Business Case Composer

Follow this skill's evidence, artifact, privacy, action-control, and outcome-reporting rules below.

Domain: Sales.

Evidence and connectivity

Begin with authorized user-provided material and accessible work sources. Discover optional CRM capabilities at runtime and use them only to enrich or execute the job; never require a vendor, connector, record identifier, object name, or field name to begin when the minimum semantic evidence is otherwise available.

If CRM is unconfigured, unavailable, denied, stale, partial, or unsupported, continue with the supported baseline, disclose the affected scope, and block only the dependent conclusion or action. Distinguish an authorized empty result from failed or unexecuted retrieval. If no connected evidence source is available, ask for the minimum pasted facts or file needed for the next useful step and return a bounded framework or needs_input rather than inventing data.

Data Sources

Use relevant supplied material or applicable tools and sources you are authorized to access. These are options, not a mandatory checklist. Ask for missing essential input or context; unavailable evidence remains unknown, not negative evidence.

• Meeting Transcripts & Discovery Notes for customer-stated problems, baseline conditions and desired change.
• Email for the buyer's investment questions, decision context and confirmed requirements.
• Knowledge & Files for approved solution evidence, sourced financial inputs, assumptions and audience-cleared comparables.
• Record Snapshots & Exports for relevant deal context and dated investment or outcome evidence, not issued pricing.

Retain provenance, freshness limits and the existing evidence, privacy and authorization rules.

Purpose

Turn a deal or initiative into a decision-ready business case that argues from the customer's own evidence: their baseline problem, what continuing to do nothing plausibly costs them, what the proposed change contributes, and what it asks them to invest — closing with a value case a named reader can act on. Not a generic capability pitch and not a price quote.

Applicability

Use this procedure when a specific deal, account, or initiative is named and at least one piece of concrete customer evidence describing a problem or need is available — a discovery note, message thread, meeting record, or comparable document. A persisted opportunity record, a live pricing feed, or a resolved product catalog entry are not preconditions; the case can be built, and its gaps stated, from supplied material alone. Without at least one customer-evidenced problem or need, produce only the missing-input request rather than a case built on assumed pain.

Usage situations

• "Draft a business case for this deal."
• "Build the value case I can send to the buying committee."
• "Make the case for this initiative to the economic buyer."
• "Justify this deal for the named contact or role."
• Not for a list price or discount quote; use an authorized pricing or commercial-review procedure outside this catalog. Not a generic product pitch with no customer-specific evidence behind it.

Procedure

1. Identify the deal or initiative and confirm what customer evidence exists: discovery notes, message threads, meeting records, or a comparable document describing a problem or need. Without any of these, state that and request it rather than building a case on assumed pain.
2. Establish the intended audience from the ask. If the ask does not name one, propose a reasonable provisional audience — the contact whose evidenced role or engagement most plausibly fits a decision-shaping reader — and state it explicitly as provisional and open to correction. Do not silently substitute the most senior or most-contacted contact for a confirmed decision-maker; ask when the choice materially changes the case's content or tone.
3. Read the customer's own evidence for the baseline problem: their situation today, the specific pain or gap they described, and its business context. Take the problem from what the customer or their evidence actually states; do not generalize it into a stock pain point.
4. Establish the supported impact and cost of inaction from that same evidence — what continuing the status quo plausibly costs, delays, or risks, distinct from a stated intention to change. Label an inferred cost of inaction as a hypothesis with its supporting basis; do not present it as an established, measured loss unless the evidence itself states one. Where the evidenced model fits, cost of inaction can be expressed as affected units per period times avoidable cost per unit times number of periods; if total volume for the horizon is already supplied, do not multiply by time again. Show the unit, the source for every input, the horizon, and any exclusions or conditions, using only sourced or user/organization-supplied assumptions — this is one illustrative model, never a required calculation, and labeling an invented number an "assumption" does not authorize it.
5. State the desired change and what the proposed solution specifically contributes toward closing the gap identified in step 3. Tie each claimed contribution back to the stated problem rather than to a generic feature list.
6. When a real comparable exists, select a supported outcome from another account and state the comparison basis and limits. Weigh segment, size, solution overlap, and timing; do not require an exact match. Exclude the target's own account from independent comparables. Its prior purchases may be separately labeled same-account precedent, never independent social proof. A comparable supports plausibility, not a promise of the same outcome. When none fits, say so and use this deal's own evidence.
7. Assemble the investment and value case: what is being asked of the customer (the investment, not a price quote) and the benefit case for it. Use only supplied or evidenced inputs and explicitly stated, source-backed or supplied assumptions. Give every figure its appropriate dimensions: units, relevant volume or frequency and time basis, and currency for monetary values only. State the basis of rates and ratios. Keep monetary and nonmonetary benefit, and one-time and recurring value, distinct. Do not combine incompatible units, currencies, or periods, or count an input twice within a calculation. Traceable reuse in gross benefit, net benefit, and return on investment (ROI) is valid. If using ROI, state its formula, included costs and benefits, and common horizon; a zero or unknown denominator leaves ROI unquantifiable.
8. When available inputs are insufficient to quantify, present the qualitative case (problem, cost of inaction, contribution, comparable) together with a table naming the specific missing inputs, rather than filling the gap with an invented number. When a valid subset of inputs is available, calculate that subset and state what remains unquantified.
9. Compose the draft in this order: baseline problem, supported impact and cost of inaction, desired change and solution contribution, investment and value case, closing with a clear next step. Tailor language and emphasis to the confirmed or stated-provisional audience. Include comparable names, deal terms, quotations, and supporting rationale in customer-facing text only when authorized for that audience, or use permitted anonymization that does not reveal restricted details. Keep restricted supporting evidence separately internal or omit it pending clearance. Present the customer-facing text as a draft for review, separate from internal rationale and gaps.

