Sustainable benefits of IT investments: From concept to implementation

Information technology (IT) benefits are often indirect and are not easy to demonstrate. Often the problem associated with IT investments magnifies because IT-enabled benefits tend to dissipate over time. In this paper we develop the concept of sustainable IT-enabled benefits. First we develop the concept of sustainability as it applies to IT. Following that, we base our conceptual framework to sustainability as a response to the process paradox (Keen, 1997) and the improvement paradox (Repenning and Sterman, 2001). We argue that organizational and IT processes change. These changes in processes have a direct impact on the maturity of processes. Changes can be planned (for instance, process improvement activities in the organization) or unplanned and even unobserved (like changes due to organizational and external changes anyway). We argue that organizational and technical flexibility is a critical enabling factor for sustaining IT-enabled benefits. This sustainability is manifested primarily through flexible processes. However, in experiencing such sustained benefits, clarity of objectives has to be defined as the explicit dual of flexibility. Meaningful and unambiguous standards provide the requisite practical complement to the conceptual notion of flexibility. We end this paper by providing implications of this approach for ongoing research for IT effectiveness and for practitioners.