Capstone project for Finance for Tech Teams

Make the case for the Partner app rebuild

Mangrove pays Lagoon Digital about $390,000 a year to build and run the Partner app: a $21,000 monthly retainer, about $90,000 of extra change work and about $4,000 a month of hosting. A change takes 6 to 10 weeks to reach shops, about 1,500 partner orders a week still come by phone at about $1.75 each to serve against $0.20 in the app, and the contract ends on 30 June 2027 with 90 days' notice. Mangrove owns its custom code, but Lagoon's core framework is licensed only while the contract runs. The finance committee wants a recommendation: stay and renegotiate, rebuild in-house, buy a B2B ordering platform, or a hybrid. Build the financial case: costs and benefits over three years with cash timing, unit economics per partner order, a cloud estimate for the in-house option with cloud cost per order, NPV and payback at Mangrove's 12% discount rate, a sensitivity analysis, the contract risks, and a recommendation.

What you hand in

A spreadsheet model with the options, monthly cash flows over three years, NPV and payback per option, and low, base and high scenarios
A one-page business case for the finance committee with the ask, the options considered, the numbers, the risks and a staged decision
A cloud cost estimate for the in-house option with its assumptions and the cloud cost per partner order
A short note on the contract terms to negotiate or watch: notice, exit assistance, the framework licence, SLAs and price caps

Check your work

Tick each item when your project meets it. Be strict: this is the rubric the reviewer uses.

Assumptions are explicit and sourced (contract facts, cost to serve, salaries, cloud prices), and each one is in one place in the model
Cash timing is modelled month by month (build period, parallel running, notice dates, ramp of benefits), not just three-year totals
Benefits are incremental against a stay-as-is baseline, with hard and soft benefits separated and soft ones haircut
NPV at 12% and payback are calculated correctly for every option
Sensitivity shows which assumptions matter most and the switching value that would change the recommendation
The cloud estimate is built from usage and gives a cloud cost per partner order
The recommendation follows from the numbers and the risks, and asks for a clear, staged decision with dates

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Model answer

The model answer opens once your capstone passes the review, so you can compare your work with an outline of a strong submission.

Hand in your capstone

Your links are checked automatically, then the work is scored against the rubric above, item by item, with comments. A pass counts toward the course certificate and shows on your profile.

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