The business case promised a saving. Two years on, the budget has never seen it. Here is where it usually goes.
The most common defect in IT business cases is the conversion of released time into money.
Eleven minutes saved per case, times forty cases a day, times two hundred staff, produces an impressive annual figure that will not appear anywhere.
Released capacity becomes cost saving only through a decision: a post is removed, a vacancy is not filled, contracted hours are reduced, or additional volume is absorbed without additional staff.
Absent that decision, the time is genuinely released and is absorbed by other work. Often work that was already being neglected, which may be an excellent outcome and is not a saving.
The rule is simple. Any financial benefit derived from released time carries a named decision, an owner and a date, or it is recorded as hours rather than as money.
Somebody will eventually ask where the money went. The honest answer — that it was never money, and that the organisation achieved something else worth having — is a considerably easier conversation to have now than at the spending review.
From Built to Be Used, chapter 8.
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This article accompanies the book Built to Be Used.