"Written for business managers, information technology (IT) managers, business students, and researchers, this academic analysis offers insight into the expost valuation of IT by posing and answering key managerial questions. Topics covered include the business value of IT, IT planning, and IT benchmarks. Information is provided and strategies are outlined to facilitate systematic, effective, and consistent measurement of IT value."
The importance of demonstrating the value achieved from IT investments is long established in the Computer Science (CS) and Information Systems (IS) literature. However, emerging technologies such as the ever-changing complex area of cloud computing present new challenges and opportunities for demonstrating how IT investments lead to business value. Recent reviews of extant literature highlights the need for multi-disciplinary research. This research should explore and further develops the conceptualization of value in cloud computing research. In addition, there is a need for research which investigates how IT value manifests itself across the chain of service provision and in inter-organizational scenarios. This open access book will review the state of the art from an IS, Computer Science and Accounting perspective, will introduce and discuss the main techniques for measuring business value for cloud computing in a variety of scenarios, and illustrate these with mini-case studies.
In an era when IT budgets are being cut as indiscriminately as they were once increased, this book offers the first systematic guide to measuring the true impact of IT spending--and making rational decisions about which projects to fund.
Annotation A call for IT and business managers to reformulate the way they manage IT, this book contends that if IT is to deliver business value, it should be measured in core business terms such as customer satisfaction, revenue growth, and profitability. Leading academic research and industry best practices are synthesized, and principles and strategies are presented for managing for optimum IT business value, the IT budget, and the IT organization's capability. In a time when IT spending is reduced and IT organizations are often perceived as cost centers, a necessary and timely counterbalance is provided, and the argument is made that IT investments can and should be linked directly to enterprise business indicators. Also discussed is how IT spending should improve corporate profitability and how the relationship between IT initiatives and business indicators should be explicit and empirical.
Now updated with new measurement methods and new examples, How to Measure Anything shows managers how to inform themselves in order to make less risky, more profitable business decisions This insightful and eloquent book will show you how to measure those things in your own business, government agency or other organization that, until now, you may have considered "immeasurable," including customer satisfaction, organizational flexibility, technology risk, and technology ROI. Adds new measurement methods, showing how they can be applied to a variety of areas such as risk management and customer satisfaction Simplifies overall content while still making the more technical applications available to those readers who want to dig deeper Continues to boldly assert that any perception of "immeasurability" is based on certain popular misconceptions about measurement and measurement methods Shows the common reasoning for calling something immeasurable, and sets out to correct those ideas Offers practical methods for measuring a variety of "intangibles" Provides an online database (www.howtomeasureanything.com) of downloadable, practical examples worked out in detailed spreadsheets Written by recognized expert Douglas Hubbard—creator of Applied Information Economics—How to Measure Anything, Third Edition illustrates how the author has used his approach across various industries and how any problem, no matter how difficult, ill defined, or uncertain can lend itself to measurement using proven methods.
It would seem that business investment in information technology (IT) is at root no different from business investment in anything else. After a careful consideration of the costs of the investment and its anticipated benefits, a decision is made as to whether the benefits of the investment outstrip the costs and by how much. If the benefits are competitive with other investment alternatives (say, a major marketing campaign), then the business will commit financial resources to the IT proposal. Otherwise it won't. This decision making process is at the heart of capital budgeting. Senior executives have been making IT investment decisions for well over three decades. So why is the measurement of IT investment payoff so difficult and controversial? Why do we need a book dealing with contemporary approaches to measuring IT investment payoff? Why have earlier approaches to measuring IT investment payoff proven unsatisfactory? In what respects have earlier approaches fallen short? Do we need to scrap earlier approaches entirely or can we find important improvements to these approaches such that they can be newly applied to effectively measure IT investment payoff in ways that are convincing to senior management? This book will help you to find improvements in existing methods for measuring IT investment payoff as well as to find new, innovative methods for addressing the value of emerging IT.0000 ø0.
The rapidly increasing level of expenditure on information technology in most organisations is one reason why IT benefits managment has become an important business concern. Top management have begun to insist that much more attention be paid to the economic aspects of information systems. This had led to a great to a great demand for a comprehensive IT metric. However, little attempt has yet been made to produce a complete approach to understanding the economics of how information is used to boost the efficiency or effectiveneww of companies. The Effective Measurement and Management of IT Costs and Benefits provides a basic framework for an understanding of the economic issues of information as well as some suggestions as to how a company's IT efforts may be appraised. The authors discuss a number of different evaluation concepts as well as reviewing several approaches to cost and benefit measurement. An IT Assessment MEtric (ITAM) is proposed which allows firms to measure their progress towards obtaining maximum value from their information technology efforts.
