Executive management and finance
Are we getting the benefit we expect from our initiatives?
Every benefit carries plan, forecast and actual. If it falls behind, a decision is due.
Today
The benefit is in the proposal and is not carried forward
The business case ends with approval
The assumptions behind the approval stay in the proposal. In day-to-day steering they are not checked again, because there is no place for it.
Plan, forecast and actual sit in three files
Plan in the proposal, forecast in the status report, actual months later in an analysis. The variance shows only once the three values sit side by side.
Financial and other quantities get mixed
Hours saved, customers won and euros land in one total. How it came about can no longer be recalculated later.
What changes
The benefit becomes a record with a history
Every evidenced benefit can be recalculated. Every measurement has a source and a four-eyes check, and the realisation index counts due, unproven benefit as open.
Benefit realisation
Benefit · Programme procurement costs
Example dataPlan, forecast and actual held apart
Example: plan and forecast range rise towards the end of the year. The measured actual stands at just over €2.6m after three measurements. A benefit that is due but not measured is marked as open and not included in the actual.
What you have afterwards
What finance holds afterwards
- Clear ownership of every benefit, in the benefit register with plan, forecast and actual.
- The evidenced share of the due benefit, in the realisation index with its calculation.
- Early decisions when the business case drifts, because its assumptions stay visible.
- Auditable evidence per project, in an evidence package with decisions, approvals and measurements.
Common objections
- Not all of our benefits are measurable in euros.
- They do not have to be. A benefit carries its unit, sums only form over the same unit, and the index says per unit what is evidenced.
- Who enters the measurements, and what if nobody does?
- Measurements come by hand or by import, with source and history. If a due measurement is missing, My Day reminds the owner and the benefit shows as open.
- Can I show the committee the figures directly?
- Yes. The board report is frozen as a dated state and shared over a time-limited link, with or without a password. What the committee sees is the state of the day it was frozen.
- Why does the approved budget differ from the plan?
- The project's finance view traces the approved budget to the plan and every approved change request. What the requests do not explain appears as a line of its own.
See it first
How the realisation index calculates
The guide describes the arithmetic that is in the product: ramp, due date, evidence and how to read the figure. Readable without the product, verifiable with it.