‘RoI and TCO are a myth’

CHENNAI: CIO’s today play a key role in shaping the technology infrastructure of the enterprises. They are even termed as change enablers who bring in organization-wide change by using information technology as the key driver.

In their previous role (they used to be called as EDP or MIS managers) CIOs were confined to a corner room, where the rest of the employees seldom bothered or understood what they did. But today, the CIO has arrived — and is considered as the nerve center of the enterprise.

As change agents how do CIOs satisfy the management’s concerns regarding TCO and ROI? The CIOL Enterprise Connect Program, fifth in the series across India, in Chennai went deeper into this issue.

"Every CIO today has to do a little bit of Indian rope trick in any IT implementation and arrive at the right IT architecture that increases employee and customer ease," Dilip Sadarangani, Head, Information Systems at Standard Chartered Bank. "RoI in some instance can be measured and most cases it is intangible."

More radical was N.S.Parameswarn, Divisional Manager (MIS), Wheels India. "RoI and TCO are a myth that does not have any relevance nor it can be measured,’ he said. Many agreed to this viewpoint. Some did not, like V.Varadharajan, Senior Manager at Ashok Leyland who believes that both the tangible and intangible benefits of IT are the RoI. Another panel member, Sundram Appan, Head-IT, Hindustan Motors also took the golden mean by stressing the benefits of IT on the organizational processes.

The meet also had an interactive session, in which the member CIO’s cited case studies for measuring RoI in certain cases and the best practices IT ushers in by way of cutting costs and manual work. After a round of animated discussions the meet ended on a sober note that RoI and TCO are a necessary evil and it is the organizational outlook that determines the extent to which it can be measured.