Continue as-is
No immediate investment. Manual effort and key-person dependence remain.
ILLUSTRATIVE OUTPUT / FICTIONAL SCENARIO / V1
A decision you can
put in front of the board.
Meridian Services is a fictional organisation. Every scenario, figure and role below is illustrative. This sample demonstrates the structure of an engagement output.
01 / EXECUTIVE DECISION
Approve a bounded pilot.
Authorise a six-week reporting automation pilot with a £30,000 spend cap. Release further funding only after finance validates the baseline, operations accepts the output and security approves the controls.
02 / EVIDENCE AND UNCERTAINTY
Know what the recommendation rests on.
Scenario assumption: twelve analysts each spend ten hours a week preparing recurring reports. At an assumed £50 hourly cost, that represents £312,000 of annual capacity across 52 weeks.
Value hypothesis: a 40% reduction could release £124,800 of annual capacity. This is neither verified savings nor a cash benefit; adoption, seasonality and capacity redeployment need validation.
Evidence required: time samples, report inventory, error rates, access controls and a finance-approved cost baseline.
03 / OPTIONS AND TRADE-OFFS
Make the alternatives explicit.
Bounded pilot — recommended
Tests value and control with limited commitment. Requires protected specialist time.
Enterprise rollout
Broader potential benefit, but the evidence does not yet justify the cost or change burden.
04 / DELIVERY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
90 days, three decision gates.
- Day 30 — Finance Director: approve the measured baseline, benefits definition and pilot controls.
- Day 60 — Operations Director: demonstrate cycle-time reduction and accepted output quality; record realised results against the baseline.
- Day 90 — Executive sponsor: decide whether to scale, revise or stop, using the evidence and actual delivery costs.
05 / RISK AND OUTCOME REVIEW
Measure the result, including the cost.
Track preparation hours per reporting cycle, correction rate, active adoption and cumulative implementation cost. Keep capacity released separate from cash savings. The benefits owner records evidence and explains variance at each review.
Stop or revise the pilot if access controls fail, output quality falls below the agreed baseline, or the approved spend cap would be exceeded.
YOUR NEXT DECISION