Patent ID: 7996249

Claim:
A process for evaluating sufficiency of spending on information technology (IT) resources by a target company, the process comprising: one or more computer systems (i) determining, for a subject industry, as represented by a set of selected companies within the industry, an optimal value of an IT metric, said IT metric being a vector of IT spending having a value equal to a square root of a sum of a square of a subject entity's IT spending as a percentage of the subject entity's revenue and a square of the subject entity's IT spending as a percentage of the subject entity's operating expenses, the optimal value of the IT metric determined by a maximum value of a profitability metric for the selected companies; (ii) comparing a value of the IT metric computed for the target company with the optimal value of the IT metric for the subject industry; and (iii) based on a result of the comparison, determining whether the target company is spending more or less on IT resources than a benchmark amount indicated by the optimum value of the IT metric for the subject industry and providing an output of that determination.