July 2006 Survey: IT Is Delivering Business Value, But Some Technologies Deliver More Than Others

Allan Alter Avatar

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The last finding in our business value survey brings good news: Both IT and business executives overwhelmingly agree that their company receives business value from its IT investments. That augers well for continued investment in IT. And there’s more good news: 11 of the 20 technologies and services we track meet or exceed business value expectations at 80 percent of companies or more

For more data and analysis, see CIO Insight‘s Research Center blog at go.cioinsight.com/researchcentral

Finding 6: Many technologies and IT services are meeting, and even exceeding, their business value expectations.
Many of these results affirm findings from earlier CIO Insight surveys: Just as security vendors score well in our annual Vendor Value survey, IT executives feel security investments are delivering value. And virtualization, which was one of the most promising technologies in our May 2006 Emerging Technologies survey, also scored well here. But ERP, CRM and outsourcing continue to disappoint, or at least raise questions, at one company in three. And ASPs, Voice over IP, and disaster recovery services don’t always generate sufficient value. Still, despite skepticism about metrics and ROI calculations, the IT executives—as well as the business executives—in our survey uniformly agree: IT is delivering business value.





Research Guide:

  • Finding 1: Only six out of ten companies measure the business value of IT.
  • Finding 2: Do CIOs measure business value often enough?
  • Finding 3: Skepticism about ROI and business value metrics remains high.
  • Finding 4: IT executives exaggerate IT’s impact on productivity.
  • Finding 5: How best to measure IT’s value?
  • Finding 6: Many technologies and IT services are meeting, and even exceeding, their business value expectations.

    Read our previous surveys on ROI and business value:

  • ROI 2004: How Well Do You Work with the Business?
  • ROI 2003: Do You Have Any Faith In Your ROI Numbers?
  • ROI 2002: How Do CIOs Figure ROI?

    Related stories:

  • Roundtable: The Trouble With ROI
  • Howard Rubin: How to Measure IT Value
  • Christopher Gardner and Ray Trotta: How to Determine the Value of a Project
  • What Does Wall Street Think of Your Technology?