Business cases are everywhere in B2B sales — and almost none of them are real. CGI named, scoped and priced the work of proving value, and turned the business case from a sales document into a service.
Our research keeps finding the same gap. Business cases are widely discussed in B2B sales, but few are built as a joint, decision-grade process with the customer. A supplier spreadsheet based on supplier assumptions is not yet a business case the customer can govern or defend — it is a pitch with cells. The conversation with Frank Van Nistelrooij of CGI is the clearest account in our research base of how one supplier closed that gap: by turning the proof itself into a product.
Proof of Value, not proof of concept
CGI distinguishes a Proof of Value from a proof of concept. A proof of concept tests whether a solution works in a limited scope. A Proof of Value builds the business case for the full scope: typically six to eight weeks, a small joint team, confidentiality arrangements, and access to the customer data needed to make every assumption explicit. Only the customer can validate the operating baseline, the internal costs, the constraints and the decision logic — so the customer co-authors the case rather than approving supplier calculations.
Naming it, scoping it, pricing it
The important innovation is commercial as much as analytical. CGI has named, scoped and priced the activity. It is not presented as an informal request for the customer to help a salesperson close a deal. It is a defined service the customer can buy, co-fund or formally commit to.
Naming the work gives it identity. Scoping it gives it governance. Pricing it signals that both sides must resource it seriously.
Productising the case changes behaviour on both sides. Informal free consulting is easy to postpone, under-resource or dismiss; a named and visibly priced Proof of Value is easier to schedule, staff and defend. Because the customer helps build the logic, the internal sponsor is better equipped and more motivated to argue it afterwards. And the output does not disappear after signature: it becomes the baseline for implementation and for measuring the value later. That is the demand we call “Show the evidence”, made operational — a decision-grade business case as a value proposition in its own right.
Keeping the promise alive
The case does not stop at the decision. CGI attaches outcome-based commitments and recurring executive reviews: the original business case is kept alive, tested against changing conditions and corrected when the customer’s context moves. In some engagements CGI assumes broader operational responsibility — but only where it has the authority, data and resources required to actually influence the outcome. That restraint is the point: this is the demand we call “Guarantee the results”, and a guarantee is only credible when it matches the supplier’s control, the customer’s maturity and the quality of the baseline.
The honest qualifier
A Proof of Value cannot be bought by every customer. It requires data access, cross-functional involvement and a sponsor willing to have assumptions made explicit — a customer who wants to keep the supplier at brochure distance cannot co-author anything. The mechanism selects for the relationships in which systemic value is actually decidable, and quietly qualifies out the rest. That is a feature, but it has a cost: it narrows the funnel before it deepens it.
The work
The business case is no longer the paperwork of the sale. It is the first deliverable — the place where the promise is engineered, agreed and made governable before anyone signs. The suppliers who treat it that way are selling certainty. The rest are selling spreadsheets.
How the business case feeds the full cycle — design, selling, realisation, capture: see the Value Engineering Cycle. From the Future of Selling research programme, co-led by Prof. dr. Régis Lemmens and Prof. dr. Javier Marcos — see the working paper Engineering Systemic Value in B2B.