Show Me the Money: How to Determine ROI in People, Projects, and Programs

The Phillips', the world's leading experts on ROI strategy, distill their years of experience and research into proven tools for determining the value of any project before, during, and after implementation. They present a comprehensive method for measuring the hard-to-measure, and placing monetary value on the hard-to-value. They even show how to measure and place value on "intangible" qualities like leadership, creativity, customer loyalty, employee engagement, and more. Developed in an easy-to-read format and fortified with case studies, checklists, tips, and tools, this work clarifies and resolves the mystery surrounding the allocation of monetary value. It gives change agents everything they need to provid e detailed evaluations of the potential and actual financial ben efits of any project or program.Show moreShow less

I hear the term ROI often enough but rarely see it calculated. It is said that business is all about numbers-- financial statements, stock prices, bonus plans--but then there are IT projects, with budgets that are clear enough (or at least large enough) but monetary returns that often get taken for granted.With this anomaly in mind, I picked up Show Me the Money by Jack J. Phillips and Patricia Pulliam Phillips. Although dry and weak on examples, Show Me the Money provides a practical framework for calculating ROI. The book breaks the calculations into several levels:* Buy-in* Learning* Application* Impact* Monetary value of impactThe first three levels of metrics do not measure ROI itself, rather a project's ability to deliver ROI. Without organizational buy-in, without the learning of new skills, without the actual application of new processes, a project cannot deliver value. And so it is essential to set objectives for these metrics, measure them at appropriate times during the project, adjust to the feedback, and evaluate them at some point after project completion.These objectives for buy-in, learning, and application should be framed to deliver the desired impact, which itself must be measured. In measuring impact, you must decide upon the appropriate units and methods of data collection. The units may be just about anything relevant to financial results: sales revenue, cost, productivity, errors, employee turnover. By giving multiple approaches to data collection, the authors challenge a common assumption and insist that anything can be measured.Finally, apply monetary values to the units, subtract project costs, and calculate ROI. For details on monetary values, please see the book. But let me point out an obvious suggestion that often goes overlooked by IT decision makers: partner with the accounting department. Those folks may either know the values or have a good sense about how to obtain them.If you want to introduce ROI calculations as a best practice into your organization, this book is a good starting point.

This book purports to describe a process for determining the value of a project, as well as a method for doing so. As regards the process, this book has some, albeit limited, usefulness (how to collect information and from whom, how to communicate results and to whom, etc.). But as regards the method, this book is not useful at all. A much more useful and credible method is Douglas Hubbard's Applied Information Economics, described in part in Hubbard's book "How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of 'Intangibles' in Business." If you need to choose between the two books, go for Hubbard's book without any hesitation.

For my money, this is the BEST book on this topic -- bar none! Most attempts at discussing ROI are either extremely technical (overburdened with financial concepts) or too "sales friendly" (lacking real substance). Their model for constructing ROI scenarios is practical and easy to work with. Anyone that needs to get real work done would be well served by using these methods.

This publication is thought provoking and fundamentally practical. As a CEO of a large and dynamic organization , Show Me the Money provides critical information and a proven method for measuring the return on investment for 100% of our programs and projects. I highly reccommend this book!

Some unnecessary justifications but overall it is THE text on examining Return on Training investment. The theoretical underpinnings have a faint whiff of finger in the air but Team Phillips have done a great job