ROI is not only thing to IT spending

IT generally reduces the cost of doing business. The trick lies in making the wisest decision while opting for the IT oriented infrastructure & services to cover your needs. The IT market is offering vast services generating enough variety to choose from, but that might very well lead to confusion. Possessing at least some knowledge of IT would lead to having an upper hand in the deal. Keeping this in mind, Pranab Basu - VP-IT Operations at ViVa Connect said that having an IT infrastructure doesn’t necessarily mean setting up the entire system. Businesses can greatly save money by outsourcing their requirement to IT firms. In such way they can enjoy the services while IT firm takes care of the functioning & technicalities. 

Traditionally the ROI of an IT investment, was measured by “financial” benefits. But today, business leaders and technologists have understood that “non-financial” benefits of IT investments are equally important, like…

Low Cost Investment – Since most of the IT implementation is done over electronic devices, it’s highly cost efficient demanding very minimal investment

Better Analytics – It allows to measure performance. Hence necessary steps can be taken to eliminate loopholes & implement requisite changes. Detailed reports help understand the demand, response & effect.

Work Remotely – The system is operated remotely, allowing the liberty of mobility.  

Competitive advantage – With electronic storage & retrieval systems, searching, processing & execution of tasks can be done in a jiffy. Giving you the much needed upper hand over your competitor’s.

Real time Proficiency - Real time access to data empowers to make amendments with least wastage of time.

When you are looking at IT investment, you cannot look at it from one perspective I.e. generating revenues; you should focus on how much cost you can save or how much efficiency you can improve in your organization’s internal operations with the use of IT. The other way to look at this is how IT can play role in launching new products and maximizing revenues. So, cost saving is only one aspect of what you want to spend on IT and aligning IT with your business needs. With the changing scenarios, in many cases IT becomes more relevant to deliver newer business opportunities, new challenges, new products to the business. So, in such cases when you are looking at new opportunity, there is always a risk associated with launching something new like it may succeed or may not succeed. Putting more light on this, Udayan Banerjee, CTO, NIIT Technologies comments, “If you are looking only at ROI angle to IT spending, you will miss out on the opportunities where IT can give much more benefits. Trying out new things is directly associated with the chances of failure, but at the same time benefits can be much higher. So, trying out many things should not always be associated to ROI.”