A simple business case template, walked through section by section
Templates are most useful when you can see one filled in. Below is a simple business case template with each section explained — and, to make it concrete, a single running example carried through every section. The example is deliberately generic and illustrative: imagine a small team proposing to replace a manual, spreadsheet-based process with a modest software tool. No real company, no real numbers — just the shape a completed case takes, so you can follow the same shape for your own.
Section 1: Executive summary
Purpose: the entire case in one short passage, written for someone who reads nothing else.
Illustrative example: "We request approval to adopt a scheduling tool at an estimated three-year cost of $X. The tool would replace the current manual spreadsheet process, which consumes roughly N staff hours per week and produces frequent errors. We recommend Option B (adopt the tool), which we estimate would pay back within the first year through time savings alone."
What makes it work: the ask, the problem, the cost, and the recommendation all appear in a few sentences. A reader who stops here still knows what is being requested.
Section 2: Problem statement
Purpose: establish that a real problem exists, with evidence.
Illustrative example: "The team maintains the weekly schedule in shared spreadsheets. Team members report spending several hours per week on updates, and version conflicts have caused missed shifts twice in the last quarter. The team lead confirms the process has not changed in three years while the team has doubled in size."
What makes it work: specific symptoms (hours spent, missed shifts), a named source (the team lead), and a trend (team doubled, process unchanged). No adjectives needed — the facts carry it.
Section 3: Objectives
Purpose: define what success looks like, measurably.
Illustrative example:
- Reduce time spent on scheduling administration.
- Eliminate version-conflict scheduling errors.
- Give team members self-service access to their own schedules.
What makes it work: three objectives, each checkable later. Note that each one traces back to a symptom in the problem statement.
Section 4: Options considered
Purpose: show that alternatives were weighed, including doing nothing.
Illustrative example:
- Option A — do nothing: continue with spreadsheets. Cost: the growing hours and error rate, which scale with team size.
- Option B — adopt the scheduling tool (recommended): license the tool, migrate the current schedule, train the team.
- Option C — build an internal tracker: a lightweight in-house solution. Lower license cost, but requires development time the team does not have and creates an ongoing maintenance burden.
What makes it work: three genuine alternatives, each with an honest drawback. Option C is not a strawman — it is a plausible choice that loses on maintenance grounds.
Section 5: Costs
Purpose: the full cost of each option over the same time horizon, with assumptions stated.
Illustrative example: "All figures cover three years. Option B: annual license fees, one-time setup and migration effort (estimated staff hours), training time for the team, and the annual renewal. Assumptions: license pricing per the vendor's published tier for our team size; staff time valued at the team's average loaded cost. Detailed workings are in the appendix."
What makes it work: the horizon is stated, the cost categories go beyond the license fee, and assumptions are named rather than buried.
Section 6: Benefits
Purpose: quantified benefits first, qualitative benefits second, all traced to the problem.
Illustrative example: "Quantified: the hours currently spent on manual scheduling (see problem statement) would fall to a fraction of current levels, freeing capacity equivalent to roughly N hours per week. Scheduling errors caused by version conflicts — two missed shifts last quarter — would be eliminated by a single source of truth. Qualitative: improved team satisfaction and fewer last-minute schedule disputes."
What makes it work: quantified benefits connect to stated facts; qualitative benefits are clearly labeled as such and kept secondary.
Section 7: Risks and mitigations
Purpose: show the risks were considered, each with a response.
Illustrative example:
- Low adoption: the team keeps using spreadsheets alongside the tool. Mitigation: retire the old spreadsheets on a set date; designate a champion to support the transition.
- Migration errors: schedule data is entered incorrectly during setup. Mitigation: run the tool in parallel for two weeks and reconcile before cutover.
- Vendor price increases: renewal costs rise. Mitigation: evaluate annually against alternatives; data export keeps exit costs low.
What makes it work: each risk is specific to this proposal, and each mitigation is an action, not a hope.
Section 8: Recommendation and next steps
Purpose: a clear recommendation and the concrete path after approval.
Illustrative example: "We recommend Option B. It addresses all three objectives at a known, bounded cost, with the lowest implementation risk of the alternatives. If approved: week 1 — procure the license and assign the migration lead; weeks 2–3 — migrate data and run in parallel; week 4 — train the team and cut over. We will report back after 90 days with measured time savings."
What makes it work: the recommendation is one sentence; the next steps tell the approver exactly what their "yes" sets in motion, including a built-in checkpoint (the 90-day report).
Using this template for your own case
Copy the eight section headings and fill them in order — but write the executive summary last, after the rest of the case has settled your thinking. Keep each section tight: if a section runs past a page, move detail to an appendix. And before you submit, run the pre-submit checklist in our common mistakes guide — it was written for exactly this moment.