Step by step guide to building a business case

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This is a step by step guide to the key activities you need to conduct in order to prepare, plan and construct your digital preservation business case. Note that the related Template for building a business case is ordered in a way that reflects a typical business case structure.

Use this to take you, in a chronological order, through the process of business case construction.

1) Preparation

2) Define the focus of your digital preservation activity

  • Depending on the scope and granularity of your activity you may want to:
    • Audit your digital collections.
    • Assess your organisation for digital preservation risks.
    • Assess and understand the characteristics of a collection of digital assets.

3) Audit your organisation's readiness (policy/strategy, skills/infrastructure)

  • Get generic list of risks.
  • Make list of issues/risks for your organisation.
  • Read more on Institutional readiness...

4) Work out what you want to do

  • Describe what you want to do (where you want to get to).
  • Define your scope.
  • Describe the resource needed - staff/infrastructure.
  • Identify costs.

5) Think hard about your audience

  • Who are your key stakeholders?
  • Your business case must be carefully targeted at your intended audience.
  • Think about what language to use.

6) Benefits

  • Get a generic list of digital preservation benefits.
  • Make a list of benefits for your digital content/collection.
  • Map those benefits to your organisation's strategy (prioritise benefits/work out what will appeal to your sponsor).

7) What else?

  • Benefits, risks and costs are core - what else do you need to cover in your organisation's business case template?
    • Cost benefit analysis or options appraisal.
    • Further detail about what you want to do (implementation plan / project plan).

8) Validation

  • Think about what else you need to do to ensure that your business case is complete.
  • Review your business case carefully, and seek advice and comment from others.
  • Identify weaknesses in your business case. If you were on a board tasked with assessing your case and didn't want to fund it, how would you attack it? Are there gaps in the evidence or unrealistic assertions?
  • Compare and contrast your case with others in order to identify missing detail or areas for improvement (see Case Studies).

9) Deliver your business case with maximum impact

  • Find out how your business case will be evaluated and consider ways to increase it's chances of success.
    • Who is you main sponsor/advocate?

10) Share

  • Consider removing sensitive details from your business case, and then contributing it here for others to learn from.

Also see...