Benefits Realisation
Benefits Management is a structured and systematic approach to ensuring successful program and project outcomes by addressing many of the common causes of investment failure such as a lack of business ownership and buy-in, and poor alignment of initiatives with strategic imperatives of the organisation. Benefits Management involves the identification of potential benefits, their planning, modelling and tracking and the assignment of delivery accountabilities to ensure that planned benefits are fully realised.
The SMS Benefits Management & Realisation (BM&R) framework has been developed based on best practice frameworks such as MSP®, the Cranfield School of Management Framework and the extensive knowledge and experience of SMS consultants. The framework can be applied to all types of initiatives, including ICT and non-ICT investments.
Why the need for Benefits Management?
Despite four decades of experience using and investing in information systems, many organizations appear to have made little progress in the successful implementation of ICT, with some research reporting project failure rates of 70%. There have been countless examples of such failures reported in the press, many of which have ended in significant cost write-offs, roll-back to legacy systems and expensive legal disputes with vendors.
There are many factors commonly attributed to the failure of investments, particularly ICT, and these include:
- A lack of understanding and commitment from project sponsors
- A lack of alignment with the strategic vision of the organisation
- Attempting to solve the wrong business problem
- Incomplete project scope
- Poor program and project management discipline
- Importance of Benefits Management
In summary, Benefits Management:
- Ensures that proposed investment initiatives are aligned to internal and external strategic drivers for change in an organisation. If there is no alignment, then the proposed initiative is not undertaken.
- Provides a framework for better articulating the ‘value side’ of a proposed investment by quantifying the expected improvements (ie. benefits) from an investment.
- Ensures that there is clear accountability for the achievement of benefits and the enabling business changes that benefits depend on.
- Models the interdependency between benefits and business and enabling changes so that it is clear what activities are required to realise planned benefits and who is accountable for delivering them.
- Significantly increases the likelihood that the planned benefits from an investment will be achieved (ie. realised) and that these benefits are critical to the strategic requirements of the organisation.