Judgment

• A stated customer intention to change is not evidence of an established loss. Keep a cost-of-inaction hypothesis and its supporting basis separate from a loss the evidence actually measures.
• Seniority or contact frequency is not proof of decision authority or audience fit. If deal-specific stakeholder roles are unknown, label any inference from title and engagement provisional rather than confirmed.
• A comparable outcome supports plausibility; it does not itself prove this deal will produce the same result. State the basis for comparability — segment, size, product or solution overlap, timing — and its limits alongside the citation.
• Quantification needs appropriate dimensions and a source for each input or assumption; only monetary figures require currency. A labeled range does not license invented bounds.
• Keep cost and benefit on separate ledgers. A single avoided cost is a benefit, not simultaneously a cost reduction and a revenue gain, and a recurring charge is not a one-time investment. Do not fold an exclusion or a different time basis silently into a headline total. Potential avoided cost is not a guaranteed loss or realized benefit; state the conditions under which avoidance is plausible.
• An investment figure in this case is what is being proposed for the customer's decision, not a quoted price with contractual force; do not present it as issued pricing.
• Absent, partial, and conflicting customer evidence are distinct states: silence on a topic is not evidence it doesn't matter, a partial account supports a partial case, and conflicting statements from different sources should be shown together rather than resolved by picking one.
• A sensitivity range or additional scenario is useful only when the underlying inputs actually support more than one credible reading; do not build one to compensate for missing data.

Output

Deliver both a concise chat summary and one saved primary editable artifact, following the sections below. The artifact must present the customer-evidenced problem, investment and supported value case.

Chat summary

In chat, summarize the decision requested, the customer-evidenced problem, the strongest supported value argument, the largest missing input or assumption, and the proposed next step. Do not surface restricted internal rationale in a customer-addressed summary.

Artifact content

A business-case draft, ordered baseline problem, impact and cost of inaction, desired change and contribution, investment and value case, next step, tailored to the stated audience, with:

• the audience named, and whether it was confirmed or stated as a provisional default;
• the customer evidence each problem and impact claim is drawn from;
• the comparable cited with its basis and limits, or an explicit statement that none was available;
• every quantified figure with its assumptions and applicable dimensions (currency for monetary values, basis/formula for rates or ratios), or a missing-input table;
• the next step the reader is being asked to take.

A draft with an honest missing-input table is a complete, useful deliverable; it does not require a live record, a resolved price, or a confirmed comparable to be useful.

Artifact selection

Choose the narrative format for the complete business case, respecting the user's requested format; keep the required quantitative model separate:

• Word (.docx): Default for reviewing the customer problem, investment, value argument and decision.
• Excel (.xlsx): Also required when grounded inputs support quantification; provide an inspectable calculation model.
• PowerPoint (.pptx): Only for a requested decision presentation, retaining the full argument and separate model.
• Markdown (.md): When requested or Office fails; retain complete case and explicit model formulas, disclosing that live XLSX calculation was not delivered.

Use authorized, format-specific workflows. Keep content concise and styling simple. Plan changes together and apply them in as few supported batches as practical. Update authorized existing artifacts without creating duplicates or changing unrelated content. Follow Delivery and control for saving and reporting.

Delivery and control

Verify each save before reporting success and provide the actual links or locations. If saving fails, disclose it and provide clearly labeled unsaved content in chat, including explicit model formulas when the workbook cannot be saved.

Guardrails

Composing this draft does not persist to any business record, send to any recipient, or commit the customer to anything. No approval is needed to author a private internal draft from authorized evidence or save it as a file in an authorized location. Permission to contact the audience is not permission to disclose another customer's information or internal rationale. A request to send, share, or post the case outside this draft requires separate explicit approval of the exact recipient, channel, and final content, and confirmation that the operator has the standing and any required consent to make that contact — approval to draft is not itself authorization to send. Report the draft as proposed only, never as sent, delivered, or agreed.

When NOT to Use

• Not for a price or discount quote on specific products; that requires an authorized pricing or commercial-review procedure outside this catalog.
• Not for a generic capability pitch with no customer-specific evidence behind it.
• After-the-fact deal reconciliation and formal stage-readiness judgments require a dedicated procedure outside this catalog.
• Do not manufacture a customer pain point, a cost-of-inaction figure, a comparable win, or a quantified benefit where the evidence needed to support it is absent.

Required information

• Baseline: the deal or initiative identified, and at least one piece of concrete customer evidence describing a problem or need.
• Useful enrichment: an evidenced or organization-confirmed audience or decision contact, prior comparable engagement data, and applicable quantification inputs (units, volume, frequency, time basis, and currency for monetary values). Their absence narrows the case to a qualitative one with a missing-input table rather than blocking it.
• Missing-input question: "Which customer use case and investment decision is this for?"