Business Cases for Info Pros: Here's How, Here's Why

Citation

Calvert, P. (2009), "Business Cases for Info Pros: Here's How, Here's Why", The Electronic Library, Vol. 27 No. 3, pp. 554-554. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640470910966961

In the 1990s as senior librarians and archivists became managers and hence had to learn the language of business, we heard more and more references to “business cases” being made during seminars and workshops. This book provides a good introduction to making a business case in the information management environment. If you do not understand why business cases are made and how to make one, this is a book you will find very useful. One aspect of business cases that it covers well is the political environment in which such processes are inevitably used.

One of the most difficult aspects of business case preparation for the information services manager is trying to calculate the Return on Investment (RoI) of the proposed change. This book explains the process clearly and demonstrates that the RoI need not be a monetary amount but sometimes has to be stated as a less precise benefit, such as improved access to information that will enable staff to do their jobs more efficiently.

Some of the most useful content of the book are three case studies (though realistic, they are not actual cases) of building a business case. The business cases deal with:

1. 1.

   a proposal to hire an external consultant to conduct an information audit;

2. 2.

   a plan to license key electronic content and hire a librarian specialising in health information; and

3. 3.

   a proposal to license a news/media monitoring service.

All the cases are set in the corporate environment, though that does not mean they are not useful to information managers in the public sector. On the contrary, the absolute need to justify all expenditure on information services in the corporate world means that a hard‐nosed attitude is the only one that will bring success, so it offers valuable transferable knowledge to the public sector.

This is a smart little book, and if you need to write a business case it will give you a good RoI.