Trying to prioritize projects and decide how to allocate scarce company resources can be complicated and hard. Adeptyx has used the following framework to help management compare and contrast various IT projects. The framework categorizes projects as follows:

1. Preventive: Do it to avoid failures, necessary to keep support active, etc.
2. Strategic: Avoiding strategic jeopardy, invest in something because your competitors are doing it and where if you don’t, you will be at a strategic disadvantage.
3. Qualifier: A qualifier investment keeps you in business. You have to qualify to run in the race, but qualifiers only buy you a place at the starting line.
4. Compete: A compete investment gives you a potential edge over other companies in your industry. “Competes” help you win the race.
5. Mandatory: (i.e., security, disaster recovery, business continuity)
6. ROI Projects: Projects with high ROI (incremental)
7. Option Creating: “Break-through” projects that may not have necessarily high ROI because benefits are too speculative or too much in the future, but they create possibilities for future beneficial projects.

By categorizing and thinking about projects in these terms, managers can jointly come to grips with projects they have to do as well as identifying projects that are high ROI, or if ROI is not immediately quantifiable, decide if they are necessary to compete or are potential option creating projects.
As part of other strategic systems and operation reviews, we have helped the management teams of other asset managers structure their thinking about future projects and identify the most valuable short-term and long-term investments. If you want to discuss any of this in more detail, please give us a call.