In last year's budget round three projects came to our investment committee with my department named as the delivery team. Transport wanted route planning software. The Midlands distribution centre wanted a tool that books delivery slots with customers automatically. Customer service wanted a portal where trade customers could see and move their own deliveries. All three were sensible, and all three were approved.
Each business case was written honestly by the team that wanted it, and each included the same saving. The Midlands depot uses four agency planners who build the next day's loads and ring customers to confirm them, at a cost of about one hundred and forty eight thousand pounds a year. Each case said its system would remove most of that work, and each counted the four planners as its saving. The committee looked at the cases one at a time, at different meetings, so nobody saw the same number three times.
We found out a year later, when finance compared the savings promised with the budget. Between them the three projects had promised to save four hundred and forty four thousand pounds from a cost of one hundred and forty eight thousand. The planners were still there, now working mostly on the exceptions all three systems passed to them. The agency bill had fallen by about forty thousand pounds.
Nobody had lied. Each team answered the question it was asked, which was what its own project would save, and none was asked what another project had already claimed. As the department delivering all three, mine was the only one in a position to notice, and we did not look, because benefits were not our part of the form.
Every business case that claims a saving now has to name the budget line it will come from, and finance keeps a register of the savings already claimed against each line. A second project can still claim the same line, but it has to say what is left after the first. The first time we ran it, it found two more pairs of cases counting the same people.
A saving can only be made once. If projects are approved one at a time, keep one list of what each has claimed, or the business will approve the same benefit as many times as people ask for it.
– Serguey Shinder
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