It's that time of year again. Chestnuts are getting ready to be roasted and visions of sugar plums are dancing in everyone's head.  Well, maybe.  But one thing is for sure: it's budget planning time for 2010 and one of the things you've been thinking about is how to get that information governance (IG) project jump started within the context of meeting compliance and legal mandates against the backdrop of tight capital and operational budgets. 

Getting Started

A great way to get started - and a sure fire way to get the CFO on your side - is to conduct a return on investment (ROI)   business case analysis. ROI business cases enable a business-value focused customer/solution provider partnership.  Within the framework of IG planning, it will allow you to work with your preferred vendor to fully understand the financial and functional benefits of implementing a records management, email management, data loss prevention or other governance, risk and compliance initiative. 

A properly defined and structured ROI analysis is facilitative and conducted as a collaborative and iterative process between you and the vendor.  It can be a mutually beneficial endeavor when credibility is achieved by thorough discovery and analysis, as well as conservative benefit calculations.  In other words, it's one thing to have your vendor say, "our solution will save you millions of dollars" and another to actually have facts and figures you both agree on and outputs that support your assertions from both a hard-cost and soft-cost perspective. After all, the mark of a successful ROI is being able to earn "buy-in" from your constituents and stakeholders.

Developing the Business Case

As the graphic above illustrates, the first step in conducting an ROI is to define your goals. For IG projects there are typically compliance or legal mandates that drive acquisition of these types of solutions.  Another value IG solutions provide is data organization.  Calculating and assigning value to your primary, secondary and even tertiary drivers will help you to focus on the overall need and strategic fit the IG solution will have within your organization.

The discovery phase will allow you and the solution provider to understand the various hard costs and soft costs related to the project.  Storage, throughput, hardware and management/resource costs comprise a fraction of the overall financial metrics that should be accounted for and analyzed in an ROI exercise.

Once the discovery phase is complete an ROI analysis can begin.  Data gathered can be inputted into an ROI tool resulting in a thorough and robust business justification document.  Because the output is derived from mutually agreed upon data elements through a collaborative process, the business case can be readily justified and deemed credible as it will contain objective and detailed financial analysis.

ROI business analysis is a sound and objective way to not only understand the value of an IG initiative, but it is also a good way to start your 2010 budget process and line up the support you'll need financially and operationally to build and sustain this program over the long haul.