Page 146 -

136 Managing Customers Through Economic Cycles

which approach will most effectively portray the potential
impact of your product or service on your prospective client.

In tough economic times, creativity is the key. It is impor-
tant to understand the full range of both traditional and
nontraditional business case approaches. There are multiple
approaches to business cases. Some are traditional, such as
revenue generation, mitigating revenue risk, cost displace-
ment, and cost avoidance. Typically these traditional meas-
ures are expressed in financial metrics and are targeted
toward current results.

There are also lots of nontraditional measures for busi-
ness cases that are more operational in nature and whose
focus is on future results. Examples of these approaches
are customer satisfaction (e.g. net promoter/detractor
scores), Work Value, cost and quality, option value, tech-
nical importance (infrastructure investing), competitive
advantage, and value of customers over time (customer
lifetime revenue).

Figure 6.1 depicts these approaches.

MULTIPLE APPROACHES MULTIPLE BUSINESS
MEASURES VALUE
Traditional
Revenue Generation Financial Current
Reduced Revenue Loss Results
Cost Displacement
Cost Avoidance

Non-traditional Operational Future
Customer Satisfaction Results
Work Value
Cost of Quality
Option value
Technical importance
Competitive Advantage
Value of customer over time

Figure 6.1