Hard savings
Quantifiable reductions you can take straight out of the budget: saved people or saved licence costs. They hit the P&L directly.
EBCG Leadership Talk · 18 minutes
From investment to impact.
Why do brilliant business cases so often fail after approval?
Irena Prášilová, CTO Portfolio Director and Prague PMO Lead (ex-MSD), joins Daisy Adose to discuss what happens after a business case is approved and how leaders keep the promised value alive.
Irena Prášilová · Moderated by Daisy Adose, EBCG · 18 min · Watch on Vimeo
Next Leadership Talk · 22 October 2026 · 2:30 PM CET · Free live The Rise of the PMOs: Where We Are HeadedWith Sachin Raje, Director, Strategy Realization Office, MRL Global Medical and Scientific Affairs, Merck. Hosted by Daisy Adose, EBCG. Join on LinkedInKey ideas
A business case is not a promise.
Approval is where the real work starts. Four ideas from the conversation on how to keep a business case alive until the value is in the P&L.
- 01 · 02:23A hypothesis.
Treat the business case as a living body, not a document that is forgotten.
Every company has portfolio governance and an approval process. What differs is whether the case stays tied to strategy, is led through benefits realisation and is measured after delivery.
- 02 · 04:03An owner.
Set up a value realisation workstream the moment delivery starts.
Once scope, tools and platforms are clear, confirm the benefit hypothesis with every workstream and make one body responsible for tracking value.
- 03 · 07:11The gap.
If only half the benefit is confirmed, make the team responsible for finding the rest.
Define how each benefit is quantified, where the data comes from and which financial systems will measure it.
- 04 · 11:26A rhythm.
Measure value on a quarterly rhythm, and report it next to delivery.
Review the assumptions, benefits and KPIs in quarterly business reviews and take confirmed numbers to the steering committee alongside timelines.
What counts as value
Three kinds of benefit. Not equally hard.
The benefits committed in a business case do not all show up the same way in the P&L. Knowing which is which keeps the conversation honest.
Cost avoidance
Cost that would arise in the future, for example from manual, labour-consuming work. Part can come out of the forecast; part stays less tangible.
Operational efficiency
The new solution lets teams do more through automation or work nobody expected to be possible. Real value, but not a line you simply cut.
The expensive lesson
Delivering against unrealistic assumptions.
Asked about the most expensive business case she has seen fail, Irena went back to an SAP implementation at an FMCG company, long before pharma.
Cost and resources were underestimated. At go-live, significantly more people, time and scope had to be added. The damage ran to a few million US dollars.
In 18 minutes
Jump to the moment.
Irena Prášilová
CTO Portfolio Director and Prague PMO Lead (ex-MSD). Previously managed a 300 million portfolio and operational budget at MSD, and delivered business cases at Accenture.
Daisy Adose
Programme Producer at EBCG.