The business case was approved. Nobody tracked the results.
Approvals release funds. Who is accountable once the solution is live?
The business case was reviewed line by line, and the sponsor stood behind the promised results. The budget was approved.
Then the conversation quickly shifted to consultants, schedule, costs, testing, and go-live.
All of that is important. But the person responsible for delivering the solution is usually not the person responsible for changing the operating numbers. Unless that distinction is deliberate, the project can finish while the promise loses its owner.
That is the gap we need to understand before the next large investment.
The system can do more. The team is not.
Take a simple example. A new system allows a team to process ten cases instead of eight. The team continues handling eight. The work simply stretches to fill the day. Why? Because requirements did not change. The original target stayed in place.
There is another risk. Old habits can creep into the new process as people find ways to stay busy without increasing the work that matters.
The promised benefit remains only potential. A cheque that was never cashed.
There may be a good reason. Demand may not support ten. Another step may limit throughput. But someone has to explain the difference. Otherwise, the organization has paid for capacity it never decided how to use.
In a 2005 Harvard Business Review article, Michael Mankins and Richard Steele reported that companies delivered, on average, 63% of the financial performance their strategies promised. The question is simple. Who follows that promise into the numbers?
Not knowing the return is a problem of its own.
If nobody revisited the business case, the return is unknown. It is too early to call the implementation a failure. There is also no basis for calling it a success.
If someone measured the return and found a shortfall, there is something to investigate. The original assumptions may have been wrong. Adoption may have stalled. The business may have changed. An owner who reports the shortfall and acts on it is showing accountability, even when the target is missed.
I would rather see an uncomfortable explanation than a benefit review that produces a reassuring slide and disappears. A review earns its place when it changes what somebody is responsible for doing next.
Take one investment back to its promise.
Choose a project that is finished. Put the promised benefit, the starting number, and the latest result beside each other. Name one person who can explain the gap. If no one ever set the measure, say that plainly.
If the value is still within reach, agree on a target, a date, and the changes needed to get there. If the original assumption no longer holds, explain why. Do not quietly replace the original promise with an easier one.
The benefit belongs in the budget.
Some savings need to arrive in stages. A process takes time to settle; capacity takes time to redeploy. Each stage still needs an owner, a measure and a date.
This is where I would put teeth into the commitment: carry the agreed benefit into the next planning and budgeting cycle. A number in a review deck can be ignored. A number in the operating plan has to be delivered or explained.
Strategy sets the value worth pursuing. Technology may make it possible. Culture determines whether the organization treats the commitment seriously after the project team leaves.
The savings can stagger. The accountability can’t.