Project Intangible Benefits Should Be Identified

It is a good practice to identify non-financial or intangible benefits when developing a business case. The ideal is when you can generate a tangible return on the investment. However, intangible benefits can be aligned with business goals and may even be able to be measured. This can be helpful when the financial return of a project proposal is at or below the hurdle rate. ...

... "Recognizing what to measure and how to measure can be extremely difficult for intangible assets/benefits. There are some common but key benefits accruing through any large IT project in an enterprise that cannot be tangibly measured. " ...

Via CXOtoday: IT Non-financial ROI

Driving Solution Adoption after Project Go-Live

Are there parallels between project delivery / benefits realization and the behavior of the market under bear conditions. Contrarians begin to notice when to make an investment. And, eventually the herd turns and the market moves. Can we learn from this phenomenon and translate into the project space? ...

... "Researchers who study nonconformity, fads, even game theory, agree that in any declining market, investors will inevitably begin to bet against the behavior of the herd. Many of these initial contrarians may be working from their own analyses ... " ...

Via New York Times: How to Turn a Herd

Project Investments During Economic Uncertainty or Contraction

Here's some tips regarding investments during uncertain economic times. This quote makes sense in that ... there's quite a bit of effort necessary to adopt and sustain a new performance level after an IT project go-live. This period of stabilization, adoptions, and maturity is a worthwhile investment after the initial capital investment is made. ...

... "Real, long-term value comes from recognizing at the outset that growth, evolution and value-generation require sustained sponsorship, attention, maintenance and marketing. " ...

Via B-Eye: Smart Investment

Methods to Value IT

Insights on valuing IT and its investments range from tracking benefits, articulating the intangible benefits, and beating benchmarks. Traditional measures are shifting to options valuation. And, portfolio management could benefit from program management. ... All interesting perspectives. ...

... "In other words, looking at relative IT spending does not tell you whether a bank is an advanced or an inefficient consumer of IT. That's the economic theory. " ...

Via CIO Asia: IT Value

Return on Data

Traditional financial analyses, such as ROI, NPV, are challenging for IT projects. Better information does lead to more informed decision making and ultimately to a better performing business. ...

... "By and large, these are effective in analysing the hoped-for returns from a project or capital asset and for comparing one project with another. But they have little to say about what is probably the most valuable part of an IT project, namely the data. " ...

Via Computer Weekly: Profiting From Technology

Virtualization Projects: Standardization Drives Benefits

Server consolidation and virtualization projects offer opportunity to standardize software and reap the benefits of a common infrastructure. ...

... "Software and personnel savings can be increased by standardizing the environment and reducing complexity as part of the consolidation initiative (i.e., reducing the number of operating system versions, eliminating redundant software tools, etc.). Many claims of savings on software costs for consolidation projects are actually a result of the standardization ... " ...

Via Virtual Strategy Magazine: Server Consolidation

IT Benefit Realization: Get Started

To begin with, articulating benefits in a business case, that are achieveable and resonate with the strategic agenda of business, is a challenge. Actually realizing the benefits and tracking the progress on the benefit journey is nirvana. It takes discipline and must flex to the culture of the organization. Don't wait. Start the journey today. ...

... "I cannot underscore enough the importance of effective benefit realization practices. They can go along way toward driving improved yields of IT investments. " ...

Via Optimize Magazine: IT Benefit Realization

IT Governance: Board of Director Involvement

Corning demonstrates leading practices in board-level governance of IT - setting strategy, shaping the portfolio, understanding business impact, and sustaining benefit realization. The company expects growth through innovation in display technologies, diesel products, and telecommunications. Corning has a history of innovation and continues to invest in longer-term emerging technologies. ...

... "They play an active, creative role in helping to set IT strategy, make sure they know what's in the technology pipeline and what it will mean to the bottom line, and ride the results hard. " ...

Via Corporate Board Member Magazine: Board Level Governance of IT

SAP ERP NE Benefit Realization

Does SAP ERP equal benefits realization? Not according to study ready for imminent release. Don't remember showing that negative NPV at the governance meeting? Neither do I.

