Assessing the Value of Enterprise Identity Management (EIdM) – Towards a Generic Evaluation Approach

The introduction of enterprise identity management systems (EldMS) in organisations is a costly and challenging endeavour, where organisations have to face various costs for the planning, the implementation, and the operation of such systems. In the planning phase it is important that organisational aspects are incorporated into the development of an enterprise identity management (EldM) solution, instead of purely focussing on the technological or financial issues. Indeed, without a proper assessment of the costs and the organisational settings (such as stakeholders, processes), companies will not see the benefit for introducing EldM as additional layer into their IT infrastructure and their business processes. This paper proposes initial ideas for a generic approach, based on the balanced scorecard, for assessing the value of investing in the introduction of EldMS. In the decision process, such an instrument can be used for decision support purposes and the planning phase on a tactical level. Furthermore, the organisational aspects are discussed and possible solutions for integrating all relevant parties into the planning process are presented.