IT (information technology) is the second industrial revolution to promote global economic development is another important driving force. Now, information technology has become the world's most dynamic industries, a strong impetus to the economic development.
Investment in information technology development of information technology is undoubtedly the biggest shot in the arm. Numerous companies in the information technology wave of investment pouring a lot of money and time to be able to power through enhanced information technology to improve enterprise management and production efficiency. However, we also found that the characteristics of information technology double-edged sword. Investment in information technology or investment failure is far greater than the probability of invalid probability of success, information technology, safety problems and ethical issues is endless. Love-hate relationship for the information technology business. "How much investment in information technology need?" "Information technology can indeed add value to the enterprise it?" "How are we going to measure IT investment returns?" These three issues on the enterprise IT investment decision making the most often raised three questions.
Information technology has brought a return to business
Information technology experts will bring a return to the company summarized in three levels:
The most basic level: Information technology can improve efficiency, that is, speed up existing processes, substantial cost savings.
Second layer: Information technology can improve productivity, that is, with less manpower and material resources to complete more work.
The highest level: the use of information technology can change or improve the company's business model, to obtain competitive advantage.
So far the mostly used method of IT return on investment evaluation and decision making
Although many companies have a suitable measure of the actual situation in information technology, the method returns, but we recognized the measure can be divided into three categories: profitability, productivity and customer value
1, profitability
This approach is usually to use some financial indicators to evaluate the effect of information technology investment. Commonly used methods include:
Cost - Benefit Analysis: Cost - benefit analysis of this is spent on investment costs and investment gains of difference. In general, the cost is determined, it is the development of systems (including hardware, software and consulting costs) the cost of the portfolio, together with training, maintenance, customer service, licensing, upgrades, and interfaces with existing systems costs. Income is based on the system brings to the organization returns to estimate. Is particularly important to note that the returns are not always visible. Income may reflect the growth in profitability, productivity gains or increased customer value in terms of which only relatively easy to measure profitability, productivity and customer value while it is difficult to quantify. Only when the expected return higher than the cost of the system investment is to make people accept.
ROI Analysis: information technology experts in the field are more interested in return on investment, because it shows the information resources sector value to the organization. And cost - benefit analysis similar to the return on investment is total investment, and proceeds through the measure, the difference is here assumed that earnings will be within a longer period of time. Therefore, the return (or yield) is for a specified period of time calculated as a percentage of investment performance. If a company to invest 1 million yuan a system, each able to receive 12 million yuan of income, then the annual investment rate of return is 12%. Over time, the system will occur depreciation, capital acquisition costs will change, so return on investment should also make adjustments accordingly.
2, productivity
Measure of productivity depends on the nature of work and the industry. Such as the installation of a fast food restaurant and orders are linked together members of the monitor can improve the efficiency of chefs to produce a fast time of 1 minute can be saved; Similarly, if installing a real-time searchable database, help desk staff per hour 4 Inquiries multiprocessing.
Efficiency: Efficiency is used to compare the results of an operation and its consumption of resources. Such as a computer-aided design (CAD) system can reduce design time for automotive components, without additional overhead.
Quality: Quality factors can be sui generis. Work to improve the quality of the product or service to reduce rework the workload, resulting in increased productivity. Some manufacturers have found that while some parts did not strictly meet the specifications, but still in the assembly of products to work well, using parts of the image, the new information system can simulate parts of the assembly process, which in can identify problems before the formal assembly, made selection.
3, customer value
Typically, the company's investment in technology and can not see the profitability or productivity obviously effective; the contrary, the client can obtain certain benefits. So why invest in organizations can only bring benefits to others technology? One implication of the reasoning is: if customer satisfaction increases, and customer loyalty will increase, which the company's long-term operation of the terms is quite favorable. Compared to open up new customers, keeping existing customers is easier and cheaper.