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Wireless Networking Handbook
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Jim Geier
ISBN: 156205631x
Publication Date: 09/01/96

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Documenting the Business Case

Be sure to document all elements of the business case in a form that makes the ROI readily apparent. You can use the elements shown in figure 7.1 as a starting point. Before submitting the business case to the executives for review, assess it according to these criteria:

  Describes realistic and achievable savings
  Describes complete and accurate costs
  Compares costs and savings
  Clearly explains return on investment
  Describes issues and risks associated with realizing benefits
  Is based on a plausible time-frame
  Provides a recommendation on whether to implement the system or not

Making a Decision to Proceed

The final step is to decide to proceed with the implementation. Distribute the feasibility study to the appropriate managers, and schedule a meeting to discuss the project. Assuming the study convinces management that a strong ROI exists, the decision on how to proceed will be based on the availability of money to fund the project and the presence of implementation issues. Funding constraints and implementation issues, such as weak requirements and solutions, can affect the project schedule.

In some cases, managers might want to divide the project into phases and stagger the implementation over a longer period of time to accommodate the following scenarios:

  No funding or implementation issues: If no funding or implementation issues are present, the company should allocate the funding and press on with a full implementation.
  Limited funding and no implementation issues: If there are no implementation issues and complete funding is not possible, the company could agree to the entire project and spread the deployment out over a time period that accommodates the future availability of money. For example, a company may have 100 sales people located throughout the United States needing mobile access to the company’s proposal and contract databases located at the company’s headquarters. The proposed wireless system may consist of 100 mobile portable computers, linked to the headquarters’ building via CDPD. Managers may feel strong benefits in providing wireless access to their sales people; however, the existing budget may only be able to fund 50 of the connections (CDPD modems and corresponding service) during the current year. The company may decide to deploy the remaining half of the system the following year.
  Implementation issues but no funding issues: If plenty of money is available but concern exists whether the requirements or design is solid, the company should consider funding only the requirements and design phases of the project to better clarify the needs and the solution. This will increase the accuracy of the cost estimate associated with hardware, software, and support. It also ensures the purchase of the right components. For example, the business case may do a good job of identifying the benefits and savings a company will receive by deploying the system, but it may not have been possible to define a solution that would provide assurance of component costs or whether a solution even exists. In this case, the company should fund enough of the project to accurately define components necessary to satisfy the requirements. This would enable the company to make a better decision later to allocate money for component procurement and the installation phase of the project.
  Limited funding and implementation issues: If funding is limited and there are issues with implementing the system, the company should not continue with the project or proceed with extreme caution. For example, there may be fantastic benefits in deploying a wireless patient record system in a hospital, but limited funding and the presence of implementation issues, such as potential interference with medical instruments and the task of migrating existing paper-based records into a database, should cause the organization to think twice before funding the project. In this case though, the company could fund smaller projects to resolve the issues and reconsider the implementation of the system at a later date.


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