{"id":3030,"date":"2012-06-12T07:00:23","date_gmt":"2012-06-12T15:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.formtek.com\/blog\/?p=3030"},"modified":"2012-06-12T07:00:23","modified_gmt":"2012-06-12T15:00:23","slug":"technology-roi-from-it-investments-trump-those-of-rd-and-advertising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/formtek.com\/blog\/technology-roi-from-it-investments-trump-those-of-rd-and-advertising\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology: ROI from IT Investments Trump Those of R&amp;D and Advertising"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Companies that invest in IT are making a smart decision. \u00a0A <a title=\"Investment in IT can produce profits\" href=\"http:\/\/sloanreview.mit.edu\/the-magazine\/2012-spring\/53302\/the-impact-of-it-investments-on-profits\/\" target=\"_blank\">recent study by MIT<\/a> found that companies found a high correlation between investment in information technology and company profitability. \u00a0The authors of the MIT report wrote that &#8220;we found something very surprising: Investment in IT had a greater impact on a company\u2019s profits than <em>comparable spending on either advertising or R&amp;D<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The authors said that &#8220;Information technology can be used to increase efficiency and reduce costs, or it can be used to support sales growth through, say, customer satisfaction and customer retention strategies. We found that in general, IT investments were more effective in improving profitability by increasing revenue than by decreasing operating expenses. In fact, IT investments had a marked positive effect on revenue growth; for example, a $1 increase in IT expenditures per employee was associated in our study with a $12.22 increase in sales per employee.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Joel Dobbs bio\" href=\"http:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/joelhdobbs\" target=\"_blank\">Joel Dobbs<\/a>, President and CEO of Compass Talent Management Group, told Dana Gardner in an interview that &#8220;That\u2019s what differentiates the leaders from the laggards &#8212; they&#8217;re approaching IT holistically as a core part of their business strategy, instead of seeing it as a support function or a back-office function.&#8221; \u00a0Dobbs detailed <a title=\"Three Best Practices for IT\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/blog\/gardner\/investing-well-in-it-with-emphasis-on-kpis-separates-business-leaders-from-laggards-survey-results-show\/4621\" target=\"_blank\">three best practices to ensure that IT investments are successful<\/a>. \u00a0&#8220;One of them is really good governance around decision making. The second thing is ownership of IT by the entire executive team. And the third thing is that they\u2019re measuring their return using business metrics on the investments that they make.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Increasingly businesses are employing tools to measure and track their success. \u00a0KPIs, or\u00a0<a title=\"Wikipedia definition of KPI\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Key_performance_indicator\" target=\"_blank\">Key Performance Indicators<\/a>, are used to evaluate the success of a specific aspect of a business. \u00a0KPIs can help a business improve and grow by targeting and measuring goals which can be either strategic or operational. \u00a0Dorr said that &#8220;Market-leading companies who outperform in revenue over their peers had more clarity within IT about which KPIs were important and had agreement on those KPIs. 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