Information Technology Benefits

Many companies and other organizations have adopted new information technology, expending considerable effort and resources to do so. Understandably, managers wish to evaluate whether the organization’s benefits from these new technologies exceeded the cost of acquisition and adoption. What was in 2000 a large and growing literature on this subject seems to have reached a plateau, as early studies questioning the value of information technology collided with the reality of growth and profitability for companies that employed information technology heavily. Methods to evaluate utility and appropriateness of information technology have not kept pace with the technological advances. Good methods of evaluation do exist, but they are not prominent in the literature. Using such methods and developing new ones represent an important challenge and opportunity for OR/MS analysts.

Much of the earlier published work on the subject, especially in business journals, focused on examining whether...