The traditional approach to information systems projects is to analyze potential costs and benefits before deciding whether to develop the system. However for moderate investments in promising new technologies that could offer major benefits. Organizations may decide to do the financial analyses after the project is over. A number of companies took this latter approach in regard to intranet projects initiated prior to 1997.
Judd’s
Located in Strasburg. Virginia, Judd’s is a conservative, family-owned printing company that prints Time magazine, among other publications. Richard Warren. VP for IS. Pointed out that Judd’s “usually waits for technology to prove itself…. But with the Internet the benefits seemed so great that our decision proved to be a no-brainer.” Judd’s first implemented internet technology for communications to meet needs expressed by customers. After this it started building intranet of the significance of these applications to the company is the bandwidth that supports them. Judd’s increased the bandwidth by a magnitude of about 900 percent in the 1990s without cost-benefit analysis.
Eli Lilly & Company
A very large pharmaceutical company with headquarters in Indianapolis, Eli Lilly has a proactive attitude toward new technologies. It began exploring the potential of the Internet in 1993. Managers soon realized that, by using intranets, they could reduce many of the problems associated with developing applications on a wide variety of hardware platforms and networking configurations. Because the benefits were so obvious, the regular financial justification process was waived for intranet application development projects. The IS group that helps user departments develop and maintain intranet applications increased its staff from three to ten employees in 15 months.
Needham Interactive
Needham, a Dallas advertising agency, has offices in various parts of the country. Needham discovered that, in