As an enterprise leader you have the key responsibility of prioritizing investments towards enterprise initiatives. Cloud Transformation is an initiative that may require thorough due diligence to determine if, and when to take on such an initiative, at what financial and opportunity cost, and to achieve what benefits and outcomes. How does the return on investment (ROI) of this initiative compare with the alternatives?

Determining the intrinsic value of the initiative may help you calculate the ROI. Then, articulating this understanding of intrinsic value should help you secure the necessary budget and the buy-in from the stakeholders to pursue and execute this initiative.

Components of Intrinsic Value of Enterprise Initiatives 

Intrinsic value for an enterprise initiative or program can be categorized as: Tangible, Qualitative, Organizational and Individual.  

Tangible value is an outcome that can be measured such as cost savings, revenue and probability. Qualitative value is an intangible outcome that cannot be measured with numbers such as satisfaction, stress and team morale. Organizational value applies to the overall organization, division, or the enterprise such as enhanced reputation of a division, or increased productivity throughout the enterprise or its business units. Individual value is specific to the individual such as employees’ enhanced career potential.  

Each of these values can be estimated over short and long-term  

Following is an example of applying this as a framework to a Cloud Transformation initiative to determine and articulate the intrinsic value of migrating apps, data and infrastructure to the Cloud

Of course, there may be more short and long-term values for each of the value categories. You could go a step further and assign a weightage for each of the value categories. You can also add metrics for categories such as: Continuing education of employees (Individual), division’s growth measured by the increase in size of its yearly budget (Organizational). 

Finally, this exercise should serve as a framework to determine whether the ROI of an initiative is aligned with the expected business outcomes of pursuing the initiative.

Rishi Khanna is a Sr. Client Partner at Technossus, a technology firm solving problems through AI, SaaS, Cloud Transformation and DevOps, based in Orange County, CA.