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    Step 2 – Justifying your budget

    Medium effort

    Medium impact

    If you’re not sure whether to buy new software or not, calculating the likely return on your investment (ROI) will definitely help you make a decision. Not only will calculating ROI give you more confidence in your decision, you’ll know how much you can spend when you start looking at software options.

    • We’ve designed our action plans to be completed in the order of steps laid out and explained why each step is important
    • Customising your action plan lets you set your own completion dates, assign tasks to others and get notifications
    • Helpful tools are provided for certain steps while a tracking metric at the end will help you determine the long-term success of your effort
    • A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available if you’d like to compete it offline
    What's involved? Ways to use this action plan Measuring impact
    1

    Establish “staff” cost savings: Considering variables such as lower staff costs, lower headcount, fewer working hours, and better performance will give you a better idea of how a technology application could drive down costs in the area of staffing.

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    It’s important to think about cost savings across specific parts of the business as all operations look and feel different and will therefore see benefits come to fruition in different ways. While some will see big reductions of costs associated with staffing, other firms will see it in fixed costs coming down. For this action plan you'll need to make the most of our ROI calculator.

    The scale of the task
    2

    Establish “facilities” cost savings: Considering variables such as more flexible working, fewer expenses/travel claims and lower waste, work out how much you would expect a technology application to drive down costs in the area of facilities.

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    It’s important to think about cost savings across specific parts of the business as all operations look and feel different and will therefore see benefits come to fruition in different ways. While some will see big reductions of costs associated with staffing, other firms will see it in fixed costs coming down.

    3

    Establish “quality” cost savings: Considering variables such as less time checking things, less time fixing mistakes and more reliable forecasting, work out how much you would expect a technology application to drive down costs in the area of quality.

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    It’s important to think about cost savings across specific parts of the business as all operations look and feel different and will therefore see benefits come to fruition in different ways. While some will see big reductions of costs associated with staffing, other firms will see it in fixed costs coming down.

    4

    Establish “customer” cost savings: Considering variables such as higher customer satisfaction/retention, improved customer service and lower customer acquisition cost, work out customer cost savings.

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    It’s important to think about cost savings across specific parts of the business as all operations look and feel different and will therefore see benefits come to fruition in different ways. While some will see big reductions of costs associated with staffing, other firms will see it in fixed costs coming down.

    5

    Establish “sales” cost savings: Considering variables such as higher sales with the same sales capacity, improved lead generation/conversion and faster, more frequent sales, work out how much you would expect to drive down costs in the area of sales.

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    Considering variables such as higher sales with the same sales capacity, improved lead generation/conversion and faster, more frequent sales, work out how much you would expect to drive down costs in the area of sales.

    6

    Calculate initial set-up and ongoing costs: using approximate figures for costs such as licence fees, installation, training and upgrades, calculate your cost outgoings.

    Impact: medium

    Why will this help?

    This cost calculation will give you a good steer on what value your business could look to extract from adopting a particular technology and can now move on to the important tasks of creating a shopping list and then buying with confidence.

    What can I do with this Action Plan?

    Start this Action Plan

    Add some extra information to this plan and we’ll help you get it done.

    • We’ve designed our action plans to be completed in the order of steps laid out and explained why each step is important
    • Customising your action plan lets you set your own completion dates, assign tasks to others and get notifications
    • Helpful tools are provided for certain steps while a tracking metric at the end will help you determine the long-term success of your effort
    • A downloadable PDF version of each action plan is available if you’d like to compete it offline

    Download and print

    Get a printable template for this Action Plan, fill it in with some target dates, and share it with your team. Pin it on the wall where everyone can see it.

    Get the printable Action Plan

    Learning Groups

    We also run Learning Groups on these topics where you can join other leaders tackling the same challenges.

    Find a Learning Group

    How will I know if my action plan is working?

    Confidence to move forward

    When you’ve completed your business case you can decide whether buying software is the best way to achieve this goal

    Why this metric?

    While you might have thought, or been told, that your business needs to make better use of technology, if the numbers don't add up then it doesn't make sense to move forward with what could be quite a costly process.

    How do I use this going forward?

    Working out your projected cost savings by using a new technology, coupled with expected upfront and ongoing costs, will steer you in the right direction when it comes to choice of product and employee uptake.