Benefits Management Tasks

Identify benefits.

Categorise the benefits – e.g. financial or non-financial, cost saving or income generating, better service or compliance

Identify which strategic objectives the idea supports and share the idea with the owner of the relevant strategic objectives.

Identify benefits for other organisations, and evaluate how costs and benefits are split between affected organisations (eg is one organisation bearing the costs of implementation, helping realise benefits for another).

Identify where benefits will materialise, and who will be responsible and accountable for delivering the benefits?

Check to ensure there is no duplication with benefits from other projects/ideas.

Identify benefits.

Check for any potential impact on other benefits.

Check that the benefits being proposed align with those defined for the portfolio, for example  eg financial or non-financial, cost saving or income generating, better service or compliance. There should be a balance in the benefits and reflect the portfolio priorities at this time.

Check  which strategic objectives the idea supports and share the idea with the owner of the relevant strategic objectives to ensure that they are happy with the alignment.

Check where benefits will materialise to ensure there is a balance of change and particular business areas are not becoming overloaded.

Check to ensure there is no duplication with benefits from other projects/ideas. 

Develop an initial view of what the benefits will be and where they will be found.

You will need to think your idea through and have something written down where you think the benefits will come from.

The mind map concept is good for putting your idea together.  It is also the start of formulating the requirements for the project.

There will be some improvements from the idea, e.g. saving money, time or improving quality or safety.

These need to be explained as early as possible .

Define the business outcomes and benefits

The idea won't go forward unless there are convincing benefits for the change and there is a reasonable level of definition about the outcomes that are needed.

This is the point where a convincing argument will need to be made for the idea to progress into the portfolio and this is where it needs to be made.

The board will be expected to confirm and endorse the vision and the expected benefits that have been defined at this stage.

Where the benefits are not clear there may be a need to outline the effects of not achieving the change.   The people on the board should be in a position to deliver the benefits for their parts of the structure and at this point help to highlight the potential benefits.

Ensure the aspirational benefits are included in the brief.

Undertake initial benefit modelling and mapping.

Major benefits should be referenced in the Vision Statement to help sell the concept of the programme to stakeholders.

This is the point where detail is required to put the detail around the benefits to justify further progress of the programme. It is likely that many of the benefits used up to this point could be conceptual, so at this point the minimum information that is required for each benefit would be:

• Description
• Where will it occur
• What type is it
• When will it occur
• How will it be measured

The strategic blueprint will be a key input as it will set out the future state and the current state, which is where many of the benefits will be found.

The risks around the accuracy of benefits forecasting will still be high, so estimates should be risk rated to show most likely result.

Ensure business requirements have been documented.

The outcomes have been developed and information on the “as is” state recorded. There is a benefits model and high level profiles to explain the value of the change.

Evaluate the financial benefits when making investment decisions and undertaking other portfolio balancing decisions.

Balance short, medium and longer term financial benefits to give an acceptable overall benefits profile.

Ensure that benefits are central to business cases and investment decisions. Tracking benefits is essential to enable rebalancing to take place if benefits forecasts change.

Decision criteria should reflect the strategic benefits policies.

Ensure that non-financial benefits are being accounted for and continue to be projected.

Ensure that the benefit policies and strategic outcomes are being used to evaluation options and that the aggregation processes are in place.

The organisation’s benefit policies, i.e. what are the priorities and how they will be measured, but be under regular review to enable continual development. Different strategic priorities will require the benefit policies and measurements to change to reflect environmental changes.

Care should be taken to avoid different projects claiming the same benefits (double counting) or one project undermining the benefits from another project.

Appropriate benefits tracking should include evaluation and achievement of statutory compliance.

Benefits for compliance projects are often expressed in negative terms (the avoidance of dis-benefits such as non-compliance, reputational damage, legal action etc, fines etc).

Compliance projects can be implemented in different ways. Implementation can often incorporate other benefits (e.g. streamlining existing processes, IT solutions etc).

Regular reviews of benefits realisation against the portfolio benefits plan.

Commission periodic review of performance against business cases.

