INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY:A new system to give a proper estimate of projected returns from IT investments, from small firms up to corporations, has been launched

LEGENDARY SCREENWRITER William Goldman once said that in Hollywood, "nobody knows anything". In other words, film executives never knew whether a movie was going to be a hit.

Imagine all those studios splashing out hundreds of millions of dollars and not knowing whether something would be successful. Basically, they were taking little more than a punt on each film.

But this affliction is not only the preserve of La-La land studios; from huge business corporations to small- to medium-sized enterprises, predicting return on investment (ROI) in IT is proving as big a problem as Hollywood has in understanding what makes a hit film.

But help, it seems, is at hand.

The Innovation Value Institute (IVI) located at National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM) recently announced the launch of the IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF).

The IT-CMF, the first product from IVI, claims to provide a structured management roadmap to optimise business value from IT investments. Over 40 public and private companies are involved in the IVI consortium, including Intel, Microsoft, Xilinx and ESB.

Intel's Martin Curley and NUIM president John Hughes are the two men who initially launched the concept of IVI.

Curley, Intel's global director of IT innovation, said the germ of the idea started when the chip manufacturer was going through an IT transformation about 10 years ago.

At that time, Curley was looking for some sort of framework that would aid the process. A few academic papers were found but, he says, there was no common framework that any IT organisation could use to transform its IT function, or even a roadmap to guide them.

Intel cobbled enough information together to complete a successful IT change, and out of that came the beginning of a framework document. Spurred on by its success, Curley began to talk to his customers and give classes worldwide on its framework. Significantly, Intel got the thumbs up from analysts such as Gartner and IDC, which recommended that the chip manufacturer push the framework out to the market on an open innovation platform.

Intel began to work with NUI Maynooth on the idea, and after much networking garnered huge expressions of interest from industry.

"Ultimately the mission is very simple - to improve the value organisations get from IT. We want to improve the probability, predictability and profitability of IT investment," says Curley. The Intel boffin points to very high profile IT failures such as Ppars and e-voting, and says it is IVI's goal to help firms and governments to be more effective in their use of IT.

"It's a complex thing to deliver a system on a national platform. So for two years we've been researching. We have an open innovation model, and much of the research has been done by IT executives. So executives that might work for Microsoft or BP are pooling their best practices, and we're turning that expertise into tools other people can use. And depending where you are on the maturity curve, you can see what's worked at companies such as Chevron, BP and so on."

So just how important will products such as IT-CMF be for businesses and public sector bodies? According to Curley, a few years ago, former Intel CEO Andy Grove said there would soon be no such thing as e-business, as all business will be e-business. "The more you look at the way organisations and governments transact, it's completely dependent on IT - it's the one thing that's totally horizontal across business and government. So it will be pivotal, and the early adopters of IT-CMF will be the ones that will be able to stabilise their processes and innovate quickly," he says.

Curley acknowledges there are different ways of calculating ROI for IT, but felt IT-CMF could be a leading worldwide product. "We have happened on this solution and there's a lot of support for the model and we're all developing and co-developing it."

Part of that supporting consortium is ESB, a company that has been utilising CMF tools and contributing to the framework.

ESB chief information officer (CIO) Peter O'Shea says the electricity supplier got involved in IVI soon after he took the post. He knew there were other frameworks, but IVI was unique as it had academia teaming up with industry. "It has the research rigour of Maynooth and the drive of Intel and Martin Curley. And that's why we got involved with it, and it gave me a framework to understand the business better . . . It gave us an understanding of what we were good at and what we needed to work on."

He says it's "about measurement, and once you can measure you can start managing". With the recent announcement of the Government granting €1 million to aid IVI research, the future looks good for the product. An upbeat Martin Curley says: "Next year we want to have the full version available and we're hopeful in five years it will be known as the global standard for recognising the value in IT."