Lee Schlenker, Alan Matcham
ISBN: 0-470-02492-5
Cloth
200 pages
April 2005

The objective of the book is to explore the issues and challenges of levering information technology to respond more effectively to clients needs and objectives both within a company and within a market. Based upon examples of successes and failures over the last decade, the book is intended to provide a common forum for discussion within organizations and between firms and their different business partners.

The first three chapters explore the foundations of business value. The authors begin by examining the inherent links between business value, business models, and corporate strategy. They document how information technology has progressively influenced our perceptions of value by impacting the practice of management. They propose the Value Matrix as a guide to determining how to best deploy talent, organization, and technology to produce value in a company and in a market.

Upon these foundations, the authors then turn their attention to how current management practice has often neglected the goal of business value. Business process improvement, although based upon improving production and service processes, has often in practice been more concerned with operational efficiency than satisfying client needs and objectives. Public and trade regulations, based on goals of performance and safety standards, have most often resulted in an vicious circle of quality that have driven human talent, passion, and innovation out of the firm. As the prescriptions for optimising organizations and technology have reached their limits, a radically different approach based on business value offers a promising alternative.

In the concluding chapters, the authors demonstrate how the Value Matrix can help you breed business value in projects, teams and organizations. The reality of the joined-up economy encourages a focus on working together with clients and business partners to build business value. A new generation of information technology, based on collaborative strategies, can be used to capture, store and communicate new metrics on the effectiveness of our relationships with internal and external clients. Built upon the roots of the drive for efficiency, a new mindset around effectiveness can help provide the nuts and bolts of business value for careers, professions and organizations.