How can I convince my boss a tool is worth investing in on a hunch?
It's easy to get the owner of my small business to buy IT if there's a defined need for it -- antivirus, auditing tools, whatever. What about the stuff that I'd like to try out but can't identify an immediate, near-term or probable need for? I'm referring to things I have a gut feeling that I'd find it useful if I could just get hold of it for longer than an evaluation period that I'd probably miss anyway. The latest example was VMWare Workstation. I have a feeling that multiple virtual PCs will allow me to be more productive, but I can't wave that under my manager's nose.
- Purpose of project -- name of project and the scope of coverage; users who would use the project
- Business goal -- such as improving productivity of particular users or groups
- Benefits of project
- Improve productivity -- how many hours it can save in a day; multiply the number of users who can benefit from it by the burdened user rate to quantify the productivity gain in dollars and cents.
- Reduced/avoided costs -- how much current costs such as support and service fees or future costs such as anticipated system upgrades or purchases can be avoided with the proposed solution
- Additional revenue opportunities -- additional customers, increased transaction price, increased number of transactions that the solution can generate
- Costs of project
- Costs for hardware and software
Ongoing maintenance and support costs - Training costs
- ROI calculation -- over a typical three-year period, the ratio of net benefits (calculated as total benefits less total costs) divided by total costs, expressed as a percentage
- Additional intangible (non-quantifiable strategic) benefits of implementing the solution
- Risks, if any, of implementing the project -- including chances for cost or schedule overruns or not realizing key benefits such as poor adoption
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