Activity-based justification of IT investments

Ever since investments in IT moved from operational to decision support, academics and practitioners have been looking for ways to justify the costs. Traditional approaches, such as NPV, have been shown inadequate in capturing qualitative and quantitative benefits, and techniques developed to address the issue have proved limited in their ability to link investment justification with impact assessment. Recent literature has called for the use of business processes to assess the impact of IT and the same processes can be used to justify investments in IT. The activity-based costing (ABC) approaches in the field of accounting were developed to relate investments to product profitability by allocating the burden to those that receive the most benefit. Thus, this paper uses the ABC approach to relate investments to activities, so that it can be used to justify IT investment. The paper provides a model to determine when the approach, referred to as activity-based justification, is most appropriate and its value is illustrated using a case study.     

Information security breaches and IT security investments: Impacts on competitors

In current business climate, a firm’s information systems security is no longer independent from the industry’s broader security environment. A question arises, then, whether stock market values reflect the interdependence of security breaches and investments. In this paper, we used the event study methodology to investigate how a firm’s security breaches and IT security investments influence its competitors. We collected and reviewed 118 information security breaches and 98 IT security investment announcements from 2010 to 2017. We found substantial evidence supporting our hypothesis that information security breaches do, indeed, have a competition effect: when one firm is breached, its competitors have opportunities to absorb market power. For the IT security investment announcements, however, we observed the positive externalities, or contagion effect, in play: market investors feel that the security investments made by one firm increase the security level of the entire network, and hence, competitors also get benefits. Additionally, we found that the competition effect was higher when the breaches occurred after the preceding security investments than when there were no preceding investments before the breaches.     

A linear decision analysis model of optimal portfolio investments†

The paper develops a decision analysis model to determine the optimal portfolio investment under uncertainty. The model extends Sharpe'a simplified model by assuming a stochastic linear equation system that relates the random returns of various risky assets to certain stochastic and uncontrollable exogenous variables and specifies that the investor has a subjective joint probability distribution describing the investor's belief in the probable values of the linear system's parameters. Decision rules are derived and four numerical examples are presented to illustrate the decision process. It is found that both the number of stochastic and uncontrollable exogenous variables that explain the random returns and correlated disturbances (non-diagonalily) exert substantial effects on optimal portfolio decisions of the investor.     

A process-focused decision framework for analyzing the business value potential of IT investments

A key consideration during investment decision making is the overall business value potential of an information technology (IT) solution. The complexity of the contemporary IT landscape is increasing. As information systems and technologies become more advanced and interconnected, they often impact multiple business processes in the organization. This in turn increases the complexity of IT investment decisions. This paper describes a decision framework for considering investments in information technologies that impact multiple business processes in the organization. The decision framework is illustrated via a case study of a small business that invested in mobile and wireless computing. The microcosm of the small business serves to illustrate some aspects of the business value derived from information technology investments that are often challenging to isolate in more complex organizational environments. The decision framework can support managers to analyze the overall business value returns arising from the ‘ripple effect’ of an IT investment on core and ancillary business processes. In the decision framework, the business value ripple effect is analyzed via a vertical dimension that emanates from core business processes to ancillary processes, and a horizontal dimension that extends over time.

Dismantling the silos: extracting new value from IT investments in public administration

The drive for information technology‐led organizational and operational change in public administration has lagged behind that in the private sector. For good reasons, central public administrations are conservative by nature. Most public administrations are bureaucracies and bureaucracies tend to resist change. Nevertheless the pressure to obtain better value from public administration information technology investments is growing and the debate as to how to achieve this is increasingly important. Part of this debate is concerned with how best to confront the formidable and specific challenges faced by the sector. These include cultural, structural, resource and technical problems as well as a legacy of isolated developments which do not interrelate. The difficulties are compounded by the problems of evaluation generally in public administration – problems which are reflected in the evaluation of public sector information systems. This drive for change is reviewed and discussed in the context of the Irish civil service, in which there is a growing awareness of the strategic importance of breaking down specialized vertical systems and providing an integrated service to the citizen. A new approach to the problem, based on adapting the concept of business objects, is suggested.     

Quality engineering: a new framework applied to justifying and prioritising IT investments

Quality engineering (QE) is a generic concept developed by the author that is designed to assess rigorously new investment ideas concerned with improving the quality of business processes. The aim is to provide a solid basis to decide trade-offs between varying levels of quality to be achieved and limited resources to be employed. In the present context, the approach is applied to justify and to prioritise a growing class of IT investments: systems designed to implement quality, effectiveness and strategic business vision. Companies report that purely accounting-based methods are unable to cope with these kinds of investments and that a change in investment appraisal procedures is now needed to complement financial approaches, with quality-based approaches to support the decision-making process in relation to sophisticated IT. Based on research projects at the Kobler Unit, Imperial College, where data was collected on the relative success of new IT initiatives, and in collaboration with several large companies, quality engineering has been further developed into four modules, to be applied iteratively: quality standards (QS), quality awareness (QA), quality performance indicators (QPI) and quality value (QV). Compared to traditional accounting-based frameworks, quality engineering places a new emphasis on critical success factors, structured awareness raising exercises, measurable performance indicators, distinguishing between primary systems objectives and their inevitable second-order effects, risk assessment, and strategic business integration.     

