Exploring the Constituents of Benefits Management: Identifying Factors Necessary for the Successful Realization of Value of Information Technology

Although organisations continue to develop and implement information technology (IS), the successful realisation of benefits from such investments has consistently been reported as one of the major organisational challenges, because it generally falls short of expectations. From a project perspective, we examine which factors are necessary to realise IS developments´ anticipated value. We use the existing literature and field study results from 29 organisations to collect a pool of items, which are merged in a questionnaire to help understand the mechanism of successful IT value realisation in organisations. We use the questionnaire to collect data from 456 individuals involved in IT projects; on the basis of this, we conduct exploratory factor analysis to determine the factor structure present in the data, and confirmatory factor analysis to validate the derived factor structure. Results indicate the presence of three specific benefits management capabilities and four contextual factors that facilitate effectiveness of these benefits management capabilities in realising the planned value of IS developments. The primary implication of our findings is the identification of the principal levers to derive IT-enabled value.