Table of Contents
Building a persuasive business case
Building a persuasive business case for a revenue automation project
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06 Minute Read
Kicking things off the right way
Selling your stakeholders and executives on your vision for a revenue automation project is not just about building a rock solid business case with a compelling return on investment (ROI). Your process needs to start by properly framing the value you are seeking to deliver, making sure your initiative is robustly linked to your organization’s highest priority strategic objectives. So how do you begin to do this?
Align on the scope and goals of the project first
Work together with stakeholders to identify and clearly articulate the desired benefits and outcomes for the project. Bringing leadership up to speed on the current process, risks, and the implications for supporting a new go-to-market model can help make the business case for a revenue automation project.
But getting buy-in from the top, especially the CFO, can be a challenge. So, what’s the best way to secure executive buy-in? Treat this like a sales pitch, complete with compelling events and a deep dive into discovery. Understanding the CFO’s perspective and employing sales techniques can turn a pitch into a compelling story that drives support for crucial initiatives.
Remind your executives about the benefits of a purpose-built revenue automation solution for the business — such as improved efficiency, compliance, accuracy, forecasting, employee mental health, reduced attrition, and more. Establish a case for change and clearly define the objective of the project and the necessary architecture. For example, will this be a revenue automation project or is it an end-to-end, quote-to-revenue transformation?
“Finance teams need to be able to clearly articulate the value of their initiatives in order to secure funding. This requires them to be able to quantify the benefits of their projects in terms of cost savings, revenue growth, and improved risk management.”
– The CFO’s Guide to Navigating Uncertainty, McKinsey & Company
Place yourself in your stakeholders’ shoes
Different stakeholders look at value through different lenses, so it’s imperative that you research and know your audience.
These perspectives will be considered when making decisions about resource allocation and project prioritization, so map out your stakeholders and frame your business case appropriately.
These stakeholders may include the following:
- C-suite executives
- BU/Geo leaders
- Billing Ops
- End users
- Information technology (IT)
- Human resources (HR)
- Legal
- Procurement
- Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)
Tailor business case to align with business goals
As you narrow down the key benefits you’d like to focus on in your business case, it’s important to make sure they align with the larger goals and priorities of the business. This will also help align your business case with any budgetary requirements.
High-level business initiatives may include things like reducing costs, growing revenue, and mitigating risks.
Highlight key benefits and improvements
As you build your business case, it can be tempting to include granular details of all the potential benefits afforded by a new billing system. But this can quickly become overwhelming and may actually be less persuasive.
Instead, focus on the key 3 to 4 benefits and value added by the solution. These benefits may include things like:
- Mitigating risk by reducing the potential for a substantive audit, audit fees, regulatory penalty, or financial restatement.
- Reducing costs by minimizing operational effort, automating more rev rec activities, avoiding team expansion, and reducing IT effort.
- Increasing revenue growth through faster time-to-market of offerings, reduced churn, and better data-driven decision making.
Tip
Keep benefits balanced
Unbalanced business cases invite criticism. Benefits that are too big or small relative to the others attract attention and are often targets for reduction or removal, thus, it’s important to ensure that all of your selected benefits are relatively of the same order of magnitude. Consider consolidating benefits to bring balance.
Pre-empt trivializations and dismissals
Sometimes, executive decision makers don’t have as much day-to-day experience with the relevant pain points and benefits as you or your team do. This can lead to quick dismissals or trivialization of key points in your business case. You can prepare for this by supporting your benefits with specific real-life examples, if you have them. For example, maybe there was a recent case of potential material weakness within the business or increased attrition due to a large amount of manual work and long hours.
Additionally, you should prepare for and preempt potential “quick and cheap fixes” that may be offered. And in the case that certain benefits are downplayed as less important, help your execs understand how they relate to more important benefits. For instance, if they reject cost or revenue oriented benefits, help them understand how these impact potential risk and make it clear what the outcome of inaction could be.
Tip
Drive action and urgency through KPIs like:
- The benefit/value of taking action
- Avoided costs
- Costs of delay or doing nothing
- The cost of competitors acting where you’re not
Maximize the credibility of your business case
As you finalize your business case and prepare to present it, put yourself in your stakeholders’ shoes once more and ask yourself: Is it believable? You should plan for an ROI of 300% to 800% and a payback period of 3 to 18 months. Tweak your numbers, if necessary, to land on numbers that are realistic and believable.
Keep the momentum going
There’s always more to learn. If you want to go even deeper and learn from experts in the field in order to make your business case as powerful as possible, our masterclass can help you do just that.
Masterclass: Building a Business Case for a Billing or Revenue Project
Everything you need to know to build a compelling business case, complete with metrics and benchmarks, to justify a billing or revenue project to senior leadership.
Learn more about revenue automation software
What does winning look like? Keep reading to learn how leading companies across industries and around the globe use Zuora’s robust suite of monetization solutions to write their own modern revenue automation success stories.
