At least once in your career, you got the short end of the stick through no fault of your own, and your project didn’t receive funding.
Why and how did this happen?
You did your work with diligence; you may have dotted every I and crossed every t and then double-checked everything to be sure that you receive your funding, and then: nothing. Zero. Nada. The answer to why this has happened isn’t black and white. Let’s take a closer look.
First, you need to recognize that engineering projects and financial decisions almost always go hand in hand. Although you held up your end of the bargain and made the correct engineering decisions, you didn’t convince the business side that the funding was justified.
There is another scenario: the possibility that your company isn’t using CapEx correctly and has a flawed process that needs to be reset.
If this is the case, then you have every justifiable reason to strongly advise your company that it is time to embrace an integrated capital investment management solution with CapEx approval.
There is only a certain amount of capital to spread around for various projects in any business or organization. There are lots of departments and people with their hands out looking for their slice of the pie.
Thankfully, this doesn’t mean you have to get another diploma and a business degree to ensure that you don’t get hosed on your next project. It merely means that the process needs improving, and this is how it can be done.
Make Your Case.
It would help if you first began by creating your financial models. Every repeatable framework requires one, so make it count. Use the same level of dedication that you do on the technical side of the business. You don’t have to butter it up – be forthcoming and honest. You can also reach out to the CapEx owners and Finance team for ideas and help. You are all on the same team, and people are inclined to be helpful as a rule.
Now that you have created a concrete and thoughtful proposal that satisfies the business side and have paired it with an equally compelling technical brief, then the finding will become available, and your project will have a higher chance of approval.
Capex is your best friend.
Remember that game where you tell a friend a story; then they tell that story to a friend, then they tell it to another friend. Then through the chain of friends telling the same story, it changes from friend to friend so that by the end of the friend chain, the final story is quite different from the original version. It’s called broken telephone.
That is basically what happens with manual processes. It is an endless round of telephone tag and email chains where the story changes every time it gets kicked back and forth.
CapEx automation completely fixes this problem when leadership creates business rules that determine how projects are approved based on the type of project, cost, ROI predictions, and other determining factors. Simply put, this means that you won’t be burdened with outside x-factors like who to include in the review and approval process.
Additionally, the system is transparent. You can discover who is reviewing your request and where it is in the approval cue. This way, if a reviewer has any questions or needs more information, you make it available to every person in the chain, so everything is transparent, and there are no more overlapping questions or clarifications about the same things. Everyone gets their answers, and the process is streamlined.
Sounds great! How do I make it happen?
If you have made it this far in the article, then you can relate, and the chances are that your Finance team is still doing things the old way – the manual way. Your pitch to them is as simple as it is beneficial. All you need to do is let them know that CapEx will change their lives for the better. Tell them that a cloud-based solution will help engineers plan projects more efficiently. Tell them that CapEx can easily be implemented for the entire organization and help with all planning, budgeting, and forecasting needs on a single platform.
Analyst Bottom-Line
To push for a CapEx software implementation, you need to establish a compelling case for it. By gaining buy-in from executives in Finance, your work will become easier, but, more importantly – it will become more valuable. Isn’t it time to convenience your team that CapEx software is the solution to make the approval process better?
