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Business Cases

A business case is a packaged, defensible value argument that translates value models into stakeholder-ready deliverables. It includes an executive summary, financial analysis, risk assessment, and evidence-backed claims.

Who this is for

End User Executive Admin

Prerequisites

Overview

Business cases are produced in the Deliverables workspace. The platform uses Layer 4 agentic workflows to auto-generate drafts from value models, hypotheses, and evidence. Human reviewers validate claims before the case is published.

Each business case carries:

  • Executive summary — one-page narrative tailored to the economic buyer
  • Current state — documented pain points and baseline metrics
  • Proposed solution — capabilities mapped to outcomes
  • Financial analysis — NPV, IRR, payback period, and ROI percentage
  • Risk mitigation — identified risks with mitigation strategies
  • Evidence appendix — linked sources, confidence scores, and provenance

How it works

Generate a draft

  1. Open the account's Deliverables workspace.
  2. Click Generate Business Case.
  3. Select the target audience: CFO, executive, or technical.
  4. Choose the scenario baseline: conservative, expected, or optimistic.
  5. Click Generate. The Layer 4 Business Case workflow compiles the document.

The workflow retrieves the account's value tree, evaluates formulas, pulls evidence from the Evidence Library, and writes each section using structured generation.

Review and validate

Generated claims are checked against the Ground Truth validation state machine:

Status Meaning Action required
Extracted AI-structured from source Review for accuracy
Supported Linked to at least one evidence source Validate source relevance
Corroborated Two or more independent sources Fast-track approval
Approved Human-validated Ready for publication

Publish and share

Once approved, the business case can be exported as Markdown, DOCX, PDF, or PPTX. Sharing links are tenant-scoped and expire after 30 days by default.

Versioning and audit trail

Every business case maintains a version history:

  • Draft versions — auto-saved every 5 minutes during editing
  • Published versions — immutable snapshots tied to approval events
  • Amendments — tracked changes after initial publication

The audit trail records who generated, reviewed, approved, and exported each version. Audit logs are retained for 7 years and are accessible via Governance > Audit Log.

Evidence quality gates

Before a business case can be submitted for review, it must pass evidence quality gates:

Gate Requirement Failure behavior
Minimum evidence At least 3 evidence items linked Warning, not blocking
Confidence threshold Average claim confidence ≥ 0.6 Warning, not blocking
Source diversity At least 2 distinct source types Blocking for CFO view
Ground Truth alignment All material claims have a TruthObject Blocking for executive view

Deliverable views

View Content focus Best for
CFO view Financial metrics, sensitivity analysis, benchmark comparison Finance approvers
Executive view Strategic narrative, risk mitigation, competitive positioning C-suite presentations
Technical view Capability mapping, implementation roadmap, integration requirements Engineering evaluators

Approval flows

Business cases move through a standard review workflow:

DRAFT → NEEDS_REVIEW → APPROVED → PUBLISHED
   ↓         ↓            ↓
REJECTED  MODIFIED     ARCHIVED
  • DRAFT — Initial auto-generated state
  • NEEDS_REVIEW — Submitted for human validation
  • APPROVED — Reviewer accepts claims and financials
  • PUBLISHED — Shared with external stakeholders
  • REJECTED — Returned to draft with reviewer notes
  • MODIFIED — Published case edited after feedback

Permissions required

Role Permission Scope
Admin Configure approval workflows Organization
User Generate and edit drafts Assigned accounts
User Submit for review Assigned accounts
Executive Approve or reject Organization or assigned accounts

Required deliverables:write to generate; deliverables:approve to publish.

Limits and guardrails

Limit Business case generation is limited to 10 drafts per account per hour.

Limit Exported documents have a maximum size of 50 MB.

Limit Claims with confidence below 0.6 are flagged but not blocked from inclusion.

Troubleshooting

Issue: Business case generation fails with 'insufficient evidence'

Cause: The account has fewer than three linked evidence items for the selected value drivers. Resolution: Add evidence in the Intelligence workspace under the Evidence tab, then regenerate.

Issue: CFO view shows blank sensitivity table

Cause: The ROI calculation was run without enabling sensitivity analysis. Resolution: Return to Value Studio, open the ROI calculator, toggle Sensitivity Analysis, and recalculate.

Issue: Approval workflow is stuck in 'needs_review'

Cause: No user with deliverables:approve permission has been assigned as a reviewer. Resolution: Ask an admin to assign an approver in Administration > Workflows > Business Case Approval.

Issue: Exported PDF is missing charts

Cause: The chart generation service timed out or the sensitivity analysis was not run. Resolution: Re-run the ROI calculation with sensitivity analysis enabled, wait for chart generation to complete, and re-export.

Escalation path

For generation failures or workflow misconfiguration, contact your workspace admin. For suspected agent hallucinations, follow the Investigate Hallucinated Business Case runbook.