Defence Program Managers are under enormous pressure to reduce program costs. They are also expected, at the same time, to raise productivity and product quality by improving business processes. The Information Technology (IT) revolution offers a significant potential for improvement. However, demonstrating the potential gains is difficult for several reasons:

• The cost of current activities is often poorly understood, or not available.
• There is limited experience with the new technology.
• Many programs that have made significant progress through CALS have not documented their improvements, or their costs, in a way that can stand critical scrutiny.

Fortunately, the IT revolution is now sufficiently well advanced to provide many examples world wide of successful implementation, in the defence business and more widely. As a result it is now possible, although still not easy, to develop a realistic business case for specific CALS investments, based on practical experience.

By far the most important criteria for pursuing the implementation of the CALS Environment on a given program are the tangible benefits to be derived from the investment required to implement and use it. Many of these benefits are not realised in the beginning of a program and are accrued over the life cycle of the system it produces. The risks associated with the CALS Environment must also be considered on a through life basis and mitigated through appropriate risk management. There is no standard prescriptive model for predicting the costs, benefits and risk management for the application of a CALS Environment to a NATO/Multi-national program due to the uniqueness of each program and the IT Infrastructures available for the program.

A matrix developed by an NCFP Workshop, provide an overview on the general categories of cost, benefits and risks associated with the application of the CALS Environment and concepts to a program..

The tailoring of the TLBM and the application of the CALS environment to the program needs will be based on what is available and affordable and therefore on the results of the Cost and Benefit analyses for the program. The method of measuring and confirming the required improvements should also be addressed. With suitable planning, the SDE itself can be used to collect the data needed by the assessment criteria, by capturing the actual program costs and performance improvements, on an ongoing basis. This information can be used to modify the CALS Environment over the life cycle and to justify any subsequent investment required for further improvement. Such data would also provide valuable feedback to NATO and the nations, by contributing to the growing pool of knowledge.