Cognos solutions for information technology

Where and how does IT drive business value?

The Business Value Map decision area provides a high-level view of IT’s current and potential effect on your business. It helps define the demand for IT and the ways IT can help. Of the five decision areas, this is the most important for driving better alignment between IT and the other functions for performance management.

Companies use the business value map at different levels and stages of IT processes. These include defining IT strategy, setting priorities, approving projects and investments, defining requirements, monitoring user acceptance, and validating success.

With the Business Value Map decision area, you can set planning goals and scorecarding metrics for performance management elements such as:

• Business value in dollars.
• Information quality index.
• IT costs ($).
• IT project costs.
• BI users (# & %).
• Ratings for information accuracy, availability, consistency, relevance and timeliness, company share (%).

Most importantly, you can analyze these goals and metrics by a number of dimensions to find the hidden gems in the data behind performance, including:

• IT project.
• Company organization.
• Decision roles.
• IT priority.
• Information type.

Using the Business Value Map decision area

As an IT professional, the business value map provides context and measures gaps in current or projected IT capabilities. This helps you clarify where / who / how / what / when questions of performance management:

• Users and BI users: Where are better IT capabilities needed in the company in terms of organizational units, functions and processes? Who are the users and stakeholders of better IT capabilities?
• Business value: What IT capabilities drive greater value for the company, and did they last quarter?
• IT project costs: How do IT project costs line up with our organizational or business priorities?
• IT projects: When must better IT capabilities be available to meet the needs of certain types of decision maker?

This decision area lets you compare strengths and weaknesses in IT capabilities across different business units, processes and functions. For example, information quality is a leading indicator of business value. You can evaluate gaps in information with qualitative factors such as relevance, accuracy, timeliness, availability, reliability, breadth of functionality and consistency. These factors can be used to clarify cost/benefit options and let you prioritize potential improvements.