Obtaining business benefits from IT

Almost without exception organisations have become reliant on Information Systems (IS) and Information Technology (IT) applications. Although competitive advantage, efficiency and effective information management are considered to be among the major drivers for investing in IS/IT, recognising, valuing and realising these expected business benefits from their investments has proved to be a complex task for organisations. The track record of the IS/IT industry shows that there are high rates of project failures, budget overruns and cancellations, resulting in the so-called IT productivity paradox. Researchers argue that the current evaluation techniques (primarily financial) are insufficient to identify, track and evaluate benefits obtained through IS/IT projects. Therefore they encourage organisations to employ non-financial techniques that are apparently more suitable for IS/IT investments. There is still much debate, however, concerning the efficiency and effectiveness of the current evaluation techniques in terms of satisfying the IS/IT investment evaluation criteria. Benefit realisation approaches are among the non-financial techniques that are discussed in this book.