As an IT buyer and planner, you may occasionally be called to order, and have to justify spending funds on new software or services. You may be asked, like your E&P colleagues, to demonstrate a good return on investment (ROI) for your proposed investment. The Boston-based Delphi Group is now offering its proprietary ROI ProofPoint service to help evaluate the likely return on such investments.
Frappaolo
Delphi Group VP Carl Frappaolo said “Economic uncertainty has pressured enterprises to perform more analytical review of current and proposed e-business programs. The easy projects, the low-hanging fruit, are all done. Now, companies insist on quantifying the process improvements they will achieve before funding new projects. They also want metrics, to follow the project over its useful life, to be sure the promised benefits hold up. Vendors providing these solutions find these tools equally beneficial in demonstrating to their clients the long-term benefit of financially difficult decisions.”
Field-proven
Client demand led Delphi to productize its in-house methodologies and tools into a ‘streamlined’ service. ROI ProofPoint is now available as a standardized offering from Delphi’s Strategic Consulting Group. The Service is intended for organizations considering extending existing applications or adding new systems or software.
Benchmark
Frappaolo added “Many companies are also evaluating the re-use of applications and infrastructure, and need benchmark metrics to assess current benefits, and to justify new services. The tools allow an organization to model alternative ROI scenarios and the information can be reworked interactively with a finance committee, the CFO, and users to dynamically model ROI targets.”
G2000
Delphi recently applied its ROI method-ologies to a study of Global 2000 enterprise applications and solution providers. A major finding was that while increased productivity is claimed as the ‘gold standard’ for technology investment, in reality, productivity improvement has proved too abstract to quantify. Finally, ROI is not a ‘one-time’ event, but a continuous evaluation process through post-implementation activities. ROI is required to sustain a project through the payback period and beyond. More from www.oneclickmethods.com.