This post will explore the financial performance of your IT investments and particularly when they should start paying for themselves.

Basically, there’s a time line associated with when you should start seeing some sort of financial return, however, most often those returns don’t present themselves in hardcore cash. What does happen is, those investments will enhance other aspects of your business and those efficiencies, in turn, start paying off.

We’ve broken it down into four (4) phases:

Phase I – Technical Proficiency

This is the installation and training period where you and your staff familiarize yourself with the new hardware and/or software. A business can expect a negative return on investment as up-front costs are incurred. During an acquisition stage, money is spent with no immediate rewards.

Phase II – Task Automation

Business owners who want to improve productivity at the task level must focus their vision on technology. Generating forms, word processing and project management can all be improved with the introduction of technology. Modest returns in the ballpark of 10% to 20% can be expected at this phase as basic tasks become automated. Those returns are generally found in better productivity of your workers; they can do more in less time.

Phase III – Improving Business Processes

This is where tactical business vision drives the use of technology. Important processes become automated WITH NO INTENTION of ever reverting back to previous methods. Returns of up to 300% are expected as technology is used for integrating project management, financial systems and providing you current aggregated information.

Phase IV – Transforming Your Business

This is the true “re-engineering” phase and offers almost unlimited returns on information technology investment. Businesses attempt to eliminate unnecessary tasks and implement just-in-time scheduling, joint marketing partnerships and seamless integration with suppliers and customers.In essence, you are FUTURIZING YOUR BUSINESS with technology.

WURLWIND Solutions can help you transform the way your business operates by showing you where you business stands in the technology ROI spectrum. We’ll work with you in any of the above phases but more importantly our goal is to get you moving from one phase to the next so your business can begin to transform itself into a lean machine.