The guide you've been looking for

If you’re a Commercial Manager in a mid-market company, you’ve probably been asked to do some version of this:

“We need a better way for ops to write business cases, and for finance to evaluate them properly.”

What you weren’t given:

• A mandate

• Extra headcount

• Or time to redesign half the organisation

So the real task becomes:
How do I fix this without becoming the bottleneck?

Step 1: Stop Treating This as a Documentation Problem

Most companies respond by creating:

• A new template

• A longer checklist

• Another SharePoint folder

None of that solves the real issue.

The problem isn’t the document template.
It’s that ops teams don’t know how to think through a case in a way finance can assess quickly.

Until you fix that, finance will keep reworking cases and you’ll stay stuck in the middle.

Step 2: Define what needs justification

Get spend types and limits clear. Confirm what kind of justification is required based on this.

It allows team member to own the business case, while management evaluates it.

At minimum, define approval limits and process steps across:

• Capex vs Opex

• Budgeted vs Unbudgeted

Example approval matrix - check out a more detailed example here. 

This table is not the system. It’s an input.

Balance rigour with practicality

A fit‑for‑purpose matrix:

• Is simple enough that people actually use it

• Is strict enough to prevent leakage

• Evolves as the business grows

Over‑engineering this stage creates avoidance. Under‑engineering creates chaos.

Digitise it early

If your approval logic lives in a PDF, it’s already failing.

Use a platform like Riff to:

• Encode the matrix once

• Let people work naturally on ideas

• Have the system determine who needs to approve what in line with your matrix

No flicking. No guessing. No stale documents.

Confirm what business case requirements are in place - here's an example:

Business case requirements apply regardless of whether spend is budgeted or unbudgeted. Budget inclusion does not remove the need for commercial justification; it only affects approval authority.

Business case thresholds

Thresholds apply to total contract value or total project cost, not annualised spend.

Short-form business case (≤ $100,000)

A short-form business case must provide a clear, concise justification and include:

1. Problem or opportunity statement

2. Proposed solution

3. Total cost and spend classification (Capex/Opex, budgeted/unbudgeted)

4. Expected benefit or outcome (financial or operational)

5. Key risks or dependencies

6. Confirmation of budget availability (if budgeted)

The objective is clarity and speed, not exhaustive analysis.

Long-form business case (> $100,000)

A long-form business case is required for all commitments exceeding $100,000, including budgeted spend.

At minimum, the long-form business case must address:

• Clear definition of the problem or strategic objective

• Options analysis (including do nothing)

• Financial analysis (ROI, payback period, NPV where applicable)

• Assumptions and sensitivities

• Non-financial impacts (safety, operational, strategic, ESG)

• Key risks and mitigations

• Implementation considerations and dependencies

Long-form business cases must be sufficiently robust to support executive or Board-level scrutiny.

Step 3: Shift the Work Upstream (Without Saying It That Way)

Right now, finance and commercial teams are doing too much of the thinking after submission.

A better model:

• Ops does the first pass of structured thinking

• Finance evaluates, challenges, and refines not rewrites

The easiest way to achieve this isn’t training sessions or long guides.
It’s giving ops a tool that walks them through the thinking while they’re doing the work.

This is where Riff fits naturally. Ops uses it to structure their case. You get something closer to decision-ready by default.

Step 4: Make This the Path of Least Resistance

If the process feels heavier than the old way, people will bypass it.

The test is simple:

Is this easier than emailing a half-formed idea to a manager?

When done well, the answer is yes because it reduces back-and-forth, guesswork and rework. Riff does the writing, they can use voice mode to skip the typing, managers are giving them compliments for using better tools - they feel better about it.

That’s when a Commercial Manager stops chasing clarity and starts seeing decisions flow.

How to Set Up a Business Case Process Ops Will Use and Finance Will Trust

Most Commercial Managers are trying to balance two opposing forces:

• Ops wants speed and flexibility

• Finance wants rigour and consistency

If you lean too far either way, the process breaks.

Here’s a practical way to design something that actually sticks.

Step 1: Be Explicit About When a Business Case Is Required

Ambiguity kills adoption.

Set simple rules, for example:

• Any spend over $X

• Any initiative requiring headcount

• Any change with operational risk

If people don’t know when a business case is expected, they’ll either over-document or under-prepare.

Step 2: Separate “Writing” From “Evaluating”

Ops and finance are doing different jobs and the process should reflect that.

A clean split looks like this:

• Ops: articulate the problem, options, and impact

• Finance/Commercial: assess assumptions, ROI, and risk

What causes friction today is that ops doesn’t know what finance will care about, so they guess.

Tools like Riff remove that guesswork by prompting the thinking finance expects before submission.

Step 3: Standardise the Questions, Not the Answers

Rigid templates fail because real situations vary.

What works better is standardising the questions:

• What’s the commercial upside?

• What’s the downside risk?

• What assumptions are we making?

• What happens if this doesn’t deliver?

When every case answers the same core questions, finance can evaluate faster, even if the context differs.

Step 4: Create a Lightweight Review Rhythm

Instead of endless ad hoc reviews:

• Require cases to be submitted through the same structure - such as Riff

• Focus discussion on trade-offs, not basic clarification and keep communication in one spot

Over time, quality improves because expectations are clear.

Ideally, feedback turns into intelligence AI can use to help operations answer questions better up front going forward as well.

Where This Gets Easy (Instead of Hard)

The reason many Commercial Managers struggle to implement this isn’t lack of insight it’s execution.

Riff works well here because:

• Ops teams don’t need to be trained upfront

• Finance gets more consistent inputs

• The process embeds itself into everyday work

You’re not enforcing compliance.
You’re giving people a better way to get decisions made with tools they actually like using.

And that’s the difference between a process that exists and one that actually works.