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Seven Greatest Ideas for Helping a Business Customer to Buy Wisely • 73

The sensible customer will take this issue very seriously. In most cases the tech-
nicians delivering something new will liaise with the users to find out whether they
are getting what they want. They will also agree the necessary improvements.

This iteration takes them back to the phase of the project 'select functionality'.
This type of evaluation is important but the customer should not stop there. Equally
important is checking that the project is producing the benefits agreed at the step
that established the business case. There is a prevalent attitude saying 'We have
spent the money and we are not going to go back to the old way, so why bother
checking the return on investment?'

There are dangers in this attitude. If managers believe that no audit will take
place, they will tend to produce business cases which are much more optimistic than
they would otherwise be. Similarly the skills in producing business cases will not
develop unless management monitors the results of each project.

Take a computer example. A number of large companies and government insti-
tutions have developed large centralised systems. They have then obliged their user
community to use them as generalised systems. Finally they have tinkered with the
functionality and failed to take a long cold look at the benefits and relevance of their
centralised processes.

This has led to inappropriate systems and user dissatisfaction, sometimes on a
very big scale. Resolving this situation is very costly but, if not undertaken, will
almost certainly cost the organisations the loss of competitive edge.

A further reason why the account manager wants to assist the customer to audit
cost justification is the need for reference sites. These are much more convincing if
they can demonstrate business benefits as well as technical achievement.

This checking mechanism takes the customer back to the business case. The
other check is of course on the strategic relevance of the project. The customer
needs to ask the questions, 'Is this still relevant?', and 'Could we make changes to
improve the project's contribution to the overall direction of the business?'

Positive answers to all of this will give the supplier of the last project much more
chance of becoming the supplier of the next one as well.