Building your intranet business case

Introduction
This document has been designed to help you present your business case for Interact Intranet to the stakeholders and decision-makers in your organisation.
Why do I need to prepare a business case?
Intranets are an important asset in today’s business environment. They form an essential part of communication both internally and externally. In our experience many organisations require a business case with sound arguments to justify the investment in any new business system.
One of the most important activities you will undertake is to gain senior management approval and endorsement. The following tips and resources will help to ensure the success of your project.
Other helpful resources can be found at the following locations:
Blog
http://www.interact-intranet.com/measuring-roi-on-your-intranet-free-business-case-template
Case Studies
http://www.interact-intranet.com/customers/customer-success-stories/
Whitepapers
> Developing a collaborative intranet strategy
> Interact Intranet vs. SharePoint 2010
http://www.interact-intranet.com/resources/white-papers/
ROI Calculator
http://www.interact-intranet.com/resources/magazines-tools/intranet-roi-calculator/
Our experienced Intranet Consultants can assist further if required on helping you build your business case. We can provide costs comparisons with other vendors or internal development, ROI calculators and other business analysis.
If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us.
Intranet Business Case Template
Many of our customers have been required to put together a business case to present to their organisation’s management to prove that the intranet project was carefully analysed and financially sensible.
Although a few people are experienced in creating business cases, for many this is a daunting prospect.
The purpose of this document is to give potential Interact customers a helping hand in getting started with a business case – providing a proven structure, along with guidance and ideas to make sure your case is relevant and robust.
How to use this document
1. Print or copy these instructions so that you can refer back to them.
2. Delete these introduction pages. The rest of the document has been built using basic Microsoft Word formatting, and should easily adapt to your organisation’s styling. Before you start editing the content you should paste it into one of your own organisation’s Word templates, or apply the formatting you would usually use.
3. Insert your company’s name. Press Ctrl H or select ‘Replace’ in the Word tool bar. You need to replace [Company Name] with the name of your organisation.
4. Skim the main document to gain an understanding of its structure and content. You will see that some areas have pre-written content that you can either edit or leave as-is, whereas other sections have content written in highlighted text that needs to be replaced with content specific to your own business. If you would like help completing these sections, speak to an Interact Intranet consultant.
5. Start editing the document.
Business Case Intranet for [Company Name]
Document Purpose
Edit as required. To propose the replacement of [Company Name]’s intranet platform, and explore the benefits and impact of doing so.
Document Owner
Edit as required. Insert your name & title here
Contents
Edit as required. Insert your contents table here for this document.
Executive Summary
Edit as required. Write this section last! It should summarise the rest of the document
This is where you create the critical first impression of the project so it is important to summarise the most important elements of the project in a concise and compelling manner.
Guidelines include;
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Describe the project precisely and concisely.
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State why the project is necessary, and why it is the best solution.
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Outline the most important benefits of the project.
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Outline the costs and major disadvantages, if any.
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Summarise the most important reasons for recommending the project.
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Limit to one to two pages in length only.
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Write after the business case is completed.
Also try to keep the executive summary to two pages or less. Do not include technical descriptions. Concentrate on explaining your reasons for undertaking the project, and what the benefits will be.
Current Situation and Major Issues / Pain-points
Edit as required. This section allows you to briefly summarise the reason for the project, what the current situation is and why it is not working for the business.
Some examples are given below to start you off – delete the ones that are not relevant or start your own.
SELECT FROM EITHER
Poor/Failing Intranet
[Company Name] currently operates an intranet, however it is dated, with a poor toolset which is not well supported or understood. This has led to minimal or no usage across the business, causing it to provide little or no benefit. There is no central point of communication, no central staff list, and no method for teams to collaborate.
OR…. No Intranet
[Company Name] currently communicates and shares information by ‘traditional’ methods, such as email, shared folders and verbally. This has served us well to this point, but to enable the business to grow we require a central point of communication and document storage.
OR… An Intranet that cannot scale with the business.
[Company Name] has outgrown its current intranet, to the point where it is no longer truly fit for purpose.
Although it has benefited the organisation over the previous years, there are many issues with it, including:
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Poor search, which users do not trust
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Difficult to manage and add documents
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Poor adoption/usage
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No interactivity or process management tools
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No upgrade path to latest software version
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No support from vendor
It is suggested that a replacement intranet is the most viable method of giving [Company Name] a platform to support its growth.
