By: Michael Smith

I enjoyed reading your posting. Throughout my career I have always attempted to focus of the benefits derived from technology, perhaps this reflects the time spent early in my career in the employment of a vendor. Later as I joined an health system IT department in a leadership capacity, I distinguished myself in the department by continuing to focus on benefits, and communicating the benefits. This became extremely challenging with the pace of activity, and the volume of projects increasing.
Identifying the benefits, measuring the value achieved (e.g., ROI, Quality improvements) is not easy work. Cost information is not readily available. Few organizations have the focus and the human talent to gather this information (e.g.,BPA, BPM, Workflow).
IMHO until BoDs and executive leadership sets the expectation that ROI will be calculated, allocates time and appropriate resources, we will all be continuing this dialogue for years to come.