Realizing benefits from ERP projects is a challenge by itself, regardless of the vendor. With SAP's dominance in the industry, you would have expected it to be the pacesetter in realizing the meximum benefits from ERP implementations.

Does IT matter? It matters if you want to derive business benefits from your ERP investment. ...

... "It's a study by Nucleus Research, an independent reseach house that specializes in helping companies assess the financial returns on IT investments. The headline of the Nucleus Research study is a bit different than SAP's advertising tagline: SAP customers are 20% less profitable than their peers. " ...

Via Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Does SAP sap profits?

Project Management: Accelerate New Product Design in Semicon Industry ...

Project Management: Accelerate New Product Design in Semicon Industry: Via MatrixOne: MatrixOne and Leading Analyst Firm to Discuss How to Accelerate Chip Design Through Better Project Management ...

MatrixOne and AMR Research join forces in webcast to explore acceleration of project management for designing and delivering new products to the marketplace in the semicon industry. Eric Karofsky has published recent research on accelerating innovation ("Reach Innovation Utopia With Project Management Tools") ...

... "MatrixOne, Inc. (NASDAQ: MONEE), a leading provider of collaborative product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions for the value chain , announced that it will present a webcast aimed at helping project managers in semiconductor companies learn how they can use better project planning, execution and tracking solutions to better meet today's chip design challenges and deliver new products faster. The webcast will feature a presentation by Eric Karofsky, senior research analyst for AMR Research, who will discuss the latest industry trends and best practices for speeding product development. The live webcast will take place on Thursday, September 29, 2005 at 1:00 pm ET. " ...

AMR Research provides world class research and actionable advice for executives tasked with delivering enhanced business process performance and cost savings with the aid of technology. Five thousand leaders in the Global 1000 put their trust in AMR Research's integrity, depth of industry expertise, and passion for customer service to support their most critical business initiatives, including supply chain transformation; new product introduction, customer profitability, compliance and governance, and IT benefit realization.

MatrixOne, Inc. (NASDAQ: MONEE), a leading global provider of collaborative product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, enables companies to accelerate product innovation to achieve top line revenue growth and improve bottom line profitability. With world-class PLM solutions and a commitment to customer success, MatrixOne is focused on helping companies across the automotive, aerospace & defense, consumer, machinery, medical device, semiconductor and high-tech industries solve their most challenging new product development and introduction problems. More than 800 companies use MatrixOne's solutions to drive business value and gain a competitive advantage, including industry leaders such as BAE Systems, Bosch, Comau, General Electric, Honda, Johnson Controls, Linde AG, NCR, Nokia, Philips, Porsche, Procter & Gamble, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics and Toshiba. MatrixOne is headquartered in Westford, Massachusetts, with locations throughout North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.

Benefits Realization: Accelerate Time to Value

Often, benefits do not immediately accrue at the completion of an IT project. A period of stabilization is needed for the newly-enabled business process(es). Also, the workforce may need to be nurtured to drive adoption rates to the targeted levels.

In order to accelerate time to value, key process indicators and usage rates should be baselined prior to go-live and tracked immediately following. Techniques, such as Six Sigma, may be required to ensure delivery of the full business value by methodically eliminating defects that prevent world-class process performance.

References on benefits realization:

Via Planview: PlanView Announces Results of CIO Survey: Fortune 1000 Companies Say Benefits Realization a Key IT Challenge ...

... "Benefits realization is a key component to the clear communication of IT's contribution to the overall objectives of the organization. It begins with the strategic initiative and is reviewed in a disciplined cycle through funding, project definition and execution and product or service deployment to provable benefit realized. " ...

Via IBM: Reaching efficient frontiers in IT investment management ...

... "And measuring doesn’t end as soon as the project does. A key aspect of value realization is post-implementation evaluation to assess the actual benefit realization at future points in time. Initial project planning needs to include benefit assessment after the project has been delivered. " ...

Via DMReview: Managing a Breakthrough Data Warehousing Project ...

... "The trend for the 21st century is to manage portfolios of projects which include IT as a component, or intermediary outcome, of the entire life cycle from concept to benefits achievement. An effective project management methodology is needed to detail the planning process necessary to ensure the business objectives are met. " ...