Companies starting to ask Don Milani, Webmaster at Exabyte in Boulder, put up his company's Web site more than two years ago. Yet even with glowing reports, management in companies like Exabyte is starting to wonder what they're getting for the money they've expended for corporate Internets and intranets. In a survey conducted with 100 information systems managers last year, Computerworld found 63 percent of corporate management did not ask for formal cost justifications before proceeding with internal and external Web sites, mainly because they were seen as experimental. But this year, according to the survey's respondents, the honeymoon is over.
Management wants definitive answers.
Heated discussions center around the problems of how to actually measure ROI when there are no models for this phenomenon, and whether companies should even be asking for it. Companies that are looking for metrics are asking the wrong question. They're just waiting for the cash register to ring. If all you measure is transactions, then you don't know anything about marketing. You have to be on the Web, but you can't quantify how much you'll make in return.