PracticalSOA

A short but thought-provoking article on Harvard Business Publishing about the importance of measuring IT costs not in conventional business terms but in terms of “demand-side metrics”:

“Most IT shops are good project economics — but they don’t create, nor are they asked, to estimate the ongoing operational costs denominated in demand-side measures like cost per car.”

It seems like a terrific concept but I also wonder about its feasibility. Many companies lack a good handle on what their product or service really costs. Approximations (and political maneuverings) abound. But imagine if the cost of on-going maintenance of  a CRM software or an ERP system could be communicated to the stakeholders in terms of transactional costs. The challenge of IT prioritization could be addressed so much more clearly and effectively.

Read the article here.

Tags: Budgets, IT, Metrics

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 14th, 2009 at 2:59 pm and is filed under IT (General). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.