Check that the benefits plans and the change plans are aligned and achievable.

Regular review of performance against business cases will help identify trends and improvements in benefits forecasting and business case development.

Plan the handover of the benefits controls.

Undertake benefits review.

Review the benefits management strategy.

 Benefits lessons learned documented.

As part of the closure, a final Benefits Review should be planned. It would also be worth initiating an additional consultation process to engage stakeholders to find out if any additional benefits have been gained and not accounted for.

This is the point where the formal review of the process and achievements takes place and added to the programme closure report and lessons learned.

Report benefits and hand over measurement and controls.

The formal review of benefits should be undertaken. This will require more than just a meeting. The data that has proved the achievements of the benefits needs to be validated. The other key area of focus must be synthesising the small benefits that may have slipped under the radar and ensure that they are accounted for. There may also have been missed opportunities, these should also be picked up in the review to ensure future programmes do not miss them or undertake additional work to leverage them. The Benefits Register, profiles and the Realisation Plan should now be closed off formally with final values being accounted and lessons documented.

Produce final performance reports to show performance is stable

Account for benefits against original business case

Account for unplanned benefits and their value

Handover outstanding change activities to the appropriate group

Benefits Realisation Plans should now be actively owned within the operations with future changes required embedded within Business Plans.

Review benefits achievement and how it could have been improved.  Consider the requirements and lessons that have been learned from their definition and delivery.

A benefits review should be undertaken as part of achieving this milestone. 

It is essential that lessons are learned if benefits are not being achieved so that it can be avoided in future. If unexpected benefits have been identified, understand why they came about and included in lessons learned.

It is possible that there may have been some concessions to off-specification issues. 

 Follow-on action recommendations should address the next steps, if any, for handling these either as part of the wider programme or within the business areas.

Review aggregated view of the portfolio benefits to ensure benefit objectives can be achieved.

Confirm that the dis-benefit management plans are working.

Check that unexpected benefits have been accounted for as well as those predicted.

Ensure that non-financial benefits are being accounted for and continue to be projected.

Review the performance reporting metrics for effectiveness.

Check that the current portfolio benefits policies and standards are appropriate and effective.

Avoid ambiguity – once responsibility has transferred from portfolio to Business As Usual (BAU), ensure that the responsible managers accept that responsibility and document the handover.

The organisation’s benefit policies, i.e. what are the priorities and how they will be measured, but be under regular review to enable continual development. Different strategic priorities will require the benefit policies and measurements to change to reflect environmental changes.

Ensure clear arrangements for reporting benefits back to the portfolio so that the value and benefits achieved by the portfolio over time can be monitored.

Post Implementation Reviews are important to track benefits and learn lessons that can be applied to improve overall performance. For benefits, this includes lessons about accuracy of forecasting at the outset and challenges in benefits realisation activities.

Ensure the aspirational benefits are included.

Major benefits should be referenced in the Vision Statement to help sell the concept of the programme to stakeholders.

Use the blueprint to identify benefits from the future state.

Review the outline benefit profiles and the risk estimates based on programme blueprint.

Draft full draft benefit profiles for the blueprint options.

The difference between the ‘As Is’ and ‘To Be’ states will ultimately be the source of benefits. Without a Blueprint the benefits will be guess work. Once the ‘As Is’ state is properly understood, a process for monitoring it must be established.

During the process of developing the blueprint there will be a number of different potential end states. Each will offer different potential benefits.

The potential benefits of each option will provide a key decision making criteria so they must be evaluated individually.

The intermediate states that the programme will deliver will also be points at which benefits will be released.

Be wary benefits that have no measurement, it is common for an outcome to be categorised as benefits and they cannot be proved at the end, focus on measurable improvements.

Achievement of contributions to a corporate objective should be included as benefits, this is often helpful to overcome the lack of the normal benefits, but again, the focus should be on measurable and evidence based.

Project realignment should include an impact assessment on their target benefits

Benefits identified in the Programme Brief should be a factor in selecting and aligning projects.  If a project cannot clearly explain how it will be contributing to the benefits, its justification for continuing will be harder.

