ROI for Wireless—is it obvious?
Like many people I want to spruce up the house with some new paint when the holidays approach. I had my eye on some "fine European paint" but my husband thinks Benjamin Moore is good enough. I showed him the ROI from the fine paint brochure (better quality paint = improved wear = put it off another year) but he wasn’t convinced. So that got me thinking, are ROI models still relevant in the information age? To this day, manufacturing relies on detailed calculations of the process and materials to understand the impact of investments. An ROI model for an investment mobile access to information, I would suggest is equally compelling, not because it will exactly quantify the delta, but because it demonstrates the scope of the impact. For example, the business impact of using wireless in your manager’s office during the inevitable interruption is certainly positive to you as an individual employee. An ROI model can capture the impact to the organization which can add up. Is the skepticism on ROI models because, like cheap paint, they do not stand up well to the test of time? If you consider the idea of an ROI model for a successful IT investment, say for example, email, it’s a slam dunk. But was it so simple at the time, or did an ROI model provide a useful framework?
Posted by Kathy Small at 04:37PM PST
m metz Nov 17, 2006
Kathy, did you ever hear of anyone doing an roi analysis on email before implementing? Or voicemail? Or telephones? Or railroads?