While the emphasis on accountability is laudable, companies may be making a mistake by jumping on the ROI bandwagon. Not only is the measurement of ROI for e-business projects an elusive goal, it may not even be the right way to think about measuring payoffs. By focusing solely on what is measurable and quantifiable in terms of dollars and cents, companies risk being precisely wrong instead of being approximately right.

It is easy to understand why ROI is popular. It is a simple concept that everyone can understand. ROI and its cousins (ROA, return on assets; ROIC, return on invested capital; IRR, internal rate of return; and NPV, net present value) are concepts that finance executives have traditionally used to measure performance. And, IT investments have conventionally been evaluated on ROI, measured in terms of cost savings attributable to investments in business process automation. So, ROI seems like a logical way to assess e-business payoffs.

The Pitfalls of ROI

While the simplicity of ROI is seductive, we would do well to heed the advice of Albert Einstein, who warned, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." ROI is a simple tool, but it may be simplistic in the context of e-business projects. Here are some of the biases that can result.

Bottom-line bias. ROI emphasizes tangible payoffs that can be measured in financial terms. Often, the easiest to measure returns are bottom-line improvements arising out of cost reductions. Consequently, ROI tends to favor projects that result in cost avoidance, at the expense of projects that promise revenue growth. However, the only way to grow the bottom line on a sustainable basis is to grow the top line, which is easy to ignore if every project is measured on tangible ROI.

Inward bias. Investments in customer- and partner-facing initiatives result in more effective collaboration and translate into important productivity benefits for customers and partners. However, ROI measures only the returns that the company sees within its internal operations. By ignoring the value created for partners and customers, ROI may be missing the real point of e-business.