Jim Wilton, VP of Product & Marketing at VEERUM, explains why a digital twin programme needs a credible business case as well as useful technology. A visually impressive pilot may attract interest, but it can stall if leaders cannot see how it supports the organisation’s priorities or what it saves in practice.
He recommends starting with a small number of operational problems that teams already face, such as time spent travelling to sites, preparing maintenance work or responding to downtime. Talking to the people doing that work helps identify where a digital solution could make a difference. From there, a team can establish what each activity costs today and measure what changes after the solution is introduced.
Jim distinguishes between improvements that are valuable to users and savings that can be demonstrated in financial terms. Both matter, but he argues that a funding decision is easier to support when the numbers are credible and tied to the organisation’s existing approval process. Involving finance and operations early helps teams agree on the baseline, check the calculations and connect a pilot to a realistic plan for wider deployment.
The presentation treats ROI as something to manage throughout a programme, rather than a calculation made once to secure approval. Teams need to decide which measures to track, where the figures will come from and how often they will report them. Jim also cautions against promising the full value of a rollout before the required work is complete; a phased plan can show what each stage is expected to deliver.
Watch the full presentation to explore Jim’s approach to building an ROI model and using it to guide digitalisation from the first use cases through to a broader programme.
Speaker
- Jim Wilton, VP of Product & Marketing, VEERUM