Potential Solution
Edit as required. There is a huge opportunity for [Company Name] to become more efficient and more profitable, as well as improve communication with, and between, employees.
The proposed intranet system contains many modern tools that will increase productivity of staff – for example, team-based workspaces and online forms. These ‘quick wins’ will unlock ….
[Company Name] will benefit by providing the business with:
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A full search of all company documentation and content
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A detailed directory of employees, including search by name, department, location, skill-set and more
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An easy to use system for sharing/publishing files, policies, procedures, news and other documentation
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Electronic Forms to replace current paper-based forms
Financial Summary
Edit as required. Insert the relevant numbers from the sections later in this document on the financials.
The Total Cost of Ownership over 3 years for the preferred solution is £X.
We estimate that the total savings over those three years would be £X, giving an excellent return on investment in the short term.
Remember – this is just a summary only.
Background
Business Objectives
Edit as required. This project aims to provide a new intranet platform for [Company Name].
Include information on the intended launch date.
Now you need to expand on your objectives for the intranet. Go back to the pain points and expand on your particular business drivers. How does this all fit into the bigger picture?
Business Drivers / Goals
Edit as required. Provide information on the business drivers and goals. For example, we need to:
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Decrease costs
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Improve internal communications and cross-department collaboration and knowledge-sharing
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Provide all information, applications and other resources in one place
Objectives
Edit as required. Summarise the objectives here. For example:
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Create a central repository to share documents and forms
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Provide information for people working remotely
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Create consistency in policies and procedures, marketing assets, etc
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Share news and events
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Create awareness of business objectives
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Produce efficiencies in the way people work
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Create a collaborative environment to develop documents
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Prevent silos of information
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Make it easy to find things
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Provide up-to-date information
Strategic Alignment
Edit as required. How does this fit into any larger business strategies or even your company vision statement?
How do we do this?
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Better customer service response
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Speed to market with new products
Examples
Do you have any larger IT projects in the works? How does the intranet impact on this?
For example one of our clients, American Golf, was extremely reliant on emails to communicate with their retail stores and this was causing an issue with their email servers. They needed to upgrade the existing email system to cope and this would have cost over £30,000. By introducing Interact Intranet they could avoid this cost and benefit from an improved way to communicate between head office and all stores. The intranet also bought a number of other savings, such as streamlining inefficient business processes via the intranets workflow and forms module, which saved them approximately £41,500 per annum.
Current Situation
Edit as required. Detail the ways your organisation currently communicates and collaborates – existing intranet sites, email, newsletters etc.
What are the key problems with these current communication methods?
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Duplication of documents
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No search
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Duplication of effort
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Silos of information
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Localised content
Problem / Pain-points
You have an opportunity to turn these problems or pain points into opportunity statements. For example,
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We have an opportunity to improve our customer service performance by….
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This is an opportunity to consolidate our infrastructure and cut costs relate to maintenance and content publishing.
Future Implications
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What are the implications of not implementing the new intranet system?
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How will this impact the company in 1, 2, or 3 years?
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Include quantifiable figures if possible
Proposed Solution
Method of Solution Selection
Edit as required. Briefly detail how you identified possible suppliers to reassure the reader that you have done due diligence.
Example below:
The project team began by speaking to stakeholders across the business in order to gather an initial set of possible requirements. We then conducted a search for potential vendors, and identified a number of suppliers that might be able to supply the necessary software and services.
We undertook an initial round of meetings to gain a deeper understanding of what tools are on the market. This also helped inform the requirements gathering process by giving us a better grasp of what could be achieved.
Following this, we invited suppliers to formally present their solutions to us, allowing us to decide on the solution that we prefer, detailed below.
Potential Solutions
Edit as required. Insert other key requirements in the table below, and then use the ’tick’ column to show why Interact Intranet is the preferred solution, and what strengths/weaknesses each solution has.
Software solutions
Key Criteria
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Interact Intranet
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Solution 2
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Solution 3
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High value for money
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Attractive, modern customisable Interface
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Easy to use for non-technical staff
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Project Workspaces
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Collaborative Tools
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Intelligent content engine and content promotion
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Advanced Search Engine
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Customisable Forms with Workflow
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Customisable Homepages
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Expertise Location
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Mandatory Read functionality
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Advanced employee profile pages
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Built-in security
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Integration with 3rd party applications
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Mobile/Smartphone application
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Detailed intranet statistics and analytics
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Version control and rollback
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Online product updates and enhancements
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Development Platform
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Additional Requirement
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Additional Requirement
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Services
Key Criteria
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Interact Intranet
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Solution 2
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Solution 3
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Unlimited intranet support and SLA’s
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Dedicated Account Manager with annual intranet reviews
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Proven intranet project management and delivery
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Tailored intranet strategy for review, planning, engagement, launch and evaluation
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In-depth software training
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Preferred Solution
Edit as required. This section allows you to present your preferred option (or options, if more than one solution is available for selection by management) and explain why it has been selected.
