Are you torn between increasing your revenue or improving operational efficiency for your IT budget? There is only a fixed budget size and these objectives are opposite of each other. Often, there is no clear quantitative figures on how much Return On Investment (ROI) can be achieved. Here are some guiding light to let you do a common sense evaluation.
1 User Enhancement
Doing an enhancement for 1 single user is clear indicator that it is not revenue generation worthy. It may not justify the objective of operational efficiency. This type of enhancement will often comes from customer, top management or even compliance. The correct question is “Can this be resolved with other means?”. Do conduct sound ROI evaluation with user base and impact before allocating your budget for such request. Do not be shocked that this is a common fact in many organisations.
Enhancing for Future
Business likes to demand their need on certain “ABCD” features for the future and potential revenue generation. You may be force to implement “ABCD” at such demand only to find the potential revenue generation never materialise. An approach to counteract such whimsical request is to go Agile and do Proof of Concept (POC). This mitigate your investment risk and increase your alignment of the business requirements.
Consult your Data
There is a chance that your data can tell you more than you expected. Flat or negative growth will point that you are in need of revenue generating initiatives. On the other hand, increased resources and continued customisation requests show signs that you may require operational efficiency review.
Danny Kwok 