Making Technology Investments Profitable: ROI Roadmap to Better Business Cases
Take the mysteryand anxietyout of maximizing IT value It is not unusual for companies to scrupulously analyze a fifty-dollar expense report, yet blithely commit millions of dollars to Information Technology projects that statistics show fail over 500f the time. Making Technology Investments Profitable: ROI Road Map to Better Business Cases applies the authors proven VALUE-on-Demand™ methods to maximizing the business payoff from IT projects. Jack Keen and Bonnie Digriuss forward-thinking study provides an abundance of practical tools, tips, and techniques for elevating the role of ROI-savvy business cases to become a firms prime driver of improved payoff from IT investments. The book shows managers how to: Formulate simple, but powerful ROI business cases that help maximize the value from IT investments Develop easy-to-install procedures for selecting and prioritizing competing IT investments Implement straightforward methods for tracking IT val… More >>
Making Technology Investments Profitable: ROI Roadmap to Better Business Cases
Tagged with: Better • Business • Cases • Investments • Making • Profitable • Roadmap • Technology
I got this book amongst other related ones, for a management learning project I participate in. My background in formal evaluation of IT projects is essentially zero.
I expected this book to provide me with some oversight on the topic, and practical tools amd methods to carry out the assignment.
The book delivers on both aspects, so I feel I have to explain why I give it only a “fair” 3 stars rating.
The book conveys a host of conventional wisdom nicely and orderly packaged, a lot of “practical” stuff (that I don’t expect to be able to use in practice though), and a “solution to any situation in 11 steps” attitude, all of which imho make it essentially a sort of consultant-held 2-day course in written form.
Also, it’s useful in that you don’t get confused with several approaches, but just the ROI approach may not be enough. You’ll likely need more than this to get the job done.
In conclusion, it’s a good book, but not something you can’t do without, nor particularly enlightening, nor your definitive source on this topic.
The book is very informative for IT project manager. Mostly, it contains steps and procedures that can be applied during each phase (planning, implementation, and review).
I think those procedures are easy to understand but in practicing those, I guess it will takes time to see the result. And, I think the most time consuming from those steps are defining the payoff measurement criteria. Unfortunately, the authors do not explain or elaborate clearly on the selection of criteria. I know that choosing the criteria depend on companies. However, I like to see in the book how many criteria to choose and how we select them.
I agree that every project should have been evaluated. The book provides a great score-sheet that could be filled by the project users for realizing the IT benefits. It gives me an idea at least to ensure that everybody realizes the benefit of the new system. This also makes easier to track the benefits stream over the costs. Since everybody participates in the survey, the project team knows what to improve if there is a problem.
Overall, this book gives a lot new ideas on IT investment evaluation and IT benefits measurement. The authors provide great guidelines from planning phase to final (review) phase. In addition, the author also talked a little bit on how to deliver ideas to your boss with good impression and persuasiveness. However, I would like the authors to explain more detail on each procedure, i.e. what’s the importance of them to follow, what if we skipped some procedures.
Although this book is targeted primarily to IT purchasers, it provides valuable insight and guidance for those who market IT products. Too often, marketers use empty phrases to describe the potential value of investing in their products. The content in this book will help marketers substantiate those claims and make all of their product messages and promotional materials more credible and compelling.
After this book I feel that much more prepared to tackle my clients ROI expectations. Out with the spreadsheets and in with these new ways.
I recently read this book for a graduate class. If I were using this book to review an already created business case, it would be useful. The checklists for a business case can really help a case creator evaluate their work. In the instance that a manager or dicision-maker is evaluating a busienss case, the selection process criteria is helpful. Some of the information in the book is vauge. The steps to building a better business case are merely statments with little substance to how to actually do some of the actions the steps advocate. The calculations are unclear also. I went to the appendix and attempted to derive some of the figures conveyed in the book and could not do so. The book also offers little in terms of intellectual insight. I really feel that this book ignores important details with the hopes that the audit tools and other checklist will be sufficient to satisfy a reader of the book. If the audit tools do not satisfy a reader, the rest of the book drags on. I could see the authors of this book writing this book with the hope of simply making some quick sales.