There’s nothing more critical in benefits realisation than ensuring everyone is aligned and committed. Securing sign-offs and approvals can be challenging, but with Wovex, it becomes a streamlined and collaborative process. Wovex makes it easy to take manageable, incremental steps, guiding everyone through a clear workflow and producing essential outputs that support and evidence agreement at every stage.

There’s no hard and fast rule about the order you follow these steps in, but this provides a great reference point. Depending on your organisation’s needs, you may find that some steps naturally come first, while others happen in parallel. What matters most is ensuring that every stage builds towards a shared understanding, clear accountability, and robust tracking for benefits realisation.

Here’s a detailed guide to managing approvals and securing buy-in effectively using Wovex:

Start by creating a benefits map in a meeting or workshop. This is a great way to engage stakeholders early on, encouraging input and collaboration. Use Wovex to map out the flow of value, capturing how initiatives align with strategic goals and contribute to benefits.

This visual representation helps ensure everyone has a shared understanding of the relationships between initiatives, resulting benefits, measures and goals. Everyone can quickly see how their contributions fit into the broader picture, creating an opportunity for productive discussions and alignment.

Once the initial map is drafted, publish it using Wovex’s sharing tools. Share the map with stakeholders and invite them to comment. This collaborative step ensures that all parties can contribute to refining the map, identifying any gaps, and proposing improvements.

Publishing maps also builds transparency and trust, showing that every voice is valued and every perspective is considered.

When updates from stakeholder feedback are incorporated, it’s time to solidify the agreement. Add a note to the map specifying the date, and publish the improved version with version control in the title.

If you have the Teams Add-on, add the map to your team list to ensure easy access and visibility. This versioned approach makes it clear which iteration has been agreed upon and provides a solid foundation for future iterations.

As individual items on the map or in the workspace (e.g., benefits, measures, initiatives) are reviewed by leaders and subject matter experts, use Wovex’s Approved setting to mark them as approved. Add the approval date to ensure a record of when agreements were made.

Focus on refining details like titles, descriptions, categorisation, and calculation approaches. Engage stakeholders to resolve disputes, clarify expectations, and agree on key elements. This collaborative refinement process ensures ownership and buy-in from all parties.

Benefits realisation isn’t static—project scopes and external conditions often evolve. Continue to iterate and refine your benefits and measures as new realities emerge. Ensure that any changes are well-documented and agreed upon, so everyone remains aligned on expectations and responsibilities.

Once the fundamentals are solidified, summarise them in a Value Agreement. This document provides a concise overview for leaders and partners, highlighting:

The Value Agreement serves as a powerful tool to maintain focus, alignment, and accountability across the organisation.

Even before performance data becomes available, Wovex’s Delivery Status feature lets you set a subjective Health Status for initiatives, benefits, or measures.

Regularly review this status with colleagues to ensure benefits remain top of mind. This practice is especially useful for early-stage benefits realisation when concrete tracking data might not yet be available. Agreeing on the health status also reinforces accountability and responsibility among stakeholders.

When tracking data becomes available, use Wovex to complement the health-check status with data-driven insights. The combination of tracking data and subjective health status provides robust oversight, ensuring that governance processes extend seamlessly from early-stage approvals to ongoing performance evaluation.

Reports generated, once the actual data is flowing, are essential for governance and demonstrate the organisation’s commitment to accountability and transparency. If you have benefit owners set up, responsible for each benefit this data becomes their focus.

At key milestones or points of change, use Wovex’s Optimisation Add-Ons to evaluate options. Leaders can weigh the possibilities, assess scenarios, and select the best projects—or versions of projects—that align with current strategies, resources, and capabilities. This ensures that the organisation consistently delivers maximum value, even in the face of shifting priorities.

Wovex’s structured yet flexible approach simplifies what can otherwise be a complex process. Here’s how it makes managing approvals and building ownership straightforward:

With Wovex, managing approvals and securing sign-offs is no longer a daunting task. By following a simple, best-practice workflow, you can engage stakeholders, build consensus, and maintain transparency and accountability at every stage. Wovex empowers you to lock in agreement early, iterate effectively, and sustain ownership and responsibility for benefits realization throughout the lifecycle of your programs.

Start using Wovex today to simplify approvals and ensure everyone is pulling in the same direction.