Forrester: - Making Leaders Successful Every Day

"What are we going to get for our money?" is the perennial question asked of technology executives seeking funds for applications, infrastructure, or other potential investments. Here's a Workshop that explains what IT and business organizations can do to thoroughly analyze, compare, and create business case justifications to get the necessary purchase approvals.

Targeted at CIOs, business managers, and their staff, this Workshop is a unique opportunity to improve business planning, financial analysis, and project selection processes.

In this interactive one-day Workshop, learn how IT and business organizations build effective business case justifications for technology investments by applying Forrester's proven Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) framework and methodology. Forrester analysts help attendees learn how to build sound business cases; easily understand basic financial concepts; quantify business benefits, risks, and flexibility options; and prioritize and communicate with business stakeholders and management. Then, apply what you've learned to exercises and a case study, finally building an action plan to incorporate an improved technology business case process within your organization. Forrester's methodology and processes are simple to execute and easy to integrate into any financial analysis and approval model.

The Forrester analyst running this Workshop is also available for an hour of post-Workshop phone support to help your organization better articulate the value of your technology solution offerings.”

During this full day of presentations, hands-on exercises, and interactive discussions, Forrester analysts teach CIOs and business managers and their staff how to:

• Identify and quantify elusive business benefits. IT investments can rarely be linked directly to a single strategic business objective, and the benefits are often intangible, making them difficult to justify using standard financial tools and business case templates. Learn to consider all of the effects of the business decision by applying Forrester's Total Economic Impact methodology and conducting a hands-on exercise, building costs and benefits into a business case.
  
  
• Build your action plan. The investment funding problem IT executives face isn't that IT investments don't have value; it's that organizations struggle with how to measure and communicate that value in a way that makes sense to executives and business leadership. This Workshop gives you the ability to go back and review your existing processes and to develop a step-by-step process to better identify business goals, assess project risk, determine value-based success metrics, and communicate IT's value to management.
  
  
• Quantify risk factors. Risk can increase the cost of an investment and decrease projected benefits. Conversely, being able to measure the affect of risk will reduce the uncertainty of cost and benefit estimates and greatly improve the success rate of investments. Complete a project risk assessment and learn to factor risk and uncertainty into benefits and costs to produce a more accurate business case estimate.
  
  
• Communicate business value impact. The difficulty in trying to value IT investments lies in their existence as assets, such as computer hardware, software, or networking. However, when these assets are redefined by the service they provide — such as email services, data access services, disaster recovery services, security services, or hosting services — it becomes a different story. Workshop discussion and exercises help you to understand these benefits and their alignment with business strategies, as well as ways to estimate the value of future strategic flexibility options.

Who Should Attend?

• Sales enablement and product marketing and management roles and anyone who has an interest in how prospect organizations justify investments in their solutions
• CIOs and their staff; directors of IT; PMO staff; finance support of IT; project/program managers; and anyone else involved with creating, approving, prioritizing, and communicating the financial value of technology investments
• Business managers may want to send staff members who are responsible for improving their business case justification processes.

Why Attend?

Dozens of technology vendor organizations have already benefited from attending this interactive one-day Workshop. Gain an understanding of the fundamentals of building effective business cases for technology investments, applying Forrester's well-known Total Economic Impact (TEI) framework and methodology. Forrester analysts teach you how to:

• Understand how IT and business organization justify their technology investments.
• Build sound, consistent business cases within your organization using a 10-step process, with 30 days of follow-on phone support from the Forrester Workshop instructor.
• Understand important financial concepts used to value technology investments.
• Identify and quantify those elusive business benefits.
• Quantify a project's risk factors and future strategic flexibility options.