Costs and ROI Costs and ROI is the fifth of six books in the Measurement and Evaluation Series from Pfeiffer. The proven ROI Methodology--developed by the ROI Institute--provides a practical system for evaluation planning, data collection, data analysis, and reporting. All six books in the series offer the latest tools, most current research, and practical advice for measuring ROI in a variety of settings. All costs must be captured for an accurate cost profile. Costs and ROI focuses on developing program costs and the ROI and explains this vital element in the ROI Methodology. The authors show how to capture all costs in order to bring credibility to the analysis. The book outlines the actual ROI calculation and explains the many assumptions and issues that must be considered when calculating the ROI. Costs and ROI presents three effective calculations: the benefit-cost ratio, the ROI percentage, and the payback period. Costs and ROI includes all the challenges and concerns regarding the use of ROI.

Open source software is changing the world of Information Technology. But making it work for your company is far more complicated than simply installing a copy of Linux. If you are serious about using open source to cut costs, accelerate development, and reduce vendor lock-in, you must institutionalize skills and create new ways of working. You must understand how open source is different from commercial software and what responsibilities and risks it brings. Open Source for the Enterprise is a sober guide to putting open source to work in the modern IT department. Open source software is software whose code is freely available to anyone who wants to change and redistribute it. New commercial support services, smaller licensing fees, increased collaboration, and a friendlier platform to sell products and services are just a few of the reasons open source is so attractive to IT departments. Some of the open source projects that are in current, widespread use in businesses large and small include Linux, FreeBSD, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, JBOSS, and Perl. These have been used to such great effect by Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, and major commercial and financial firms, that a wave of publicity has resulted in recent years, bordering on hype. Large vendors such as IBM, Novell, and Hewlett Packard have made open source a lynchpin of their offerings. Open source has entered a new area where it is being used as a marketing device, a collaborative software development methodology, and a business model. This book provides something far more valuable than either the cheerleading or the fear-mongering one hears about open source. The authors are Dan Woods, former CTO of TheStreet.com and a consultant and author of several books about IT, and Gautam Guliani, Director of Software Architecture at Kaplan Test Prep & Admissions. Each has used open source software for some 15 years at IT departments large and small. They have collected the wisdom of a host of experts from IT departments, open source communities, and software companies. Open Source for the Enterprise provides a top to bottom view not only of the technology, but of the skills required to manage it and the organizational issues that must be addressed. Here are the sorts of questions answered in the book: Why is there a "productization gap" in most open source projects? How can the maturity of open source be evaluated? How can the ROI of open source be calculated? What skills are needed to use open source? What sorts of open source projects are appropriate for IT departments at the beginner, intermediate, advanced, and expert levels? What questions need to be answered by an open source strategy? What policies for governance can be instituted to control the adoption of open source? What new commercial services can help manage the risks of open source? Do differences in open source licenses matter? How will using open source transform an IT department? Praise for Open Source for the Enterprise:"Open Source has become a strategic business issue; decisions on how andwhere to choose to use Open Source now have a major impact on theoverall direction of IT abilities to support the business both withcapabilities and by controlling costs. This is a new game and onegenerally not covered in existing books on Open Source which continue toassume that the readers are 'deep dive' technologists, Open Source for the Enterprise provides everyone from business managers to technologistswith the balanced view that has been missing. Well worth the time toread, and also worth encouraging others in your enterprise to read as well." ----Andy Mulholland - Global CTO Capgemini "Open Source for the Enterprise is required reading for anyone workingwith or looking to adopt open source technologies in a corporateenvironment. Its practical, no-BS approach will make sure you're armedwith the information you need to deploy applications successfully (aswell as helping you know when to say "no"). If you're trying to sell opensource to management, this book will give you the ammunition you need.If you're a manager trying to drive down cost using open source, thisbook will tell you what questions to ask your staff. In short, it's aclear, concise explanation of how to successfully leverage open sourcewithout making the big mistakes that can get you fired." ----Kevin Bedell - founding editor of LinuxWorld Magazine

ROI (Return on Investment) is today's key business tool for measuring how effectively money was spent--yet few marketing managers receive any ROI training at all. Marketing ROIchanges all that, showing marketing pros at every level how to use ROI and other financial metrics to support their strategic decision making. This comprehensive book details how an accurate working knowledge of ROI is essential for using the latest marketing measurements, and provides insights for gaining the greatest competitive advantage from the skilled use and understanding of ROI concepts.

