Digital Asset Management

ROI calculations are a joke.

Our colleagues over at Forrester recently undertook some interesting research regarding content management investment attitudes in 2010 (DM, RM and WCM).  The overall finding was along the lines one might expect, “72% of respondents intend to expand their use of ECM technologies“… but there was an intriguing second key conclusion in the report: “49% could not estimate the ROI for any of their ECM systems.”

Let me state my take on ROI calculations as clearly as I can. ROI calculations for information technology are junk calculations, a fraud, a nonsense, and a complete waste of time. Clear enough for you? Oh and by the way, ROI calculations from software vendors are even worse…

ROI assessments are based on the simplistic formula of benefits minus costs to calculate the return on your investment. But simple is not always smart, and most if not all the of the benefits in such calculations are by nature predictive. In other words they are guesses, and in my experience, almost always overly optimistic — and fatuous guesses at that.

Continues @ http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1798-ROI-Joke

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