More than ever, information systems departments are expected to align themselves with corporate strategies and need methods to identify high-payoff, mission-critical opportunities.

Methods such as business process reengineering have uncovered significant business opportunities, but are not designed to identify systems opportunities. Without specific methods, business process reengineering teams intuitively define requirements that may or may not be the highest payoff use of information technology. Therefore, the needs assessment and benefits measurement methods in this book are perfect adjuncts to a successful reengineering program.

And in these challenging economic times, executives are demanding high returns on their investments in IT. This forces IT professionals to learn methods for measuring, in meaningful and tangible ways, the payback from computing and telecommunications tools.

Even though this book has a long history, during that decade no other book has even come close to providing such accessible, practical, and effective methods of finding and measuring the "intangible" strategic benefits of computing. It is the "handbook" of IT internal business consultants.