The primary measure of project success is ‘did we deliver the business outcomes and benefits?’ Yet, less than 30% of firms attempt to measure benefits realization and even fewer do it well. Most try to measure the final financial outputs - yet these are the least stable elements of benefits and the hardest to track. We therefore made it easier. Our Benefits Realization Management TOPology measures the delivery of

• the project outcomes - the defined enabling states
• the desired business outcomes - the targeted business end states
• the associated business benefits - where the value is
• the financial value of these benefits - the resultant scorecard
• and the financial value drivers - the bases, assumptions and estimates that underpin the financial values.

Cumulative delivery of these ‘inputs’ to the delivery of benefits ensures that both the route to and realization of the value is tracked and measured, and changes in circumstances are taken into account. The result is a realistic benefits management process. To do this, our benefits management approach simply

• plans and tracks the delivery of the project to ensure the benefits are realizable
• plans, tracks and manages the delivery of the business change activities to ensure the available benefits are realized
• encourages the delivery of benefits progressively throughout the project’s lifecycle; building belief in and commitment to the project while reducing its net cost to the organization
• identifies, tracks and analyses legitimate variances in the financial ‘value drivers’ - to know what the real value of any benefit is (at any time)
• analyses any realized benefits’ value variances so as to recoup any missed value, fast.

TOP™’s Benefits Realization Management TOPology enables you to manage the process from the identification of the benefits, through their delivery, to their practical, easy measurement. It ensures you get the ‘gain’ for the ‘pain’ of the project — not as a ‘hoped for after-effect’ but as the managed raison d’etre of the project and as its primary measure of success.