The Enduring Value of IT and Process Investments
March 19, 2010 by Mary Adams · Leave a Comment
Fortran punch card on Wikipedia
Yesterday, I had a meeting with some consultants who told me the story of a group of IT and accounting people from one of their clients screaming at each other because they could not find common ground to communicate about the cost and ROI of IT investments.
Then, last night, standing in the parking lot outside the Boston KM event, I had a long chat with an engineer who has been around tech and business for decades. He was very active in the Y2K adjustments (yes, that was a decade ago?!). He volunteered to me that people still don’t have a disciplined way of tracking their IT and processes.
This is one of the big reasons that IT and accounting people end up screaming at each other. It’s not that the individuals are at fault. It’s that they are working in a broken system. Read more
Five Reasons to Focus on Optimizing Intangibles in 2010
December 16, 2009 by Mary Adams · 6 Comments
I am more and more convinced that 2010 will be the year of intangibles, intangible assets, intangible capital, intellectual capital, knowledge assets or whatever else you want to call them. There are five big reasons why:
- Intangibles already get the majority of your investment dollars. Estimates are that at least 60% of the money organizations invest in their future productive capacity is in intangibles. If you are already spending money, isn’t time you created a way to track intangibles performance? Read more
CIO’s–and CFO’s–Need to “Get Real”
November 5, 2009 by Mary Adams · 2 Comments
There is an interesting report at CFO.com called CFOs to CIOs: Get Real.My response is that CFO’s need to “get real” too.
One of the biggest barriers between CFO’s and CIO’s is how they view the cost of projects. CFO’s are trapped inside an accounting model that expenses a lot of investments. Recent macro data suggested that US businesses spent $1.7 trillion on intangibles versus $1.2 on tangibles. For the most part, intangibles get expensed, tangibles get capitalized. Many of these intangibles are related to IT-enabled systems and/or processes. Read more
Shedding Light on the Value and Performance of Intangible Capital
October 8, 2009 by Mary Adams · Leave a Comment
The first thing that most people ask when discussing intangibles is value. My answer is, “how can you value something for which you have no data?”I do not mean to imply that it is impossible to develop data on your intangible capital. It’s just that most companies have not taken the necessary steps to accomplish this. How can you create a sound data set on your intangibles? Read more
Intangibles Measurement IV: Indicators and Performance Management
August 23, 2009 by Mary Adams · 1 Comment
Here’s the next post in my intangibles measurement series. The last two posts have provided details on investment and assessment. This time, I am going to talk about the third kind of data: indicators.Indicators and performance management are the most widely used forms of intangibles management today. This approach arose in direct response to the limitations of financial data in understanding the knowledge era business. Common approaches build a dashboard to show key performance indicators (KPI’s) of the company’s operations. Sometimes the dashboard is associated with a balance scorecard as well.
The idea is to identify data points that are leading indicators of strategic success and track them closely. Read more
