IT Innovation in SMB space requires creativity

CIOs at small and mid-size companies are struggling to leverage budgets to fund risky but potentially rewarding IT projects. J. Marc Hopkins, manager of information technology at a large medical practice headquartered in Ohio, writes about his experience justifying a risky business intelligence (BI) project in CIO magazine. He reveals that getting a green light on these initiatives can be more of an art than a science. But the effort is worth it, if SMBs are to join their large enterprise brethren in reaping the rewards of innovation. "[In my environment] traditional project planning and ROI measurements are ineffective in calculating the value of BI because calculating the potential value of unknown information is similar to a prospector digging for gold," he writes. Hopkins offers readers a few tactical suggestions that helped him eventually secure the funding for his BI project. Among his recommendations: start small in order to make the project more financially feasible. In this case, Hopkins broke the project into multiple cascading sub-projects, each of which built on the success of its predecessor; each step was used to fund the subsequent steps. He also recommends focusing on the end user: "finding the information is insufficient to generate value; it must be accessible to the parties who can best utilize it," he writes. In the end, Hopkins says the company has delivered more than $1 million in benefits to date with an investment of $125,000 in hardware and software.

For all the details on how he sold the project to his CFO:
- read the article in CIO