Assess the impact of project realignment on benefits.

Attribute benefits to individuals project delivery is possible.

Use the tranches to outline the benefits realisation plan.

Benefits identified in the Programme Brief should be a factor in selecting and aligning projects.  If a project cannot clearly explain how it will be contributing to the benefits, its justification for continuing will be harder.

Benefits will tend to happen after a Tranche completes, this must be reflected in Benefit Profiles and the Benefits Realisation Plan. Some early benefits may be linked to the achievement of a Tranche.  Releasing benefits may well be required to fund the future tranches.

Decisions about the Tranche plans and the programme delivery may well be driven by benefits realisation plan, particularly if there is a compliance element to the programme where there is pre-defined deadlines.

The full project dossier doesn’t exist yet formally, but it should now be possible to allocate benefits activities to existing or key projects that are already known about.

Analyse the effect of the delivery options on the benefits achievement.

Impact assessment of preferred approach on benefit profiles and plans.

The value of the benefits for various options should underpin this activity. They will be different for each option and enable selection of the optimum strategy.

The benefit profiles and plan should be a key factor in selecting the delivery strategy, there may be many different options available to delivering the change.

Their timing and impact will be worked through during this milestone, as such an impact assessment of the benefit profiles and plans will be needed as the preferred approach is likely to have had an impact.

Now that the approach is known, it should be easier to allocate specific activities and responsibilities for benefits realisation within the benefit profiles.

Review and confirm the projected benefits and their ownership.

Independent assurance of the validity and viability of the benefits.

Document any lessons learned in the Gate report.

It is essential that the level of benefits are fully defined, their level of sensitivity and dependency on the Blueprint is fully understood. The justification for the programme will be based on the anticipated benefits.

Independent assurance of the basis for estimates and risk for the benefits should be undertaken to give the programme board confidence.

A review of the programme needs for benefits should also be undertaken to help with lessons learned.

Define the contribution of individual benefits by each project.

Undertaken gap analysis for non-project activities needed for each benefit.

These projects must produce the outputs to enable the benefits to be achieved. The Project Dossier should be aligned to enable the Benefit Profiles KPIs to be achieved.

The information for each project should explain how it will contribute to the benefits, or how it is contributing the capability that will enable the benefits.

The benefit profiles can now be updated to show which projects are contributing to which benefits and when the release activities will take place.

This is also an opportunity to undertake the gap analysis to identify activities that will be needed to deliver benefits that are not currently scoped for delivery by the projects.

Complete the benefits management strategy.

The strategy should set out how benefits will be identified and delivered. It should explain what types of benefits are important, how they will be calculated and what will be measured to assure delivery.

The framework currently sets out the standards, types and approaches to delivery. So this could be a straight forward activity to confirm using the standards approach and any deviations to that approach to accommodate any unique aspects of a specific programme.

There should be clarity about the process for managing the change to realise the benefits as an on-going activity.

The BCMs will have a big role in this, but it should be clear how line management roles fit into this as well, as they will be a big responsibility when it comes to delivery.

Review and finalise the benefit profiles.

Review the risk and time aspects of the benefits achievement.

Review the project dossier and individual project plans for timescales.

Create the programme transition plan.

A Benefits Realisation Plan should be constructed from the Benefit Profiles and project dossier

It should take account of project timetables and recognise the lead time between projects delivering and benefits being achieved.

The programme plan will need a transition plan which will be driven by the benefits delivery timescales so should be completed at this point.

Consolidate the total cashable benefits for the business case.

Consolidate the total non-cashable benefits for the business case.

Check the risk profile of the individual benefits to check viability.

The full business case will contain the consolidated benefits, which will be drawn from the benefit profiles and the benefits realisation plan should show then the benefits will appear.

For the business case the main justification is likely to be based on cashable benefits and there is likely to be a bigger challenge to numbers at this point, as the costs and savings are coming together formally.

Being able to attribute the benefits to specific activities is very important as is individual ownership or the benefits, so that there is a line of accountability visible.

