How to Measure the Payoff of E-Business Projects
Pay your freight first. Think carefully about short-term wins that you can document to pay the freight for the initial investment in the project. For example, a telecom company found that it could justify its investment in data warehousing based solely on cost savings from data mart consolidation, even though the real payoffs from the project would come from lower churn and increased cross-selling opportunities.
Follow the unanticipated. Keep an open mind about where the payoff from e-business projects may come from, and follow opportunities that present themselves. Eli Lilly & Co. created a website called InnoCentive (www.innocentive.com) to attract scientists to solve problems in return for bounties. In the process, Lilly has established contact with 8,000 exceptional scientists. Now, the HR department has become very interested in this initiative as a talent pool. Sometimes, the detour becomes the main road. If you see one, take it.
In the heady days of yore, CIOs could get almost any e-business project approved because everyone else was doing it and nobody wanted to be left behind. Now the bean counters are back with a vengeance. However, by relying excessively on ROI as the tool for enforcing accountability, CFOs may be asking the wrong questions.
