Following is a curated list of resources that reflect current thinking on a topic of interest to IT leaders. You can assist this effort by contributing insight from your own real-world experiences, and are invited to suggest changes or additions here.
Definitions Include:
This post deals with general Business Value for IT services to an organization, rather than the value equation of a specific technology solution such as cloud computing or unified communications. As is the case with “business alignment”, Business Value is a much-used term and regularly shows up on CIO and business surveys – specifically, the critical need to demonstrate business value for the organization. The lack of a consensus on its definition for IT leaders suggests that more maturity is needed for definition as well as the practical use of the concept.
In management, business value is an informal term that includes all forms of value that determine the health and well-being of the firm in the long-run. Business value expands concept of value of the firm beyond economic value (also known as economic profit, Economic value added, and Shareholder value) to include other forms of value such as employee value, customer value, supplier value, channel partner value, alliance partner value, managerial value, and societal value. Many of these forms of value are not directly measured in monetary terms.
David Morris: Adding business value
Business Value is anything that contributes to an organization’s stated primary goals, e.g. increase or protect revenue, reduce/avoid costs, improve service, meet regulatory/social obligations, achieve market strategy, and develop staff.
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Current Thinking Includes:
Current thinking includes suggestions for providing increased cost transparency through the advent of service catalogs and cloud computing, as well as the notion that Business Value may be a corollary for “confidence” in many cases, and can of course be built through successful delivery of services and programs. We seem to be in the early days of discerning best methods/frameworks to measure and manage Business Value within the IT shop; two suggested here are the IT Capability Maturity Framework and the use of enterprise productivity measures such as EBITDA: