Originally delivered on 17 April 2012, this slide set is still relevant today. It describes how Benefits Management fits in with the Project Management lifecycle, where Projects should only be initiated once the benefits have been determined, and the decisions a project manager makes should optimise Benefits Realization Management (BRM) rather than simply try to reach the next milestone (see especially slide 7)

1. The Social Return Company Ltd
Benefits management in reality
– lessons from success
Dr Hugo Minney
NHS – Commissioning Support (NHS CDD) and GP led
Provider (Easington South Health)
Management Consultancy (The Social Return Company Ltd)

2. The Social Return Company
How we’ll do this workshop
• What is Benefits Management in
reality?
• Case Study 1 – retro-fitting
benefits management onto
£60million of existing spend
• Case Study 2 – major ICT
(“infrastructure”) project doesn’t
need a business case
• Case Study 3 – User experience of
service – is it just a nice to have?
• Applying the lessons in all
environments

3. The Social Return Company
IS
•For the business case, pseudo-financial
Catherine Cookson (with a bit of optimism bias)
•Looking back, blame apportioning
SHOULD BE
•decision-making tool
•Motivator, Inspirer, Culture Changer
Benefits Management

4. The Social Return Company
• Maternity cover director wants a report to show
he’s spent his time wisely
• 160 initiatives costing £60million, all with
business cases
– Tell-tale names like “3 additional ECPs”
• No useful project reporting, no visible change in
the high-level outcomes (that couldn’t be
attributed to other causes)
• Actually no project management methodology
(though plenty of theory)
• Benefits Management stood no chance here
Case Study 1 – NHS Innovation

5. The Social Return Company
• Team of 3
• Understand the explicit and implicit targets
– 11 Key Objectives
– 24/7 service delivery to the population
– Relationships to other service commissioners
and providers, and the population
– Constraints (financial, political, cultural, legislative)
• Permission to proceed with radical empowerment of front-line staff
• Teach – show each team where they fit in, and what they
contribute to directly (let them decide for themselves what they
should contribute)
• what would be relevant if you could measure anything (if necessary
coach them to take a wider view)? Right, how would you measure
that? Not the easiest, but with a will there’s a way
Case Study 1 – what we did

6. The Social Return Company
• “even if the Board don’t endorse this, we’ll measure and
report anyway” (nurses and AHPs are traditionally number-
phobic and everyone hates performance management)
• “This is really important – you’d better present to the Full
Board”
• “we don’t need you to do phase 2, it is now part of the
culture (and survived the substantive director’s return)”
• Decisions made where and when they are needed, and
teams work together for the good of the customer
• “Now I remember why I joined the NHS. I can tell my
grandchildren ‘I did a good job this week’ “
Case Study 1 – the result

7. The Social Return Company Ltd
Define Benefits
Case for
Investment
Quantify benefits
Milestone achievement
Enablers
Resource input
Milestones delivery
Enabler benefits
Benefits realisation
What benefits
deferred and how
to monitor them
Benefits
Framework
Assess
Needs
Review
Current
Decide
Priorities
Strategic Planning
Design
Service
Shape
structure
Specify & procure
Access
to care
Clinical
Decision-
making
Manage performance
Manage
performance
WCC
Idea
Initiation
Define Deliverables
Milestones
Resources
1st
stage project plan
Kick-off
Project monitoring
Project delivery
Governance
Closedown
Project
Management
Case Study 1 – a UNIFIED APPROACH

8. The Social Return Company
• “Infrastructure” projects are projects that are so
expensive that no business case justifies them, so
they go ahead anyway
• Most of the project director’s time is spent
removing obstacles, and most of the obstacles
are competing systems that might beat him to
the desired result
• People voting in favour aren’t the ones
spending their own money
– feels like a house of cards
Case Study 2 – contribute to a
Business Case

9. The Social Return Company
• Key risk for the project – that the support from
external bodies dwindles
• So role of BM is to generate enthusiasm
• By asking “what are you going to get from this
project – and therefore how much do you want it
to succeed?”
• Complaint – stakeholders “too enthusiastic” –
they want it now instead of waiting
• Result – project funding retained
inspite of cuts everywhere else
Case Study 2 – the role of the
Benefits Manager

10. The Social Return Company
• Advocates believe it is important – DH says so
but there’s no extra money
• Business cases and ROI don’t put a value on
User Experience; it’s “Nice to Have” but at
times of cuts . . .
• Who benefits anyway? Commissioners don’t
put a value on benefits to provider
organisations, who in return don’t put a value
on any benefits to commissioners
Case Study 3 – is User Experience
important?

11. The Social Return Company
Case Study 3 – What we did
 Social Return on Investment (SROI)
 Decide what’s in and out of scope,
and who are stakeholders
 Talk to representative stakeholders
(around 40, over 50 interviews)
 Build chains of causality and
calculate financial equivalence value
(usually direct financial return)
 Sanity check with all stakeholders
(and keep all workings transparent
and clear)
 Attribution, alternative attribution
 Sensitivity Analysis

12. The Social Return Company
Case Study 3 – what we found
• People need more support if they aren’t being
listened to – and a few hours every week adds up
to a lot of money (5.78x)
• Staff feel more engaged and take less sickness/
absence (1.17x)
• You can put a value on employability, even if you
only count those who actually get a job
• You CAN put a value on contract compliance,
even compliance with “readiness to innovate” –
and it is measured in staff overtime and legal fees
(1.48x)

13. The Social Return Company
“One of the great problems of
our age is that we’re governed
by people who care more
about feelings than they do
about thoughts and ideas.
Now, thoughts and ideas –
that’s what interests me.”
Hard factors vs. Soft factors

14. The Social Return Company
• Get those who are “done to” involved – without them the
delivery is likely to fail however well the project goes
• Don’t measure easy things, measure things that matter
• Cause and Effect, Chain of
Causality – sometimes the
big effect is one or two
changes down the line.
The business case can
measure the important things
(with a bit of imagination)
• Get everyone involved –
everyone needs to care
• Use the right questions to
focus attention
Application : Commercial World

15. The Social Return Company
• Many political and cultural obstacles can be moved
with careful application of BM
• Share out the work (specialist teams to measure
specific things eg all financial calculations to be done
by the finance department) and get everyone thinking
about achieving the desired result
• Everyone – clear and concise reports; explain context,
make it matter
• Empower and delegate – with the right questions and
the right measures in place a team can see when and
what they need to improve, and do it when it needs
doing
Application : not-for-profit

16. The Social Return Company
Any Questions?