Benefit Management

Benefits management takes more than a financial spreadsheet and a list of benefits sitting on a timeline, and it should also involve a lot of very effective communication. As with every aspect of transformation, under communication is often at the root of many issues. So when it comes to benefit management, plan for extensive pictures, charts, maps and diagrams that will resonate with your stakeholders far better than dull documents and spreadsheets. My name is Rob Llewellyn and as you know, companies need people with the right capabilities to manage and lead transformation. As you know, orchestrating successful transformation isn't that easy, and I mean innovative transformation which creates a new future without the constraints of the past. Which is why I hope that what I share in this episode will help you get better equipped to perform at your best as a manager, leader or consultant. If you want to learn more, go.

To studythrive.com Benefits are essentially a business responsibility, and technology implementation on its own is rarely enough to deliver benefits. At a bare minimum, it must be accompanied by sufficient training and support so that users can actually use the new digital solutions. There are too many lessons learned to ignore this maximum benefits are gained by the integration of technology, process change, business changes, and the business making effective use of the information that the technology can provide. Typically, a project may be responsible for delivering technology and process change, but the business change is necessary to deliver improved business performance. The Benefits of a Business Responsibility for all key stakeholders within the business to sign up to the benefits, it's essential that they understand their business responsibilities for defining and executing business changes and measuring performance improvements in their business areas. Key to this is the continued business involvement. The business needs to be involved in identifying the potential benefits to be gained from an initiative, and ideally this starts with digital use cases, then the business case. This should include defining the scope of the technology, process change, and business change necessary to deliver the business benefits. Most importantly, it's the executive sponsor of an initiative who should take overall accountability for delivering the benefits from the project or program on behalf of the business. They and their team need to collaborate with key business stakeholders who are responsible for the benefits within their respective business areas. Because of the general lack of knowledge and understanding about benefits realization, it's really important that a RACI matrix is established and communicated, leaving no room for ambiguity. It should be clear to everyone who is responsible for undertaking an activity, accountable for ensuring that that activity is undertaken and consulted in conjunction with the activity, and and informed as the activity progresses. Without the raci, it's almost certain that people will begin to make incorrect assumptions about who's Doing what? And sooner rather than later, the benefits realization effort will run into trouble. Every transformation should have a set of tools and proven techniques to manage the business benefits, which should be evident at every stage of the transformation. And it's important to remember that value is not just about financial benefits, about any improvement which is perceived as being beneficial by stakeholders which could be financial, measurable, quantifiable or observable. Benefits are often colorfully painted in business cases to secure funding, but once those funds are secured, the very people who did a splendid job of selling the benefits to those who held the keys to the budget sometimes pay little of any attention to benefits management. They promise value in the business case, get the money they need, but then fail to measure the value. The business case should be supported by a benefits management strategy which does more than just explain the activities, time and resources needed to achieve a set of benefits. It should describe the process that will be used for monitoring, realizing and assessing benefits, and contain relationships and dependencies between changes and benefits. Other content would address a dependency network and criteria to assess whether benefits have been achieved and how they should be quantified. This will serve to build stakeholder confidence and trust from the very outset. Once the transformation has been kicked off, a benefits plan should be consistently and proactively managed and monitored with a set of tools and proven techniques. Benefits management takes more than a financial spreadsheet and a list of benefits sitting on the timeline, and it should also involve extensive communication. As with every aspect of transformation, under communication is often at the root of many issues. So plan for extensive pictures, charts, charts, maps and diagrams that will resonate with stakeholders far better than verbose documents and complex spreadsheets. The benefits management strategy should define the approach to realising benefits and the framework within which the benefits realization will be achieved. It should cover methods for identifying, mapping, monitoring and reviewing benefits scope and explanation of which areas of the business will be covered by benefits management measurement methods and processes to monitor and assess the realisation of benefits success factors against which the effectiveness of benefits management should be measured tools, systems and sources of information to enable measurement descriptions of functions, roles, accountabilities and responsibilities for benefit planning and realization priorities of benefit types relationships between capabilities and benefits opportunities to be managed in relation to risk management clarification of benefits related terminology and a review and assessment process for measuring benefits realization. A benefits realization plan should be designed to track the realisation of benefits across the transformation portfolio and set review controls. It should contain detailed benefit maps to illustrate sequential relationships between benefits schedule detailing when each benefit disbenefit or group of benefits will be realized milestones for benefit reviews, estimated effort and costs associated with the plan, detail of transition schedules, benefit reporting schedules and relationships with program outcomes dependencies external to the program handover and embedding activities to enhance the process of benefits realization and details of how benefits realization will be maintained after the programme closes. So let's step up from the detail and state that investment is made to make transformation happen which should be to provide value. Those who ignore the concept of value management and benefit realization management are essentially neglecting the very purpose of transformation. Three key questions stakeholders should always be asking are what does the benefits management strategy look like? What does the benefits management plan look like? And who is executing the benefits management plan regardless of who it might be delegated to? Ultimately the digital Business transformation manager is responsible for value and benefits management and ideally they'll have someone dedicated to managing both.

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