Risk rating estimates to ensure that there is an understanding of the levels of risk associated with the benefits projections will help to build confidence and understand the risks.

Prepare the business performance monitoring metrics in first tranche.

Review and confirm m the projected benefits and their ownership.

Independent assurance of the validity and viability of the benefits.

Record lessons learned related to benefits management.

Business Performance monitoring should already be in place to track benefits, but they may need to be extended to monitor other factors for negative or positive impact.  The provision of regular performance information and impact analysis should be built into the plan.

It is essential that the level of benefits are fully defined, their level of sensitivity and dependency on the Blueprint is fully understood.  The justification for the programme will be based on the anticipated benefits.

Independent assurance of the basis for estimates and risk for the benefits should be undertaken to give the programme board confidence.

Ensure lessons from the stage are recorded in the Gate report.

Ensure clear line of sight between the projects and the programme benefits where possible.

Establish the business performance monitoring for benefits realisation.

Ensure benefit realisation activities have been allocated.

This is the point where the benefits management strategy is deployed.

The controls and reporting of progress should be put into place.

The projects should be creating outputs that can contribute to the realisation of benefits in line with the Benefit profiles and the Benefits Realisation Plan. Project documentation should explicitly explain the connection to the benefits.

The link between project progress and change control and benefits delivery needs to be established, so that project changes are approved based on an impact assessment on the benefits.

Track the benefit impact of deliverables and business change.

Review the effectiveness of business performance metrics and benefits forecast confidence.

Ensure that the change plans minimise the potential dis-benefits during transition.

Track the business performance metrics for evidence of benefits being released or risk increasing.

Review the effectiveness of requirements management within projects.

Record benefits achieved at this point and validate future plans.

Most of the focus up to this point will have been on project delivery, now that the capability has been achieved the transition plans will now be activated to realise the benefits

The progress of projects should be monitored with close reference to the Benefits Realisation Plan and Benefits Register. Business transition will be dependent on key outputs rather than the whole project being on time, so having a good understanding of the project schedule will be key to benefit realisation activities.

The project close reports will help identify issues that could impact on the benefits realisation during this tranche.

Much of the realisation activity will be taking place within the Realising Benefits process. At the programme level there should be monitoring of the progress of change. The focus will change as the tranche progresses from monitoring current performance, to assessing stability and on to tracking improvements. At this point the effectiveness of the Benefits Management Strategy and the alignment to the plan should be managed. Deviations should be escalated.

The achievement of the outcomes and re-stabilised operations means that the focus should now move to ensuring that the benefits are identified and actions taken to release them.  

Ensure that all positive effects have been recorded, it is possible that some of the benefits will not be achieved, so it is important to record any benefits achieved at this point.

Ensure the review identifies potential to increase benefit opportunities.

Review the effectiveness of business performance metrics and benefits forecast confidence and refine.

Confirm the projected benefits and their ownership.

This is a point where benefits will be released and the change has happened, it is also very likely that there will be a lot of other activity to bring other benefits to life

The review should test and challenge the benefit profiles and the realism of the plan, benefits should have been realised or it may be that there is evidence of over optimism which could nullify the programme's value. Updates to Benefit Profiles should be issued based on the experiences to date.

The effectiveness of the Benefits Management Strategy should be assessed, including the suitability of the areas being monitored. Assess whether business performance is being effectively managed through the various controls. If benefits are not appearing, this should be a cause for concern. A Benefit Review should have been undertaken at least once.

Business Performance monitoring should already be in place to track benefits, but they may need to be extended to monitor other factors for negative or positive impact.

Operational performance should be tracked to ensure there is no dependence on the systems.  

Residual assets that are to be deployed should be isolated and handed over.  If the new system is an upgrade, there may be spares or residual value in some aspects of the product.

Whatever the circumstances, the capability should be disabled to ensure it cannot be re-commissioned.

The period of instability should now be over and the new performance should be heading towards delivering the benefits. The removal of the old ways of working will be a major milestone in achieving the change and leaving the past behind. All the efforts should now be focused on releasing benefits and more importantly, testing for unexpected benefits.  