Aligning IT investments and workforce composition: the impact of diversification in life insurance companies

This paper investigates the impact on productivity of combined changes in information technology (IT) investments and workforce composition of life insurance companies. Workforce composition is defined in terms of three broad classes: clerical, managerial and professional. Hypotheses on the combined impact of changes in IT investments and workforce composition on productivity are proposed and empirically tested on a sample of companies from the US life insurance industry. Companies are clustered based on two main strategy alternatives, focus on a market niche vs diversification. In niche companies, higher IT investments accompanied by a decrease in the clerical and managerial components of the workforce are found to have a positive contribution to productivity. On the contrary, higher IT investments in conjunction with a decrease of the professional component show a negative effect. In diversified companies, increasing IT investments show a positive contribution to productivity when accompanied by a decrease of the professional component and a growth in the clerical and managerial component of the workforce. Findings are discussed in the light of fundamental competitive goals in the industry.     

分析型CRM的软件体系结构

随着客户关系管理概念的普及推广,各厂家的CRM产品及人们对CRM的讨论层出不穷,由于这些讨论大多集中在CRM的功能、效益及发展前景等方面,因而对CRM本身的软件体系结构却未能形成统一的标准。该文针对CRM系统中重要的支撑部分-分析型CRM,依据层次化体系结构和中间件的思想,提出一种分析型CRM的分层软件体系结构。     

银行CRM系统的分析与设计

银行建立以客户为中心的服务体系,对于维系老客户,争取新客户,挖掘黄金客户,增强市场竞争能力有重要的意义.目前,采用CRM管理理念,搭建服务平台,建立相应CRM系统,是银行建立性能卓越的客户服务系统的重要方法.文中介绍了CRM的管理理念和基本概念,研究了银行建立CRM系统的必要性和技术要素,给出了银行CRM系统的设计结构及其应用条件和实现步骤.并按照这一设计思路,为某商业银行初步设计实施了一套银行CRM系统.     

银行CRM系统的分析与设计

银行建立以客户为中心的服务体系，对于维系老客户，争取新客户，挖掘黄金客户，增强市场竞争能力有重要的意义。目前，采用CRM管理理念，搭建服务平台，建立相应CRM系统，是银行建立性能卓越的客户服务系统的重要方法。文中介绍了CRM的管理理念和基本概念，研究了银行建立CRM系统的必要性和技术要素，给出了银行CRM系统的设计结构及其应用条件和实现步骤。并按照这一设计思路，为某商业银行初步设计实施了一套银行CRM系统。     

客户关系管理系统设计研究

结合863／CIMS项目的实施方案，主要分析了客户关系管理系统的系统结构及其功能设计，并重点介绍了客户销售管理，市场管理，客户支持和服务管理及数据库管理的设计方案。     

基于ERP的CRM系统模型

通过分析企业资源计划系统 (ERP)存在的问题 ,提出了客户关系管理 (CRM)的管理思想及其实现原理 ,集中说明了CRM中的数据处理过程、数据仓库的应用、ERP与CRM的无缝连接 ,以及基于ERP的CRM系统模型的建立及该系统对企业的重要性。     

中小企业客户关系管理探讨

客户是所有企业经营活动的终极元素,客户关系管理(CRM)是“以客户为中心”的现代管理理念和IT技术结合的产物,能够提高企业的核心竞争力。本文对中小企CRM进行了较为全面的研究,包括CRM相关理论和中小企业CRM的实施等。     

CRM应用中的集成问题

本文介绍了客户关系管理(Customer Relationship Management，CRM)的概念、国内外研究和应用现状以及发展方向，对目前客户关系管理应用中的集成问题从企业管理模式和技术两个角度进行了详细的剖析。     

浅谈信息技术的教学

随着社会的不断进步,科学的不断发展,现代化的信息技术已经融入到生活和工作中的方方面面。会使用现代化的信息工具,已经成为一项必备的技能。信息技术的迅猛发展把人类社会带入到了一个崭新的信息时代,它已对我们的生产方式、生活方式、学习方式及思维方式产生了深远的影响。     

中小企业客户关系管理探讨

客户是所有企业经营活动的终极元素，客户关系管理（CRM）是“以客户为中心”的现代管理理念和IT技术结合的产物，能够提高企业的核心竞争力。本文对中小企CRM进行了较为全面的研究，包括CRM相关理论和中小企业CRM的实施等。     

如何对零售业客户关系管理效果进行度量

前不久，国际评估市场组织合伙人发布了有关世界各地采用信息技术及其支出方式的全球性研究报告，其中零售业部分特别值得关注。中型市场零售商的IT经费预计将从2004年的220亿美元增长到2009年的310亿美元，年增长率约为7％。     

The optimal level of fuzz: case studies in a methodology for psychological research

Cognitive science research is hard to conduct, because researchers must take phenomena from the world and turn them into laboratory tasks for which a reasonable level of experimental control can be achieved. Consequently, research necessarily makes tradeoffs between internal validity (experimental control) and external validity (the degree to which a task represents behaviour outside of the lab). Researchers are thus seeking the best possible trade-off between these constraints, which we refer to as the optimal level of fuzz. We present two principles for finding the optimal level of fuzz, in research, and then illustrate these principles using research from motivation, individual differences and cognitive neuroscience.