Management of IS/IT Investment
On November 24 and December 1, 2009, Graduate Program in Information Technology invited as a guest lecturer to sharing the real world experiences in IS/IT investments
Herewith the objectives of the sharing experiences that I taken from the sylabus:
The Information Systems (IS)/Information Technology (IT) investments will always be related to costs and benefits. Costs are much easier to identify and calculate than benefits, especially intangible benefits, which include increased company image due to the use of IS/IT. The hardest and most tedious part is the effort to quantify intangible benefits into monetary values in order to make the cost-benefit analysis more accurate.
Most of business and IS/IT managers prefer not to go into detail when talking about intangible benefits because the depth of analysis is uncertain. The more practical way in using this financial approach is to focus on tangible benefits, such as cost saving, reduced staff, etc. Unfortunately, reducing or even eliminating the intangible benefits contribution to the IS/IT implementation has degraded the economic value of the investment.
Based on this issue, some thinkers have introduced a much more practical way for business and IS/IT managers to get snapshots of how IS/IT investment is going to be measured, i.e., using the nonfinancial approach. Some people believe that the two approaches must be combined to have a better and more accurate result.