Rapid Economic Justification Framework Available

Microsoft is arming information technology (IT) managers with a potent tool for moving major IT projects forward: a framework that can help them sell their proposals to decision-makers who hold the corporate purse strings. Microsoft’s Rapid Economic Justification (REJ) Framework is designed to give IT managers a “pragmatic and quick” way to quantify what a project will do for a company’s bottom line.

As a Microsoft white paper on REJ notes, IT investments are frequently evaluated in terms of how they will improve operations or reduce costs within IT itself. But the CEO and other non-IT senior managers in a company must typically balance IT investments against competing proposals from a company’s sales, marketing, research, and manufacturing divisions. If an IT manager can clearly point decision-makers to the impact that a project will have on the organization as a whole, and particularly on its bottom line, non-IT managers will find it easier to evaluate the project’s benefits.