Whenever a business opportunity emerges, any company's management (i.e.: marketing staff, financial officers, legal advisers etc.) has to assess the viability of the opportunity. This may be done through analysis based on financial measures such as the expected Return-On-Investment (ROI) or other business measures. The purpose of the assessment is aimed at eliminating any non-profitable/non-desirable business engagement. In today's dynamic business environment with intensive competition the dilemma is quite simple: On one hand there is a need to perform a thorough background analysis, resulting in a high cost and time consuming efforts. On the other hand, the faster the relevant analysis is completed naturally the chances to achieve the business opportunity is much better (for example; to sign a contract with a customer before the competitors do or to submit a "winning" proposal in a public tender). Sometimes management's due to various reasons such as lengthy procedures and\or time pressures decisions are based onintuitionand not onsystematic analysiswhich may lead towrongdecisions. In other words, the Business Engagement Process (BEP) has to be optimized and accessible since it may impact both, the business opportunity approval by management and the realization flow (Exploration, Research, Development, Qualification, Execution, and Customer Support). The conclusion is that in a dynamic business environment there is a need for a Generic and State-Of-The-Art Methodology, based on available Automatic Tool – a One-stop-shop – supporting the Go/No Go Decision made by management. In this article, we present a generic tool developed through an empirical case study in the ITC sector (Information, Communication Technology). This tool based on mathematical models transformed into simple questionnaires, may be applicable to many other types of businesses, hopefully upgrading the BEP from the exploration phase to the Decision Making execution phase.

Full text: IJEIR_1190_Final.pdf