A compound real option and AHP methodology for evaluating ICT business alternatives

After the liberalization of information and communication technology (ICT) markets many potential providers have appeared. Thus, business complexity, for ICT decision makers, has increased. In this paper, we focus on the problem of selecting the optimal business evolution path for ICT, focusing on the broadband technology (BT) field. Traditional quantitative cost–benefits analysis, such as net present value (NPV), is by no means sufficient for capturing the complexity of the problem in its entire. Researchers suggest the real options (ROs) for valuating ICT investments. However, RO models are strictly quantitative and very often ICT investments may also contain qualitative factors, which cannot be quantified in monetary terms. In addition, ROs analysis itself brings to the “surface” some factors that can be more efficiently treated qualitatively. We combine the ROs and analytic hierarchy process (AHP) into a common decision analysis framework providing an integrated multicriteria model, called ROAHP, for prioritizing ICT business alternatives. The proposed model is applied to a real life BT business case, showing how it can be formulated and solved.