Seven tactics for making the business case for website investment

In an uncertain business climate, marketing budgets are invariably tighter and there are more hoops to go through to secure investment. Therefore, getting your business case right is critical.

We’re certainly seeing projects that might have been greenlighted in the past not automatically approved, reduced in scope or bounced back and forth with decisions delayed. Specifically, making the case may also involve a deeper or more convoluted process than in the past to justify any spending.

Most businesses have a set process or format for making a business case, so there is no standard for what to include in any document. However, there are a number of elements that are commonly included and can provide a robust argument for your project, as well as approaches that can bolster your case.  

In this article we’re going to cover some of the key tactics and approaches that we’ve seen that can help get your business case over the line.

1. Work on alignment before the formal business case

In reality, a business case starts months before it is formally presented. The stakeholder management and activity that precedes the creation of a document or slide deck can make all the difference to success.
Ideally when submitting a business case there should be no surprises for decision makers and you already have advocates in the room. Spending time working to achieve alignment by speaking to stakeholders in the months before a formal review and explaining what-is-in-it-for-them will usually make a major contribution to any final thumbs up.

2. Double down on critical risk exposure

Risk often provides the raison d'être for a project, particularly if it relates to compliance, security or tangible reductions in income. 
Critical risk exposure focuses on what will happen if you don’t carry out the project. Regulatory compliance, cybersecurity and data privacy are non-negotiable and if your current website is nearing out of support, has potential vulnerabilities or doesn’t meet your organisation’s standards in these areas, then something that reduces this risk exposure will likely get greenlighted. 
That doesn’t necessarily mean an all-singing and all-dancing CMS will get support, but it is argument for change that can dramatically sharpen and speed up decision-making.

3. Demonstrate competitive and commercial risk

The competitive and commercial risks associated with the impact of not going ahead with your project are often harder to prove because they are less tangible. 
The extent of commercial drift is hard to report on and can involve including numbers such as dwindling visitors, reduced lead generation or poor page load times for example. You may also be able to include some loose benchmarking which indicates the investment that your direct competitors have made in their website. Qualitative data such as poor feedback from users or anecdotal evidence about a lost commercial opportunity caused by issues with your website can also be useful.

4. Include something that can be cut

A common business case and budgeting tactic is to include elements in there that can be cut  or removed if necessary: the nice-to-haves or the more expensive option, making it more likely that the core of what you are asking for will be passed.

This is standard practice and the people approving your spending will recognise it too, but it is always worth doing. In a business case, for example, you might illustrate three scenarios, with the most expensive choice likely to be discarded.

5. Cover cost reduction and avoidance

In the current economic climate cost reduction is going to be a plus for any business case. Website projects can be very expensive but there can also be opportunities for reducing costs, for example in streamlining or rightsizing your infrastructure. Some content management systems (CMS) and digital experience platforms (DXP) also have additional features and plug-ins that will allow you to retire existing solutions.

A project may also help improve processes around content management that save time; AI features in a new CMS may speed up the way you create or optimise content. Some business cases try to present time saved as a £ figure; however, in our experience this is never really convincing and doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny from anyone with a background in finance. 

Cost avoidance is more convincing in a business case. The associated maintenance costs with your legacy solution, particularly if it is old or is custom (with “technical debt”) and requires regular fixes, and how these would accrue by not carrying out your project, are always worth including. 
When talking about costs and associated benefits using the right language that will appeal to a CFO will also help to support the business case and make it more polished and convincing.

6. Spread the pain of costs

If you’re asking for a level of capital expenditure that is going to raise eyebrows and is at risk of being refused, then it is always worth looking at ways to spread the costs. Can what you are asking for be phased across different budget cycles? Are there elements that move from capital expenditure to operational expenditure? For example, here at 3chilies we have worked with clients where website changes are delivered more iteratively each month, rather than as one traditional project.

While a phased approach means there is always a risk that a full scope of a business case will not get delivered (the elusive “Phase 2” that never seems to quite happen), in reality this risk would still be there even if a fuller expenditure has been signed off.

7. Clearly align with strategic and wider business objectives

It sounds obvious that the business case should align with wider business objectives, but this doesn’t always happen in practice. Clarity is key so mirroring the language and explicitly mapping elements of your project to specific objectives is the way to go, unless making the link is tenuous and starts to undermine credibility. Moreover, if you cannot make the link, then it is worth reexamining the validity of your project scope.

Making the business case? Speak to us first!

We’re often asked by our clients to contribute to a business case. If you are making a business case for your website or digital marketing project and it needs strengthening, or you want to explore a more iterative approach that will spread the costs, then get in touch.