The Business Value of IT; Seeing the Forest through the Trees

The relation between IT and value is a complex and disputed one. Many studies are not decisive in their results. This paper presents an overview of approaches to the ‘quest for value’ and identifies the qualities of and issues with each approach. It adds several new insights, including what’s missing from most approaches: taking into account the nature of the investment. From this notion a conceptual model to select the most appropriate valuation approach is developed.