If your preferred solution is Interact Intranet, you may wish to use the text below as a starting point.
The solution preferred by the project team is Interact Intranet, an out-of-the-box system that is easily customisable to meet our requirements (as detailed above).
Interact Intranet is supplied by the organisation ‘Interact’, and has been available in various versions for over 10 years. It is a mature, stable and feature-rich platform used by many other organisations similar to ours.
A full client list can be found here: http://www.interact-intranet.com/customers/
It is a flexible and scalable solution that has revolutionised the way companies communicate, collaborate, share knowledge, and streamline internal processes. The product learns as people use it, adapts and automatically connects relevant content to people.
The differentiating factors of Interact Intranet are:
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Ease-of-use for non-technical staff therefore very little training is required for content authors. For users no training is required.
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Superb search engine which indexes documents including attachments, as well as people, posts, forums, teams, questions, and calendar entries.
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A unique Intelligence Store that logs information and monitors activity to recommend information to users; connecting content to people, people to experts and answers to questions.
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Collaborative – many collaborative tools including forums, comment streams, blogging, micro-blogging with @and # tagging, Teams and crowd-sourcing Q&A facilities.
Company URL: www.interact-intranet.com
Twitter: @intranetexperts
Other Vendors
Edit as required. You may choose to include information on other vendors and why, in summary, you chose not to select them.
Expected Business Impact
Edit as required.
We anticipate that selecting Interact will allow us to rapidly deploy an intranet that will offer the following benefits:
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“One Stop Shop” for company information
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Breakdown of ‘silo’s of information amongst all our employees across all locations.
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Promoting collaboration amongst our employees ensuring that people can be found, skills can be utilised, experts can be found and best practice can be shared.
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Re-enforcing our company brand and values amongst our distributed workforce
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Improving efficiency using e-Forms to submit requests
Business Readiness and Risks
Edit as required.
In order for [Company Name] to successfully implement the preferred solution and realize the benefits above, some work will need to be completed by [Company Name] staff. Specifically:
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A Steering Group must be finalised in order to ensure the key stakeholders in the project are able to influence it from the start. The foundations of this group must already exist and have informed the project team during the requirements gathering stage.
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Departmental Owners/”Champions” must be selected in order to prepare [Company Name]’s content and migrate it to the new intranet platform.
Some risks exist that could affect the success of the project, specifically:
Risk
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Lack of support by senior management
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Probability
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Low
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Severity
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High – Would cause cancellation of project
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Mitigation Strategy
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Ensure buy-in to business case and selection of vendor.
Demonstration by vendor to show key features/benefits.
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Risk
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Lack of support by Content Owners
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Probability
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Low
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Severity
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Medium – would lengthen time to implement and could cause quality issues
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Mitigation Strategy
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Supplier to provide consultancy and training to engage team
Selected solution is easy to use and maintain
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Risk
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Lack of support by IT
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Probability
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Low
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Severity
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High – would prevent launch of solution
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Mitigation Strategy
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Software can be hosted on existing [Company Name] server, or on the cloud – reducing risk of being unable to launch
Selected solution requires very little on-going IT input.
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Risk
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External factors affecting budgets and spending
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Probability
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Low
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Severity
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High – would prevent go-ahead of project
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Mitigation Strategy
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To be determined
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Insert more risks here as required.
Financial Analysis
Budgetary Context
Edit as required. If relevant, explain how the cost will be allocated across company budgets. If some or all of this is sourced from an annual budget, state this. If you plan to distribute some costs (e.g. Training, Support) to different budgets, explain this.
Solution Costs
Edit as required. The solution cost is split into 4 parts: Software, Professional Services, Hardware, on-going costs.
Software Costs
Edit as required. Insert the “Software Costs” section of your Interact Intranet proposal here.
Professional Services
Edit as required. Insert the “Services” section of your Interact Intranet proposal here.
