IN A BRICK- and-mortar industry, investments in IT systems and solutions are the most difficult to correlate to ROI. Conventionally IT has been viewed as a support function. The underlying thought process is that while the core business is evaluated as a profit center, the IT function is looked at as a cost center. “IT is an important element in business strategy execution” is commonly heard. While the “investment” is poured into IT enablers, the return would be visible from the core business only; and that is the way it should be.

One needs to move away from quantifying the return, but look at qualitative improvement of the business process execution that IT is able to bring out. This requires competencies in the IT team to be able to understand business and implement business analytics that could track the qualitative improvements and make them visible. This demands that there is a single version of truth in data that is captured at various touch points. This is where the problem starts.

While the data used in transaction systems has always got to be right, in other areas, such as engineering, pre-sales and service, there is a lot of room for interpretation, the data quality depends on several soft factors such as the personnel skills, non-use of subjectivity in data input, and process standardisation. It is essential therefore to work on 'people and processes' rather than just on 'technology.' This needs a collaborative style of working with the core business stakeholders. Winning their confidence is critical to success in implementing analytics, to bring in the business intelligence they are looking for. This would happen only if IT could demonstrate clear understanding of the challenges the business faces – not just capture data, but design methods and tools that could make their life easy.

The analysis of clean data would bring to the surface the benefits that accrue to business; the real ROI!

So the choice ahead is only one. Transform the historical approach of 'looking for technology' into 'looking through technology'!.

BY Chandrasekaran N Special Director-IT, Ashok Leyland THE AUTHOR, CURRENTLY with Ashok Leyland, has over 35 years of experience in IT industry, designing mission critical systems, managing software exports etc.