst team? Do they need training? What will it take for them to be up and running?? Not everything starts its return on investment the moment the “on switch” is flipped!

But as good analysts, you now start explaining what the risks are with this approach. There’s a cybersecurity issue right up front for sharing information in a space that could be insecure. So your “costs” need to include your IT’s cyber team to help ensure the setup is protected and can be used on internal, confidential and private materials. What about the risk that people do not use Copilot once it becomes available? There’s probably some marketing “costs” to advertise this feature and explain it.

And what is great, just by walking through these items you can see all the places where there are going to be impacts with this course of action. You absolutely want to articulate all the positive impacts the technology can have on your daily productivity and in the increased quality of your deliverables. But you now also have a great idea of the full picture of the impacts, both positive and negatives. Each of the costs and risks lead to business impacts. Listing these out in entirety helps decision-makers make a much more informed, data-driven decision. As the length of this is getting longer, let’s put in the comments more ideas on the impacts!

Cause here is where you can separate your analysis skills from good to great. This same amount of work you have just done to justify your recommendation you now need to do for EACH alternative. What are the other options? What else could be done? And then yes, for EACH one, what are their respective costs, risks and impacts? Now you’re really painting a picture of what is and is not happening today.? And that’s a critical piece:

Explain the full value of “doing nothing” as an option.

Doing nothing is still an option! What are the costs, risks, and impacts of doing nothing? The challenge many organizations face is that even if they continue doing things how they are doing, others are changing; industries are changing, and customers are going to continue to change, let alone the pace of the technology changes. So thinking through the impacts of doing nothing is important.

Yet all this hard work can not lose the point of the message. You complete business cases with a re-emphasis of the recommendation. Ensure there is a clear call to action on what are the next steps. How does the organization start to move forward on this great idea?? Clear, simple next steps are the actionable items teams need. But as a good analyst, how will anyone know that this course of action is having a positive impact? How will you evaluate the success of the action? Or even know if things are working in the right direction? Steps to measure, or more importantly, prove that the assumed impacts are having their actual impacts are where good analysts help deliver great results!

So what actions are you trying to justify? What do you need in your work? And how are you articulating the business value of both the recommendation for you, but more importantly, what the recommendation will mean to your team, organization, and beyond?