ROI - return on investment
Post date: Apr 7, 2013 9:00:50 PM
It applies to many areas but here focus is IT and investment decisions in IT. In its simplest form ROI analysis is comparing cost with benefits. One thing to consider is returns, whether they will be realized or not to recover investment amount and another things is how soon benefits will be realized means time frame.
Sometimes following terms are also called return on investment: Return on total assets, Return on invested capital, Return on capital employed,” and Return on net worth.
One of the forms simple ROI also known as cash on cash analysis. In cashflow ROI analysis, amount and time of investment cost is compared with amount and timing of returns or investment gain or benefits.
Simple ROI = ( Gains - Cost)/Cost
(a ratio or percentage)
Calculate all the costs
Initial or one time cost
Recurring or maintenance costs
Cost to mitigate risk etc.
Examples are as follows:
Software and hardware purchase/ licensing cost
Installation cost
Cost of a service and maintenance
Testing, training and education cost.
Power consumption, cooling cost; and other supporting infrastructure like including rack mounts, space required for the system etc.
Migration and conversions (server migration, data conversions and migration if required)
Cost to maintain redundant resources for contingency and risk mitigation
Cost to integrate with other systems (if there are legacy systems it may be a requirement)
Operational costs to make sure reliability, availability and performance.
Estimate returns
Returns direct or indirect
When benefits are expected
Identify a timeline for investment and returns
List investments and returns in chronological order.
Annual percentage yield of return
Calculating annualized returns is called annual rate of return and there are other similar terms such as annual percentage yield, compound annual growth rate etc. Sometimes it is important to compare returns of two investments, if we have to know benefit of an investment in mid of an investment, comparison can be done by calculating APY
APY =100* [ (Final Return/Investment)(365/NoOfDays in terms) -1 ]
APY = 100*[ (1+interest/principal)365/days_in_terms -1]
Interesting resources
http://roitco.vmware.com/vmw/
http://www.aspiresys.com/soaroicalculator/
http://www.managementstudyguide.com/return-on-investment-in-erp-project.htm
http://copperegg.com/implementing-clouds-with-roi-potential/
http://www.cisco.com/cisco/web/solutions/small_business/resource_center/articles/do_business_better/the_roi_of_virtualization/index.html
http://www-935.ibm.com/services/multimedia/innovation_soa_en.pdf
http://www.alfabet.com/media/34192/whitepaper_value_of_ea.pdf
http://davidfrico.com/rico07a-s.pdf