Prepare the business performance monitoring metrics in first tranche.

Review and confirm m the projected benefits and their ownership.

Independent assurance of the validity and viability of the benefits.

Review effectiveness of benefits management strategy.

Identify benefits management lessons from the Tranche.

Business Performance monitoring should already be in place to track benefits, but they may need to be extended to monitor other factors for negative or positive impact.  The provision of regular performance information and impact analysis should be built into the plan.

It is essential that the level of benefits are fully defined, their level of sensitivity and dependency on the Blueprint is fully understood.  The justification for the programme will be based on the anticipated benefits.

Independent assurance of the basis for estimates and risk for the benefits should be undertaken to give the programme board confidence.

The next tranche could be Close, if that is the case then ownership of the benefits release activities will be need to be handed over in the benefits realisation plan.

Formalise the requirements and benefits that form the new capability.

A major element is the business design model to produce formal requirements. As part of this step, it will be necessary to categorise the information to enable analysis and comparison. 

Some requirements may look unrealistic or unachievable, but may become feasible, or there may be another project that can pick them up at some stage.  

Similarly, requirements that look straight forward may hide complexity or innovations that are yet to be understood.

It is then possible to undertake an analysis of the benefits that the change will produce. All benefits forecasts should be evidence based. To do this, it will be necessary to understand the ‘As Is’, or how things work now, as well as the ‘To Be’ state which is being defined in the business design. This measurement of current performance is to establish a baseline and establish the metrics to assess improvements that will come from the new approach.

Analyse and report the ability of each option to achieve the requirements and benefits.

It is important that the recommended approach is driven by requirements and benefits, not features of a particular product.  

The recommended option selected will be the one that best meets the business requirements.

If the requirements aren’t well defined then the selection of the preferred approach may well be flawed.

There will be requirements that must be met by the project, others will be less important; this is essential information for the selection process.

Some options may offer a different set, or magnitude, of benefits.  It is likely that the choice of option and approach will be highly influenced by evidence that the project has a close link to the strategic/corporate commitments and principles – which will result in tangible benefits.

Developing a strategy will optimise the options for achieving the requirements and benefits.

Achievement of the requirements should drive the decision on the procurement approach. If an option is selected which constrains the numbers of potential suppliers then competition and innovation will be restricted.

The strategy selected will be the one most likely to, not only meet the requirements but deliver the benefits that have been defined.

The benefit profiles can now be defined. Benefits should be identified and valued. Not all will survive as certainties. Outside bets need to be tracked as opportunities. Benefits should be consistently classified, with clarity about whether they are economic, efficiency or effectiveness. 

Maximising benefits may require changes to the Blueprint. Benefits development will have to be iterative with the Blueprint refinement. The value of the benefits for various options should underpin this activity; they will be different for each option and enable selection.

Ensure recommended actions relating to requirements and benefits are planned for.  

There may be recommendations on requirements that you will need to take action on.

It is normal for queries to be made on benefits as these are fundamental to having the project approved.

Complete the business model, finalise requirements and profile the benefits that can be expected.

The requirements should be defining a solution that can be used by the business. Be careful that the focus on deliverables does not underestimate the need to manage changes to processes and services.

The analysis should consider the changes to process, structures and technology around the products that are going to be delivered with the associated requirements included in the operating model.

This is a key point where the benefit profiles are finalised. The new Business Operating Model should clarify what is different from how it works now. The differences should enable the calculation of the anticipated improvements, whether they are in terms of efficiency, effectiveness or socio-economic. There should be clear line of sight between the Business Operating Model and a contribution to the Aspire Europe Business Plan, commitments and outcomes.

The development of the final detailed design should consider the impact on requirements and benefits.

The requirements will be the major contribution to the procurement - they should now be completed and put under change control (if not already done so).

It is essential that all the areas involved in implementation, support and use of what the project is going to deliver sign up to these requirements at this time. 

The requirements should include what operations and corporate will need to deliver as well.

The detailed specification may well introduce opportunities to extend or improve the benefits potential but, equally, oversights in the function of the project outputs could be terminal to benefits.

