IT chiefs must start measuring the value IT brings to the enterprise, an influential professional body has mandated after its latest research found nearly half of all organisations do not know what they are achieving with IT.
The study carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the IT Governance Institute touched more than 250 non-IT executives in 22 countries in a bid to determine their views on IT’s contribution to the business and how their enterprises are governing their IT operations.
Executive management is generally convinced of the value of IT investments, but there is a significant lost opportunity that enterprises can close by measuring that value, said John Thorp of the ITGI.
The organisation is behind a relatively new framework known as Val-IT that addresses the governance of IT-enabled business investments. Val IT is tightly integrated with COBIT, the collection of approved ‘best practice’ processes for IT governance.
Specifically, Val IT focuses on the investment decision and the realisation of benefits, while COBIT focuses on the execution.
The thinking behind ITGI’s warning is that given the current economic climate, CIOs have to be looking to strengthen their IT governance to ensure that investments are delivering real value.
A free report compiled from the PwC research has just been published by IT Governance Institute. It’s called An Executive View of IT Governance. It is imperative that IT staffs pursue innovative uses of IT that can sustain and increase value, the report has concluded.
