Val's work: a business case
Operations reporting consolidation for a regional logistics operator
A committed business case Val assembled from the customer's own numbers, for an analytics vendor selling into a 46-site freight and warehousing network. Shown as it would arrive in the seller's Claude, with the customer's and vendor's names changed.
Sample output from a demo account. The companies and people are fictional and the figures are illustrative. The method, the structure and the standard for every number are exactly what Val applies to a real deal.
Business case: operations BI consolidation
Committed case · every baseline measured in the customer's systemsExecutive summary
The operator runs a 46-site network on reporting spread across a legacy on-premise reporting server, a departmental desktop BI tool and spreadsheets. The monthly network operations pack takes six business days, analysts spend twelve hours a week preparing data, and the two legacy tools cost $355,000 a year to keep running.
The ask: a three-year subscription (800 seats, $338,000 a year) plus an $85,000 implementation, to consolidate operations reporting onto one governed platform.
Confidence. Every baseline was measured in the customer's own systems, and the improvement figures come from the customer's six-week proof of concept. The spread between the conservative and optimistic case does not change the decision: all three pay back inside the term. If the largest lever moved by only three hours a week rather than five, the case still returns 22%.
| Case | 3-year benefit | NPV (8%) | 3-year ROI | Payback |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | $1,493,467 | $227,024 | 22% | month 23 |
| Expected | $1,921,838 | $589,069 | 57% | month 20 |
| Optimistic | $2,136,024 | $770,092 | 75% | month 18 |
Current state and cost of inaction
All five baselines customer-measured- Report cycle. The monthly network operations pack takes 6 business days from data-ready to published. Measured from the customer's reporting calendar over six months.
- Analyst prep. 42 analysts spend 12 hours a week on manual preparation. Measured from timesheet codes over six weeks.
- BI developer maintenance. 6 developers spend 16 hours a week maintaining legacy reports. Measured from the customer's ticketing system over a half year.
- Legacy tool spend. $355,000 a year: the reporting server ($205,000 licence and maintenance plus $40,000 infrastructure) and the desktop BI tool ($110,000). From vendor invoices and hosting charges.
- Executive trust. 15% of executive-facing dashboards sit on a certified source. Counted by the customer's analytics team.
Cost of doing nothing over three years: the legacy spend alone is $1,065,000, before any productivity is counted, and the six-day pack keeps network decisions a week behind the month.
Value levers
Productivity hours count at 50% as cash; ramp 50 / 90 / 100 across years 1 to 3| Lever | Baseline | Target (expected) | Range | Calculation | Annual value, steady state |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Faster report and close cycles | 6 business days | 2 business days | 210 hours saved per cycle (150 to 240) × 12 cycles × $68 × 50% | $85,680 | |
| Analyst time back from data prep | 12 h/week | 7 h/week | 9 to 6 | 5 h saved (3 to 6) × 42 analysts × 46 weeks × $68 × 50% | $328,440 |
| BI developer capacity freed | 16 h/week | 10 h/week | 12 to 9 | 6 h freed (4 to 7) × 6 developers × 46 weeks × $82 × 50% | $67,896 |
| Legacy tool consolidation | $355,000 a year | $765,000 retired over 3 years | Desktop tool retired at month 6; reporting server retired at month 12 | $355,000 | |
| Certified executive dashboards | 15% | 80% | Not converted to cash in a committed case | Not counted |
No double counting. Analyst hours and BI developer hours are different people on different timesheet codes. The report-cycle lever counts only the seven people who assemble the pack, who were excluded from the analyst sample.
Investment, timing, and what would falsify this
Risks named before the customer names them| Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription | $338,000 | $338,000 | $338,000 | $1,014,000 |
| Implementation | $85,000 | $85,000 | ||
| Benefit, expected case | $296,008 | $788,814 | $837,016 | $1,921,838 |
- The reporting server cannot be retired at month 12. Several operational feeds still run through it. If they are not migrated, the consolidation lever falls to the desktop tool's $110,000 a year. This is the largest risk to the case.
- Site supervisors do not use the scorecards. The viewer seats are priced on all 46 sites adopting them.
- Prep time does not fall outside the proof of concept. The pilot analysts were volunteers.
Assumptions log
| Assumption | Why | What would falsify it |
|---|---|---|
| 50% of productivity hours count as cash | Convention; not every freed hour is redeployed | The customer's finance team applies a different conversion |
| Ramp 50 / 90 / 100 | Convention | Go-live slips past month 3 |
| Loaded hourly cost $68 (analysts), $82 (developers) | The customer's FP&A figures | A different loaded rate from FP&A |
| Proof-of-concept improvement holds across all 42 analysts | Pilot of 8 analysts | Quarterly prep-time readings stay above 9 h/week |
| Reporting server retired at month 12 | The customer's IT migration plan | Any feed still routed through it at month 12 |
What to notice
- Every baseline says where it was measured. A CFO can check each one.
- The conservative case is shown first and still pays back. The decision does not depend on the optimistic number.
- The risks and the assumptions are in the document, not discovered in the finance review.
- One lever is deliberately not converted to cash. Val does not inflate a committed case with soft benefits.
Then, after the sale
Two years on, the same levers get measured against what was promised. See the value review Val produced for a second account.