Hardware
Edit as required. EITHER Insert the hosting costs from your Interact Intranet proposal here
OR Insert the costs your IT department have given you for the required hardware
On-going Costs
Edit as required. Insert the “Software Updates and Support” section of your Interact Intranet proposal here.
Internal Costs
Edit as required. On-going support of selected solution and associated rollout costs.
Total Cost of Ownership over 3 years
Edit as required. The TCO equation assumes:
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Support & Software Updates contract is maintained each year
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A small selection of additional features/modules are purchased each year, to continue expand the remit and reach of the platform, or to react to [Company Name]’s changing requirements over time.
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Two training courses are purchased from the supplier each year, to transfer skills to new starters
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Licence count increases by 10% per year, in line with our staffing forecast
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Year 1
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Year 3
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Year 5
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Vendor
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Software
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Services
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Annual
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Year 1 Total
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Software
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Services
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Annual
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3 year Total
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Software
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Services
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Annual
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5 Year Total
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Interact Intranet
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£25,000
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£20,000
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£15,000
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£60,000
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N/A
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N/A
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£15,000
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£90,000
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N/A
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N/A
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£15,000
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£120,000
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Microsoft SharePoint
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£50,000
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£150,000
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£70,000
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£270,000
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£50,000
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£150,000
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£70,000
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£610,000
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N/A
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N/A
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£70,000
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£750.000
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Other
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£10,000
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£20,000
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£15,000
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£45,000
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£10,000
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£20,000
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£15,000
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£135,000
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£10,000
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£20,000
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£15,000
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£225,000
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Open Source
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N/A
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£150,000
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£50,000
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£200,000
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N/A
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N/A
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£50,000
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£300,000
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N/A
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£150,000
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£50,000
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£550,000
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*The above figures are just for illustrative purposes and will vary depending on project size and company needs
**Annual costs are support, updates and wages of internal staff to manage solution.
interact-intranet.com
In the above table we illustrate the different costing models that are available when selecting an Intranet. In most businesses you should not look to refresh/replace your intranet inside 3 years with most companies taking on a longer time between reviews. It is important to work out the total cost of ownership of the solution and include not just initial costs of getting the solution in place.
Considering costs such as wages are important, does the solution require a skilled employee to manage the on-going development of the intranet? This is common with a mid-size Microsoft SharePoint implementation and would cost a business in the region of £70,000 per year (Wages and associated costs to organisation).
With a smaller SharePoint implementation you might consider outsourcing this development work but would incur high daily rates for any work you required. This is also a feature complete product with a 3-year lifecycle. An upgrade on a 3-year cycle requires the same investment as the initial launch in general. General (lot. generalis - umumiy, bosh) - qurolli kuchlardagi harbiy unvon (daraja). Dastlab, 16-a.da Fransiyada joriy qilingan. Rossiyada 17-a.ning 2-yarmidan maʼlum. Oʻzbekiston qurolli kuchlarida G.
Open-Source solutions often look attractive with no costs for the software but this tends to hide the huge development costs. The time and money associated with scoping, designing and building an intranet from scratch is a long and expensive process. This would also require a higher level of on-going support from the team internally or, as with SharePoint, a need to outsource developments. Upgrade paths can be difficult also hence the 5 year lifecycle.
Other Intranet products require lower upfront costs for software but the yearly cost is more. Companies effectively lease and require a higher level of on-going support with the organisation. This is also common with SharePoint bolt-on products that fill the gaps left in SharePoint. The upfront cost might make this look a sensible decision but the on-going costs (yearly or per user per month) moving forward makes them an expensive decision as you can’t stop paying or they will switch the service off.
Expected Return on Investment
There are essentially two types of ROI for intranet software – general productivity gains and specific project goals. Without an understanding of the size, type and nature of your business, it is difficult to give any specific ROI calculations, however we have included some examples to show you how this can be explained.
For help with this section, please contact us to speak to an Interact Intranet Consultant
Productivity Gains
People Directory
Edit as required. Locating colleagues’ contact details using the new intranet will save at least 10 seconds per time over the old staff lists. Our investigation shows that each employee does this around 5 times per day. This equates to a saving of £X,000 per year.
Search
Edit as required. Productivity gains from implementing a reliable and fast search are potentially huge – current methods of “searching” for policies/documents consist of phoning staff for a discussion.
Version Control
Edit as required. One of the main complaints of our current intranet is that there are multiple versions of each document available, and the user is required to search through them in order to locate the most up to date one. A conservative estimate is that this process takes 3 minutes per time, with a frequency of 2 times per week across the business. Saving this time would realize a saving of £XXX.
