The term ROI has been used and abused for a long time in different industries and contexts. Originally it may have come from equity investments and then made its way into IT and every other industry, as well as our lives in general. ROI has a different meaning, importance and outcome in different countries and cultures. In some economies, especially advanced economies, relative time is more important than money, but it’s the opposite in other economies and circumstances. Also, the size of an organization will have an impact on their perspective on ROI.

The discussion and relevance of ROI is sometimes so varied that it can be quite confusing. Yet ROI is the single most critical topic in any business. We have all seen and heard stories in our professional lives where ROI discussions have led to better decision-making, and other stories where ROI has either have gone wrong or led to delayed decision-making - to the point where it was no longer relevant.

What is ROI?
The classic definition of ROI is net income divided by investment, where the net income is gross profit minus expenses. It ignores several other important factors in the context of non-financial investments, though in other industries and over a period of time, organizations have understood and identified these factors, and so taken them into account. In the world of IT you typically have a prospective IT consumer and buyer, and then a direct or indirect seller of software or hardware.

The IT world is constantly working towards building better products and solutions for their customers to ease their business operation and help them to support their business, make better business decision and so on and so forth. The seller not only has to convince the customer regarding ROI but also on TCO – total cost of ownership - and what makes them a better software vendor than others for their respective businesses. The crux of the matter for IT consumers and buyers is ‘what’s the best software for my business’. The IT buyer is aware that no software can fulfil his entire business operation requirements and that he will always need an IT partner to customize the business software that was chosen to suit their business needs.

I remember a conversation with a young entrepreneur 13 years ago in Mumbai who spent 6-8 months trying to find the right website developer for his venture - he was very anxious to launch his venture but had to wait for a very long time. He had spent time with one agency after another and could not find someone who could deliver a quicker go-live with his expectation of an impressive design for the website. Nonetheless, who are we to say that he should have started with someone and developed the concept over a period of time. As an IT consultant or IT advisor you’re tempted to offer that advice for free. Fast forward 10 years and today we have the power of automation and templates for building an impressive website in no time at all – it’s less challenging than it used to be.

ROI & the Usability Package
At Boyum IT our channel partners often ask us about ROI for their business as well as the business of their customers. There is various different feedback and data for our channel partners in different countries regarding combining the B1 Usability Package (B1UP) to strengthen and compliment their SAP Business One development and customization efforts in terms of cost and profitability.

The important point to note is that customers have to pay each time they have a new requirement, so the next time they want something done, they have to pay again. With the B1UP you pay once and you can cover 75% to 80% of your development needs. However, we noticed that, irrespective of the cost of development in different countries, in the long run having the B1UP is always profitable for partners and customers, no matter which region you are doing your business in. One way to prove this is to try just one project where the B1UP is implemented, and you’ll soon discover that overall project cost, time, profitability and customer satisfaction improve dramatically, thus impacting your and your customers' ROI on SAP Business One and the B1UP. There will always be this argument on ROI and it seems it will never be fully settled, but in actual fact it is the constant debate regarding ROI that makes the world of IT evolve so rapidly.