ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A nine-country survey of 1,217 IT professionals reveals that enterprises worldwide believe they are realizing value from their IT investments—yet they cannot be sure, as fewer than half have a shared understanding of value across the enterprise, and two-thirds fail to fully measure it.

The Value of IT Investments survey—undertaken by ISACA, an association of 86,000 IT governance, security and assurance professionals—found that half of the respondents believe they are realizing between 50 and 74 percent of expected value from their IT investments.

“The negative news, however, is that half of respondents said they measured the actual value only ‘to some extent,’ and an alarming one in 10 does not measure it at all,” said Robert Stroud, CGEIT, international vice president of ISACA.

Commenting on the survey results, John Thorp, chair of the Val IT Development Team for ISACA, said that, while most enterprises feel they are realizing value from IT, few have a clear understanding of what value means, and even fewer actually measure it.

According to Thorp, who also is president of the Thorp Network, this raises the interesting question, “On what basis are organizations making their spending decisions?”

“Enterprises that do not fully measure value are unable to determine which investments are successful and which need to be cut,” he said. “As a result, many firms are missing out on new business opportunities and may even be pursuing unsuccessful investments.”

Added Thorp, “The research also suggests that most decisions related to value from IT are subjective and, all too often, are based on perception and emotion rather than on facts. Organizations will not come close to realizing the full value of their IT investments until they adopt effective value management practices and assign accountability for the realization of value from those investments to the board and CEO, rather than abdicating it to the CIO.”

In the study, 15 percent of respondents said the role of ensuring optimum stakeholder returns on investments was handled by the board, 11 percent said their CEO handled such matters and just nine percent said their CFO was responsible. Eight percent admitted that no one was responsible.

On a positive note, 76 percent of respondents are aware of the Val IT framework, and 44 percent of organizations questioned have such a framework or guidelines in place to select the investment that will result in the highest value.

The framework, a suite of documents that seeks to assist in governance and best practice in IT investments, is supported by 44 percent of companies, who use the guidelines to assist in generating the best value from their investments.

Full results of the survey can be obtained by contacting news@isaca.org.

Founded in 1969, ISACA (www.isaca.org) publishes the COBIT, Val IT and Risk IT frameworks and administers the CISA, CISM and CGEIT certifications.