Defining the optimal level of business benefits within IS/IT projects: Insights from benefit identification practices adopted in an IT Service Man

📝 Abstract

The popularity of benefit realization management (BRM) in today’s IT-enabled world is fast gaining traction within IT organisations around the world. However, there appears to be limited attention paid to the intra-organisational practice by which benefits are identified. The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, to describe and define a practice approach to the identification of benefits that exploits a number of benefit identification methods in an effort to more comprehensively identify IS/IT related benefits that reflect the ongoing organisational investment. Secondly, to underline the importance of this benefit identification process in the context of IT service management (ITSM). This is achieved through a case study of an information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) implementation in a multi-national organization. The case study exposes a pragmatic practice approach of customising such implementations in an effort to achieve a cost effective implementation of IT services that reflects the context and requirements of that specific organisation.

💡 Analysis

The popularity of benefit realization management (BRM) in today’s IT-enabled world is fast gaining traction within IT organisations around the world. However, there appears to be limited attention paid to the intra-organisational practice by which benefits are identified. The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, to describe and define a practice approach to the identification of benefits that exploits a number of benefit identification methods in an effort to more comprehensively identify IS/IT related benefits that reflect the ongoing organisational investment. Secondly, to underline the importance of this benefit identification process in the context of IT service management (ITSM). This is achieved through a case study of an information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) implementation in a multi-national organization. The case study exposes a pragmatic practice approach of customising such implementations in an effort to achieve a cost effective implementation of IT services that reflects the context and requirements of that specific organisation.

📄 Content

Australasian Conference on Information Systems

Wijesinghe et al.
30th Nov - 4th Dec 2015, Adelaide, Australia Defining the optimal level of IS/IT benefits

Defining the optimal level of business benefits within IS/IT projects: Insights from benefit identification practices adopted in an IT Service Management (ITSM) project
Ravinda Wijesinghe Department of Information Systems and Logistics Swinburne Business School Swinburne University of Technology Hawthorne, Australia Email: rwijesinghe@swin.edu.au Helana Scheepers Department of Information Systems and Logistics Swinburne Business School Swinburne University of Technology Hawthorne, Australia Email: hscheepers@swin.edu.au
Stuart Mcloughlin
Department of Information Systems and Logistics Swinburne Business School Swinburne University of Technology Hawthorne, Australia Email: smcloughlin@swin.edu.au

ABSTRACT The popularity of benefit realization management (BRM) in today’s IT-enabled world is fast gaining traction within IT organisations around the world. However, there appears to be limited attention paid to the intra-organisational practice by which benefits are identified. The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, to describe and define a practice approach that reflects the ongoing organisational investment through a benefit identification process that serves to exploit a number of benefit identification methods. Secondly, to underline and reflect on the importance of this benefit identification process in the context of IT service management (ITSM). This is achieved through a case study of an information technology infrastructure library (ITIL) implementation in a multi- national organization. The case study exposes a pragmatic practice approach of customising such implementations in an effort to achieve a cost effective implementation of IT services that reflects the context and requirements of that specific organisation.
Keywords Benefit Planning Management, Benefit Identification, Information Technology Service Management

1. INTRODUCTION
   The realization of benefits through IS/IT investments that results in organizational change and development is one of the most frequent and critical business and policy issues being discussed and researched in the domain of information systems (Ward & Daniel, 2012). The continued failure of high profile IT projects around the world has put significant challenges on organizational executive teams to properly execute their IS/IT driven change projects so as to realize value through the achievement of the projected optimum level of business benefits (Gingnell, Franke, Lagerström, Ericsson, & Lilliesköld, 2014). The popularity of benefits-driven approaches in IS/IT investments has significantly risen in recent years in concert with other popular mechanisms such as the balanced scorecard (Gacenga, Cater-Steel, Toleman, & Tan, 2011). This is both a function and consequence of the need to
   continuously involve impacted stakeholders and the necessary ongoing re-evaluation of business objectives with IS/IT changes.
   Australasian Conference on Information Systems

Wijesinghe et al.
30th Nov - 4th Dec 2015, Adelaide, Australia Defining the optimal level of IS/IT benefits

Benefit driven approaches are based on the premise that, given IT has no inherent value, benefits will only arise as and when IT enables people to do things differently (Ward & Daniel, 2012). For this reason, the starting point of any benefit-driven approach is to consider the impacted stakeholders, what they are going to do differently in the context of new investment and how this is of benefit to them. This focus on benefit identification is particularly important because potential changes may impact significantly on the relationships, roles and working practices of many stakeholders across the organization. As benefits come from organizational change that enables people to do things differently, a key implication is that there is a need to ensure business ownership of benefits, a balance of benefits for every benefit owner and the changes required to realize them (Ward & Daniel, 2012). Once the project is in progress benefits may change over time as new issues and working practices emerge. This is because the organisational context in which the new project takes place is likely to have a significant impact on the attitudes and actions of the stakeholders. For this reason business benefits resulting from new IS/IT projects continually evolve and the organization and its context is critical in determining an emerging set of potential benefits. Optimal benefits are those benefits that are aligned with the investment objectives, address strategic stakeholder needs and reference to existing performance management evaluation standards.
To date, the

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