Confirm that the preferred option offers the highest level of benefits to the organisation and meets the requirements.

The requirements will provide the basis for the specification that will be put to market for the potential suppliers to bid for.

Achieving the operating model and detailed specifications should provide the basis for making the selection of the preferred approach.

As the procurement is being undertaken, the proposals from potential suppliers could provide opportunities for more or less benefits. The benefit profiles should be closely monitored and the proposals analysed against these.

Validate that benefits and requirements are achievable and attributed.

This is an opportunity to challenge the proposed requirements, specification and supplier solution to maximise the confidence that the level of change can be achieved.

The benefits will have a level of risk associated with them. This should be reflected in the value of the benefits being claimed in order to ensure that there is no optimistic bias for the benefits being aspired to.

Requirements and benefits achievement should be clearly attributable as part of the contract mobilisation. 

The detailed schedules in the contract should illustrate how they will achieve the requirements of the project and the acceptance criteria.  The requirements should be providing the basis for the agreement with the supplier.  The services in the contract should achieve the operating model.

The benefits are unlikely to be derived directly from the contract unless they are directly attributable cost reductions.  Care needs to be taken to ensure that benefits do not evaporate in the negotiations through compromise on requirements - short term savings can have significant long term effect on benefits.  

Benefit profiles and requirements should be updated to reflect the final Business Operating Model.

Once the contract has been awarded and the full specification is defined then the operating model should be updated to reflect how the new capability will affect the current operating model.

The model will define the future operating state. If this has now changed then it may well affect the benefit profiles.  The profiles should now be updated to reflect the changed scenarios, if appropriate.

Track opportunities for additional benefits and ensure requirements are met.

Each product must have an evidence based criteria for achieving the requirements.

It is likely that there may be requests for change to requirements or planned deliverables (see issues and changes). Approved changes will require previously baselined documents to be updated.

Any deviations or quality failures need to be monitored for their effects on the Business Operating Model and the achievement of their benefits.

Benefits should now be a major factor when considering any changes that arise during the build of the components.  

Check that the functionality required for requirements and benefits achievement has been delivered.

The requirements in the contract should now have been fully tested along with the supporting business processes that will support them. If there are any areas of functional failure, these should be managed as issues.

The results of the completion of the testing should now be reviewed against the impact on the achievements of benefits plan and the likely business performance during and post transition.

Ensure that the operations teams have skills to support the new capabilities and there are resources able to support the benefits achievement.

Experience and expertise in how the requirements were defined and assembled will help with managing issues that come out of transition.   There will be a greater need for experience of performance management to help exploit the benefit opportunities. 

Update the benefit profiles to reflect the new baseline performance.

The original baseline performance should be in the Benefits Profiles. These should be revalidated at this point because changes may have already happened, either detrimentally or as an improvement.  

This data is required to enable effect planning of transition.

Service levels should be monitored to ensure they remain within acceptable deviation.

Within the Benefits Realisation Plan acceptable performance degradation parameters during transition should have been set. These should be monitored to ensure that these parameters are not exceeded and mitigation plans are activated if they area.

Record benefits achieved at this point and validate future plans.

The achievement of the outcomes and re-stabilised operations means that the focus should now move to ensuring that the benefits are identified and actions taken to release them.  

Ensure that all positive effects have been recorded, it is possible that some of the benefits will not be achieved, so it is important to record any benefits achieved at this point.

Validate that requirements and benefits have been achieved or are attributed.

Lessons learned from the management of requirements should now be in place and other projects should be made aware of them. Benefits may still not be achieved at this stage - what the gate review should be looking for is projection showing that they will be achieved. Additional benefit reviews may need to be scheduled.

Ensure that the outcomes are stable, that there is confidence in benefits delivery and any new requirements or outstanding defects are logged as issues.

It is likely that some additional functionality will be required - this should be fed into the lessons learned and a new project developed to deal with this.

The early benefits should now begin to appear - this milestone provides an ideal opportunity to undertake a benefits review and confirm that everything is on course, as defined in the benefit profiles.