How to Justify a Business Case

¶ … save five percent of the company's sales and one is using last year's sales as a yardstick, that would be a saving of about $5.485 million. However, there are indeed some questions that have to be answered. First, it has to be deciphered what the sales would be for the year during which the improvements are being done, not to mention the years after that.

If the sales projections over the next three to five years are not all that great or the sector or wider economy is sputtering, it would be hard to justify the project. If sales are consistent, there would indeed be a business case for the project as the project would pay for itself in six months. However, it has to be defined and figured out how much productivity and movement would be lost while the improvements are being made.

Indeed, one third of the supply chains in the company would be affected. Question 2 It would seem there is a good business case but there are two things that would need to be answered to. First, there is the matter of how long it would take to get the changes done and how much of a financial drain this would cause on the usual revenues and output.

Second, if company B is operating at 95% capacity, at least some of these changes would be potentially wasted as the output gains could not be fully offset by the fact that the supply chain is nearly maxed out. It would be a bit hard to justify this case as is without a concurrent expansion in capacity. Otherwise, the money spent might be wasted.

The $111M alone on the raw materials would pay for the project nearly five times over but the real cost savings would be less than $100M if capacity is maxed out as a result of the improvements (Enslow, 2016). Question Three It would all come down to change management.

If there is a major change being executed in an organization and there is not buy-in from the functional departments and organizations within the wider company, the change will not go off as planned and thus the benefits of the changing will be at least partially negated (if not wiped out). Whatever changes are to be made need to be explained to the powerbrokers and front-line people of the company.

The management in particular needs to be on board with the changes or it will not perform as expected or preferred. If buy-in is not garnered, there will be people that resist and push back against the change and this will undermine both how long the change will take to implement and how successful it will be if/when it is the least bit successful.

To be sure, the people leading the organization should have the sway to convince people through their authority and knowledge but buy-in has to be gained .. it cannot be assumed (Burroughs, 2016). Question Four Decreasing costs and its linkage to an improved supply chain and time spent moving a product is simple. When it comes to moving materials, supplies or finished product, there should be as little wasted motion or time as possible.

For example, materials and supplies that are heavily and commonly used should be closer to the front lines while ones that are less common to rare should be further away. Another example would be lumping as many shipments as possible into.