Business & Economics/Project Management An exclusive portal to the methods and tools the ROI Institute uses to determine return on investment in project management To survive this modern age of financially skeptical "show me the ROI" investors, it is a crucial step for companies to develop an effective project management strategy in order to stay ahead of the curve and achieve success. Project Management ROI takes the guesswork out of determining how to monetarily value projects by teaching the time-tested Return on Investment (ROI) methodology. It presents these results-based concepts in a methodical, reproducible manner that project managers, executives, and analysts can use as a validated reference for future projects. This book focuses on an array of measures to forecast project value and collect data during and after implementation, including reaction, learning, application and implementation, impact, return on investment, and intangibles. Project Management ROI: Is the first book from the renowned ROI Institute to focus on project management ROI Provides both the tools and methodology for measuring the ROI of project management investments Will help project managers discover the value of specific project management solutions to justify project expenditures

As with executives and managers in so many other business functions, pricing specialists are being challenged more and more to substantiate the added value of their activities. Pricing is a core function of every business, and needs not only to contribute positively to short- and long-term results, but also to document its impact to the bottom line. A fundamental part of this is the pricing ROI calculations. This book, edited by globally renowned thought leaders Andreas Hinterhuber and Stephan Liozu, is the first to outline contemporary theories and best practices of documenting pricing ROI. It provides proven methods, practices and theories on how to calculate the impact of pricing activities on performance. Marketing ROI is now a common concept: this collection proves to do the same for pricing. Hinterhuber & Liozu introduce the concept of pricing ROI, documenting and quantifying the return on pricing activities and on the pricing function itself is of increasing relevance today and in the future – in times of budget constraints. 20 world class specialists explore the concept of pricing ROI under both a theoretical perspective and a managerial perspective to shed much-needed light on how to measure and increase pricing ROI. This groundbreaking book will enlighten students and specialists of marketing and sales, pricing managers and executives alike.

Sending an SOS when it comes to ROIs? Help is on the way . . . UNDERSTANDING RETURN ON INVESTMENT Return on investment (ROI) plays a major role in business, but itcan be a difficult concept to grasp. Understanding Return onInvestment shows you how to better utilize this essential tool bysimplifying and clarifying all its important points. Thisinvaluable guide includes information on: * The effect of ROI on investment and disinvestment decisions * The various forms of ROI and how they provide different measuresfor evaluating investment activities * The relationship of ROI to ROE (return on equity) * The use of ROI in evaluating investment centers in adecentralized operation * How ROI is used to evaluate managers * The use of weighted average cost of capital (WACC) in makinginvestment decisions If you use ROI, but are confused or unclear about some of itsdetails, you'll definitely profit from Understanding Return onInvestment, a complete guide to this all-important performanceindicator.

I spend a lot of time in marketing-oriented discussion lists. If you do, you probably also sense the incredible frustration of people who keep asking about using their customer data to retain customers and increase profits. Everybody knows they should be doing it, but can't find out how to do it. Consultants and agencies make this process sound like some kind of "black magic", something you can't possibly do yourself. I disagree. I think the average business owner can do a perfectly decent job creating profiles and using them to retain customers and drive profits. Thus the book. The examples provided are Internet specific, but the methods can be used in any business where customer data is available. This book is about the down-and-dirty, nitty-gritty art of taking chunks of data generated by your customers and making sense of it, getting it to speak to you, creating insight into what types of marketing or general business actions you can take to make your business more profitable. We'll be talking about "action-oriented" ideas you can generate on your own to drive sales and profits, ideas that will reveal themselves by analyzing your own customer data, using only a spreadsheet. We have all heard how important it is to collect customer data, to "know" your customer. What I don't hear much about is what exactly you DO with all that data once you have collected it. How is it used? What exactly is Drilling Down into the data supposed to tell me, and what am I looking for when I get there? For that matter, what data should I be collecting and how will I use it when I have it? And how much is this process going to cost me? The following list outlines what you will learn and be able to do after reading the Drilling Down book: --What data is important to collect about a customer and what data is not --How to create action-oriented customer profiles with an Excel spreadsheet --How to use these profiles to plan marketing promotions --How to use these profiles to define the future value of your customers --How to use these profiles to measure the general health of your business --How to use these profiles to encourage customers to do what you want them to --How to predict when a customer is about to defect and leave you --How to increase your profits while decreasing your marketing costs --How to design high ROI (Return on Investment) marketing promotions How to blow away investors with predictions of the future profitability of your business Table of Contents Chapter 1: What's a Customer Profile? Chapter 2: Data-Driven Marketing - Customer Retention Basics Chapter 3: The Language of Data, The Science of Profit Chapter 4: Interactivity Changes the Rules of the Game Chapter 5: How to Build a Customer Profiling Spreadsheet Chapter 6: How to Profile (Score) Your Customers Chapter 7: Marketing Using Customer Scores - Basic Approach Chapter 8: Using Customer Characteristics and Multiple Scores Chapter 9: Watching Scores over Time - Customer LifeCycles Chapter 10: Customer Scoring Grids - Profiling on Steroids Chapter 11: Calculating and Using LifeTime Value in Promotions Chapter 12: Turning Profiles into Profits - the Staging Area Chapter 13: Turning Profiles into Profits - the Financial Model Chapter 14: Turning Profiles into Profits - Financial Tweaks Chapter 15: Measuring Success in Best Customer Promotions Chapter 16: Some Final Thoughts Seasonal Adjustments to Marketing Promotions Don't Fight Customer Behavior CRM Software and Customer Scoring Data-Driven Marketing Program Descriptions There's more! Automate the basic customer scoring process on large groups of customers. Use the software included free with this edition! Windows OS and MS Access and Excel required to run the software.