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Alternative Selection – Total Value of Ownership
More and more prevalent in business case evaluations today is the concept of the total cost of ownership whereby organizations evaluate the collective expense associated with a given initiative or asset over its entire life. Comparing initiatives on this basis alone however, fails to consider the offsetting benefits the organization would realize over the investment’s lifetime as calculated during return on investment (ROI) estimations. In order to effectively compare competing proposals, organization leaders should evaluate the total value of ownership of each investment alternative.
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Think about if there were no guardrails on the freeway. It would be all too easy to run off the road and find yourself hurt and way off the fast track to your end destination.
Rich Christiansen describes himself as ‘a perfectly good business executive, turned entrepreneur.’ Before becoming an entrepreneur, he was a skilled executive and market innovator in the corporate world. He was General Manager at both Mitsubishi Electric and About.com. After 20 years in the technology industry, he discovered that his true passion and talent is in launching start-up companies.
Executives and managers are rightfully concerned about the costs and potential returns associated with the investments before them. Subsequently, business planners painstakingly research, analyze, and calculate the financials associated with each initiative to be considered and present these and the associated risks to business leaders. To enable comparison, risks are also presented in monetary terms. The analysis is then aggregated in a cost-return matrix and a recommendation developed based on the organization’s available investment capital for those initiatives exceeding the business’s return on investment threshold. Technically, these recommendations appear very sound; realistically, they can be absolutely wrong for the organization.
Leaders face the difficult challenge of selecting those few operational activities their organization will pursue from the multitude that are proposed every planning cycle. Collectively, these activities define the company; its culture, its direction, and ultimately its success or failure.
When considering various operations to continue or new initiatives to pursue, there tends to be a singular focus on cost, revenue generation potential, or regulatory compliance necessity of the activity. However, many initiatives offer highly qualitative but no less beneficial contributions to the organization that should be considered beyond the simple financial return. In today’s marketplace, some of these qualitative benefits significantly contribute to sales such as the advancement of diversity and inclusion within the organization and green initiatives in both the organization’s production processes and products. Such qualitative benefits serve to enhance the organization’s reputation and in doing so attract superior talent and additional customers that would otherwise be lost to competing organizations. Thus, it becomes increasingly important to consider the total benefit of ownership of a give business operation or initiative; one that includes the ongoing quantitative and qualitative benefits these activities.
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