Competing demands at Meridian Retail
Meridian Retail operates 180 stores, an e-commerce channel and a central supply chain. Annual IT spend is €4.2 million, of which €2.7 million is already committed to running existing systems. The business information management (BIM) team has five staff and reports to the CFO. For next year, three business units have submitted competing demands. E-commerce wants a personalisation platform costing €900,000; store operations wants a point-of-sale replacement costing €1.1 million; supply chain wants a warehouse management upgrade costing €700,000. Each unit has an executive sponsor who argues their case is existential. The IT supplier says it has capacity for only two projects. Last year's prioritisation was settled by the CEO after a heated meeting, and the losing unit has been reluctant to cooperate ever since. The BIM team has been asked to prepare a prioritisation that the board will accept, with clear reasoning and no repeat of last year's fallout.
1. Which BiSL process should own this prioritisation, and what decision criteria would make the outcome defensible to the board?
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The prioritisation belongs to demand management at the business information management level, working with portfolio management. Demand management collects, aggregates and weighs demand from the business units; portfolio management then balances the total set of investments against strategy, risk and capacity.
A defensible approach has four elements:
- Agree criteria before any scores are seen: strategic contribution, business benefits and costs (total cost of ownership, not just project price), risk including operational and compliance risk, architectural fit, and deliverability.
- Require each sponsor to submit a one-page business case with measurable benefits and a 'do nothing' option.
- Separate mandatory work (regulatory, end-of-life, safety) from discretionary work; the €1.5 million is only for the latter.
- Score in a joint session using a documented weighted method, and record dissent.
The board then sees why, for example, the POS replacement scores above personalisation, rather than hearing three existential claims. The output is a ranked portfolio with a reserve for the unexpected.
2. How should the BIM team handle the executive sponsors and the supplier's two-project capacity limit?
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Treat both as governance design, not negotiation tactics.
For the sponsors, establish a demand board chaired by the CFO or CIO, with decision rights written down: the board decides the ranking, sponsors accept the outcome in advance, and no bilateral deals with the supplier are allowed. Publish the criteria and the scores so lobbying becomes visible rather than decisive.
For the supplier, the capacity limit is a supply-side constraint that connect management should verify and document, not simply accept. Connect management should request a capacity plan showing skills and timing, and test whether the limit is fixed or can be changed through sequencing, temporary resources or a different delivery model. If capacity is genuinely fixed, sequence the portfolio: fund the top two now and place the third in a planned pipeline with a decision gate. That preserves the relationship and avoids starting three projects badly. The BIM team should also check whether the supplier's estimate reflects demand-side delays, such as late specifications, which functionality management can influence.
3. What input do you need from functionality management, connect management and financial management before the decision?
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Each process answers a different question, and the board needs all three answers to compare like with like.
- Functionality management supplies the business-facing facts: what each proposal must achieve, which processes change, how many users are affected, the required information and integration, and a first estimate of effort and risk. It also identifies overlaps, for example whether the personalisation platform and the POS replacement both need the same customer data.
- Connect management supplies the supplier-facing facts: contractual capacity, rates, service levels, dependencies and lead times, plus the consequences of deferring a project for the supplier's roadmap and existing agreements.
- Financial management supplies the money facts: total cost of ownership over five years, including licences, hosting, support, internal effort and transition costs, and the funding profile.
Without all three, the board is comparing sales pitches. The BIM team should reconcile the inputs, flag disagreements explicitly, and present a single recommendation. If the warehouse upgrade has a lower headline cost but a higher five-year TCO, that must be visible before ranking.