| This book is based on a very simple idea: A company should only spend money
on IT1 that directly supports its business strategy and its operational effectiveness,
and should not spend money on IT that doesn’t. The management team can
control IT budgets and investments, and at the same time improve IT’s bottom-line impact, by consistently
and persistently selecting the best IT investments, and eliminating underperforming existing IT activities.
This book shows how to do that.
Almost 20 years ago, Bob Benson of Washington University and Marilyn Parker
of IBM, with the help of Ed Trainor, broke new ground in understanding
the value relationship between IT and business. As co-principal investigators in
a research project sponsored by the IBM Los Angeles Scientific Center and
Washington University in St. Louis, Bob and Marilyn described a process and
framework for assessing the business value of IT investments in any company.
Their first book, Information Economics: Linking Business Performance and
Information Technology,1 established the view that, to be effective and valuable
to the enterprise, IT has to fundamentally improve how a business2 performs; to
do this, business management must be directly involved in IT decision-making.
This insight defined performance improvement in strategic and operational
terms, in the areas strategically relevant to the company and not merely as measured
in traditional bottom line or ROI terms. Their book established a practical
methodology for prioritizing IT investments, and it demonstrated that
focusing new investment on achieving explicit business strategies and operational
excellence helped maximize the bottom line impact of new investments
for the business. |
