L4M2 Exam Dumps : Defining Business Needs

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (from CIPS L4M2 – Business Case Development)

A robust business case must:

Quantify costs and risks (financial, operational, environmental).

Identify and justify business benefits (savings, value, compliance, performance).

Supplier lists or informal notes are not appropriate inclusions.

Thus, Option A (1 and 3 only) is correct.

Relevant L4M2 references:

“Structure and content of a business case”

“Cost, risk, and benefit evaluation in justification”

Explanation

The writing of a complex specification should be treated as a project because it requires the brain power from different stakeholders. Many tools and processes of project management can be applied to complex specification development. Before engaging with the stakeholders and implementing the project, the project initial document should developed.

A Project Initiation Document (PID) is one of the most important components of project manage-ment, which forms the foundation for a company project. It is a reference point during the entire project, for the client as well as for the project team.

A PID bundles documentation into a logical reference work that collects all important information needed to start and run a project from a good foundation. After that, Project Initiation Document must be transferred to all stakeholders, including business sponsors.

This forms the basis for the project management. The documentation from which the PID is com-posed include the business case in which the project’s justification can be found, the communica-tion plan and the project plan.

The PID is composed out of collected information and includes, among others, the following com-ponents:

- Project goal(s); what do you want to achieve with the project?

- Project size; how large is the project, how long does it take and how many people are involved?

- Project organisation; who are involved in the project, what are their tasks, responsibilities and authority?

- Limits and risks; what can cause a project to stagnate and are there risks related to the project?

- Stakeholders; who has a stake in the success of the project?

- Project checks and frame reporting; by carefully taking into account evaluation moments, it is clear to everyone what sample tests can be carried out during the process.

In addition, it is important that the Project Initiation Document also contains the following infor-mation:

- The background and occasion of the project, which together provide information about the con-text.

- The project organisational structure, which describes who has which management responsibility in the project.

- The project quality plan, describing who controls the quality of the products to be delivered and how it will take place.

- The total project planning, including the duration of all activities.

- The exception process, which describes how exceptions are dealt with and the steps of the escalation procedure.

- The risk log, including the measures that will be taken when there are unforeseen risks.

- The documentation structure of the project, in which the encoding and storage of all documents and products to be provided by the project has been recorded in advance.

Explanation

Public annual reports can be a source of information that helps the procurement professional to analyse an industry's cost and revenue using the line of best fit. Line of best fit is one of the most important outputs of regression analysis. Regression refers to a quantitative measure of the relationship between one or more independent variables and a resulting dependent variable. Regression is of use to professionals in a wide range of fields from science and public service to financial analysis.

In this case, by collecting and analysing 17 annual reports, the procurement manager can find the line of best fit which goes approximately through the middle of the data points with an equal num-ber of data points above and below it.

The slope of the line of best fit is the approximate variable costs the industry. The easiest way to calculate it is to take a point at the right-hand end of the line of best fit and note its cost and output levels. Divide the cost by the output and this gives and approximate figure for the cost per unit of output or variable cost. This gives an approximate value for the industry fixed and variable costs.