Crunch attitudes ignore RoI

It’s apparent that many organizations are responding to the current climate  by freezing capital spending, irrespective of the returns that might be available from specific projects. IT’s history of delivering uncertain, or hard-to-quantify, returns makes it difficult for those championing IT spending projects to win over their colleagues to making an exception to the freeze and approving IT spend. Technology for technology’s sake certainly wont find many friends at the moment.

But even given a clear financial case – typically showing outlay recouped in six months or less – the tendency is to ringfence the capital budget, even while daily operations may be bleeding cash unnecessarily through operational inefficiency. What’s the solution?

If ever there was a period when it was necessary to show clear financial returns from IT, and for greater flexibility in licensing, it is now. Perhaps this will turn out to be something of a silver lining for our industry.