The following is an excerpt from SIIA’s Deciphering Finance, a publication cataloging finance strategies and best practices. The goal of the book is to provide solid guidance to help finance executives understand how these new technology trends can benefit finance departments by tapping into the minds of SIIA member executives.
Today′s post is brought to you by Mat Ellis, Founder of Cloudability.
Traditionally, technology projects have been treated as if all of the features, benefits and costs can all be accurately defined right at the start. Lengthy ROI and business model reviews, combined with the waterfall method of project management have managed to reinforce our belief in this lie. All too often we recognize late in the project life cycle that our technology needs have changed and so we scramble to catch up, resulting in late delivery, lower than forecast ROI, cost overruns and, in the worst cases, abandoned projects. The cost of this inefficiency, both measurable, and in terms of lost opportunity, customers, market share, etc., are significant, and getting higher as we come to rely more and more on technology in every area of business.