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Despite the natural advantages larger companies enjoy, our research reveals an insightful example of marketing and number validation happening in a midsized transportation company. During the governance process, IT collects project ideas from the business side and then vets them with finance. Once the finance department estimates the business value of each project, IT identifies the costs. "If they meet a collective ROI that is greater than 18%, then they progress in the governance process," the CIO says.
At this transportation provider, all executives and senior VPs attend governance meetings and vote to prioritize the projects. As projects are completed, the finance department computes the actual costs and compares them with the outcome. "In this way, we close the loop: 'Did IT do what they said they were going to do?' Ninety-nine percent of the time we do," the CIO says proudly. "This generates positive press. It demonstrates that IT is a useful function that contributes to the company. Delivering at least an 18% ROI is part of my budgeting campaign [and means that] the company returns about 10% to the shareholders. So money invested in IT is a better use of shareholder capital than money invested elsewhere."
This company's experience runs counter to the controversial argument made by Nicholas Carr in his Harvard Business Review article "IT Doesn't Matter," which questioned whether IT is merely a commodity. Since the article's publication in 2003, IT practitioners have gone out of their way to demonstrate that IT is anything but a commodity. But what is the opposite of a commodity? Something that's branded. And what makes a brand? Marketing, of course. If you want to be more than a commodity, you must be branded; and to be branded, you have to do some marketing. I would contend that the opposite of commoditized IT is branded IT (see "What's in a Brand Line?," below).
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