Return on Investment (ROI)

In 2010, MESA has started a new working group to focus on understanding how to justify investments and appropriately calculate the expected business benefits of various types of projects that change business processes and enterprise solutions.  Each and every year, manufacturing companies are faced with a diverse set of business issues/challenges which require some form of capital investment to be made across one or more elements of their organization. Executive management within these organizations are looking to invest their funds wisely, challenging their business leaders to discover and present opportunities/projects that could significantly impact bottom line revenue.

The challenge faced by these manufacturing business leaders is assembling a credible business case that clearly articulates the value of an investment. With that said, the intent of this Guidebook is to discuss classic investment metrics and models, organizational dynamics and key fundamental steps in building and presenting a business case to enable manufacturing business leaders to secure investments for manufacturing IT projects .

This team is creating a new ROI Guidebook to accompany those on the strategic initiatives and metrics.  Some of the topics this Guidebook will cover are:

• Why Cost - Benefit Analysis? (Discuss why companies/organizations use cost-benefit analysis to justify manufacturing IT expenditures, etc.)
• Understanding Investment Metrics and Models (Discuss/review classic financial models used in cost justification ... NPV, TCO, IRR, ROA, etc.)
• Cost Justification Challenges and Obstacles (Discuss/review classic challenges and obstacles faced in building and presenting a business case )
• Building the Business Case / Cost-Benefit Methodology (Discuss/review the elements of a good business case , as well as the supporting information )
• Presenting the Business Case (Discuss/review typical stakeholders/audience and how/what to focus on when presenting a business case

GUIDEBOOK:
The guidebook is currently under development and will be released to our Premium members in the coming months.

Chair: Darren Riley, Rockwell Automation dkriley@ra.rockwell.com