I just ran across an interesting presentation on the use of metrics in product management by Dan Olsen, which shines some light on the art of convincing the business side of the organization of the value of a proposed solution.  Though the metrics in the presentation are primarily website-related, including click-through rate and rate of registration for a site, the concepts are still applicable to all types of business cases.

Particularly insightful is the idea of graphing the ROI of various benefits in an attempt to illustrate the value proposition (slide 26).  Those customer benefits which have the highest importance to the user, but which have the lowest current satisfaction rate, may be the ideal benefits to bring to the table first, or as labeled within the slide deck, “upside potential.”

Have a look!