How do I know which services will provide the most value for my investment?

How do I know which services will provide the most value for my investment?

When in doubt, start with processes that involve customers, directly affect revenue and address a specific pain point in the business. A 2006 survey by the Business Performance Management Institute found evolving customer needs and preferences to be the top driver in business process change or the introduction of new applications, followed by competitive threats and new revenue opportunities. (Cost savings was a distant fourth.) "Externally facing applications are the ones that provide the most business value, and they have a good set of change requirements that come up very often," says Daniel Sholler, vice president of research for Gartner. "If you can improve those applications by 10 percent, it’s better than improving lower-level applications by 50 percent." Of course, adds Sholler, Service Oriented Architecture SOA may not provide more value than, say, a good packaged application. "But if it’s something you would have to build yourself anyway, you need to do it service-oriented," he says.

Source: http://www.cio.com