5 Score for business value
With a long list of potential use cases, you need to prioritise. This step scores each use case on two dimensions. The first is business impact. The second, covered in Step 6, is feasibility. Together they give you the basis for a defensible roadmap.
Score each use case for business impact on a 1–5 scale:
| Score | Label | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Strategic transformation | Directly enables or protects a stated strategic priority. Without this, the strategy stalls. |
| 4 | Significant value | Measurable improvement to a key business metric with clear ROI. Stakeholders will feel it. |
| 3 | Meaningful improvement | Improves efficiency or decision quality in a specific area. Useful but not urgent. |
| 2 | Incremental value | Improves visibility but does not change decisions materially. Nice to have. |
| 1 | No direct value | Does not change decisions or outcomes. May be requested but will not move the needle. |
The scores only mean something relative to the strategy you documented in Step 3. A use case that would be a 2 at one company might be a 5 at another. Use the strategic barriers and priorities your leadership described to calibrate.
Example — B2B SaaS
Recall the strategy: grow to $500 million ARR by moving upmarket into mid-market and enterprise, and expanding into the US. The biggest barriers are a product not yet suited to larger teams, a sales team without enterprise deal experience, and an untested US go-to-market.
| Stage | Question | Score | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing | Which campaigns are driving signups, and what is the cost per trial? | 2 | Useful visibility but does not change how the team operates. |
| Ongoing usage | Which product investments would most improve retention? Which disengaged users are about to churn? | 5 | Directly answers what to build for larger accounts and surfaces at-risk revenue — central to the stated strategy. |
| Renewal | Which accounts are at risk of not renewing, and what should we do about each one? | 5 | Directly protects ARR at scale. |
Scoring is always relative to your strategy from Step 3. A full scored inventory is built line-by-line in a TrueState 360 Engagement.
Example — Non-bank lender
Recall the strategy: grow the loan book from $2 billion to $10 billion by lending to a broader range of borrowers, winning more customers directly rather than through brokers, and lowering the cost of funding. The biggest barriers are limited data on riskier borrowers, broker concentration, and slow document collection.
| Stage | Question | Score | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Document collection | Which applications are going to miss settlement targets unless we intervene? | 4 | Actionable intervention on the bottleneck many lenders hit at scale. |
| Servicing | Which borrowers are showing early signs of stress before they miss a payment? | 5 | Protects credit quality as the book expands — often the hinge for a broader growth strategy. |
| Referral | Which brokers should we invest more in, and which are costing more than they are worth? | 4 | Addresses broker concentration and mix when that is a stated priority. |
Illustrative scores only — your full use-case list from Step 4 should be scored end-to-end against your strategy.
You now know what is worth building. Step 6 maps the data you have, so that Step 7 can tell you what you can actually build with it.