Electronic Forms
Edit as required. [Company Name] has over XXX forms in circulation – ranging from simple petty cash requests to more complex items such as new starters and IT change requests.
If each employee completes 1 form per week, and the new system saves just 5 minutes (across the entire process of locating the form, completing it correctly and getting approval from the correct managers) then the new intranet will save (no. employees x 5 x 52 ÷60) man-hours per year, or £XXX.
ROI from Project Goals
Edit as required. Below are some examples of genuine ROI stories from Interact clients. Although you will not be able to keep these in your final document, they might give you some ideas for identifying hard ROI in your own organisation.
Example 1: ROI by ensuring compliance with money-saving best practice
[Company Name] spends in excess of £866k with non-preferred suppliers.
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This data has been built only over suppliers where total spend in 2008 was >£1,000
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Data is sourced across 5 purchase areas (Electrical Wholesale, Stationery, Trucks & Trolleys, Industrial Hire, Heating & Building Materials)
Negotiated discounts with Preferred Supplier List range from 10% - 60% with an average of 25% across all suppliers.
The largest reason for using non-preferred suppliers is a lack of knowledge about who to use. Implementing a searchable preferred supplier list on the Intranet would solve this issue.
Total compliance to preferred supplier list would save £216,000 per annum.
A conservative view of 50% compliance would realize £108,000 in savings.
Example 2: ROI by improving New Starter processes
On average, [Company Name] has 45 new starters per month. Validation of data entry takes HR 30 minutes per new starter. Using £11 per hour, £11 x 0.5hrs x 45staff = £247 per month, or £2970 per annum.
Approximately 70% of first submissions are incorrect and need to be reviewed. The administration time for this is estimated at 15.75 an hour per month. £11 X 15.75 = £173 per month, or £2079 per annum.
Next Steps
Project Timescales
Of course with any project there will be an end-date. In this case, this will be when you want to launch the intranet in your organisation. With this in mind, and knowing your business with the time taken to get sign-off for a business case, it must be carefully planned to ensure that your timescales can be hit both internally and with the supplier.
Edit as required. Detail your timescales here and illustrate that delays in sign-off may delay the intended project timescales.
Include high-level summary on dates and intended go-live date. Highlight risk factors for the project.
Steering Group / Project Team
Edit as required. Include information on which employees you intend to include on the Project Team and even the estimated resource required.
Roles and Responsibilities
Edit as required. Include a table on the roles and responsibilities involved in this project.
Role
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Description
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Responsibility - Name
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Senior Sponsor
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IT Project Owner
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Handles IT issues
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Infrastructure
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Hardware / hosting
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Project Manager / Team
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Manages project day to day
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Solution implementation
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Business Case Approval
Edit as required. Include information here on the sign-off of the project if required.
Approval of Business Case
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By signing this control sheet I confirm that I approve this business case for the XXX project.
…………………………………………………………………………………..
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Name
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Role on Project
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Signature
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Conditions * (see below)
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Date
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* Conditions
FURTHER HELP?
ASK ONE OF OUR INTRANET CONSULTANTS
If you would like further help completing your business case then please contact us and one of our experienced consultants can either come and see you or discuss your project over the phone, which ever you would prefer.
We look forward to hearing from you.
About Interact
Founded in 1996 with headquarters in the UK, Interact operates globally and is one of the fastest growing intranet software companies. Interact has built a strong reputation of delivering successful and collaborative intranet solutions to leading companies such as G4S, Superdrug, Arriva, NHS, Yodel and Waterstones.
UK Head Office: 4th Floor, Station House, Stamford New Road, Altrincham, Cheshire, WA14 1EP
Tel: 44 (0) 161 927 3222, Fax: 44 (0) 870 112 5881
US Office: 222 West Las Colinas Blvd., Suite 1650, Irving, Texas, 75039
Tel: 1-(214)-774-2802
Web: www.interact-intranet.com
Interact Intranet
Interact Intranet is intelligent intranet software created by Interact. The flexible and scalable solution has more than 500,000 users and has revolutionised the way companies communicate, collaborate, share knowledge, and streamline internal processes. It has a unique Intelligence Store which logs information such as browsing routes, search entries, document ratings and hits and uses this information to promote content to users. Interact Intranet promotes a culture of collaboration and idea sharing by using corporate social networking and micro blogs. Non-technical users can quickly and easily update the intranet.
interact-intranet.com
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