A business case is a story in six chapters. Each one causes the next. Skip one and the story breaks. The Value Story Canvas puts all six on one page, so the story you tell the CFO holds together from the cost of the problem to the return on fixing it. Enter your email and it lands in your inbox.
The Value Story Canvas from the book Fly the Deal. Six chapters, already laid out. Free.
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Current State → Investment → Capabilities → Future State → Value → Economic Return. The cost of the problem earns the right to talk about the investment. The return is only believable because of everything before it.
What does the problem cost today, per year? The more detailed the better. This is the baseline every other chapter is measured against.
What is the total cost of ownership? Fully loaded: license, setup, training, upkeep. A CFO will find the costs you left out, so put them in first.
What capabilities are you offering? Talk capabilities, not your feature list. Each one should map to a cost you named in the current state.
How does the business work differently? Before and after, in the client's words, not yours. If they would not say it, it does not go here.
What is it worth, and how confident are we? Broken down by type, with a conservative case and the main risk named out loud.
What does the CFO get back, and why now? Payback, 3-year ROI, and the cost of delay: annual value divided by twelve, for every month you wait.
56% of B2B buyers say vendors do not understand their business needs, and 79% of purchases now need CFO approval. A pitch built on features loses that room before anyone gets to the numbers. A value story starts with what the problem costs the business today, and every chapter after it follows from that. When the CFO can trace the return back to a cost they recognise, the business case stops being your claim and becomes their decision.
One A4 page. Six boxes, one for each chapter of the business case: current state, investment, capabilities, future state, value, and economic return. Each box has the question to answer and a prompt for what good looks like. Below them: five questions that unlock the numbers, and a five-point check to run before you send anything to the client.
Because each chapter causes the next. The current-state cost justifies the investment. The capabilities explain how the future state happens. The future state is where the value comes from, and the value is what produces the return. Skip a chapter and the CFO sees the gap: a return with no cause, or a capability with no cost attached to it.
Revenue at risk belongs in the story, where it explains why the problem matters and why now. Counting it in the return as well inflates the number, and a finance team will spot it. Keep the return to value you can defend, with a conservative case beside it.
It is the six-box Value Story from the book Fly the Deal, by Sultan Semlali, turned into a one-page tool you can fill in for a live deal.
90 minutes. Your team. A business case framework they'll actually use.