by Angela Guess
Oscar Berg recently wrote in CMS Wire, “Here’s a fact about corporate IT investments: All investments made in hardware and software, development and deployment are sunk cost, never to be recovered. That is why IT investments need to start generating as much business value as possible from day one. And if employees do not adopt and use the IT system in ways that make them more productive or innovative than they were without it, it won’t generate any business value. Despite this we see and hear many stories of IT investments that go ignored by the intended users and fail to generate the expected business benefits. Why is this?”
Berg offers three answers. The first is, “(1) Starting with ‘What’ Instead of ‘Why’. The most common mistake organizations make when considering a new system or service is rushing into purchase without spending much effort on answering the ‘why’ — why you want it in the first place. What do you want to achieve? Who are the intended users? What do they need to do? What problems do they face? What should be the outcome? Finding out the ‘why’ can be a bit tricky, and many find it easier to jump directly to the ‘what’ — technologies, products and features. Yet if you get the ‘why’ wrong, you won’t get any value at all from the investment.”
Photo credit: Flickr/ dkalo