10 questions every IT department should be able to answer (BUT PROBABLY CAN’T)

1 What’s the RoI on that?

Businesses exist to make money. Everything you do should be broadly aligned with that goal, and the same goes particularly for everything you spend money on. As you’re doubtless aware, return on investment – RoI to MBA types – is the notion that any given bit of kit, or service, ought to make a measurable contribution to the revenue-earning ability of the business.

While coming up with a precise number may be tricky, it’s easy to recognise RoI in things such as vans, buildings or manufacturing-specific lumps of metal. It’s a lot less easy with a laptop, which is very likely running the same software as machines 10% cheaper and ones 50% more expensive.

Expecting your IT team to fully price up its asset list and tell you how it contributes to the bottom line is a tough ask. Most IT teams know a lot about systems, but only a little bit about how exactly your business extracts value from them. Working out an RoI requires a deep understanding of not just the key driving factors in a business, but the practicalities of how users