Where's the payback..

I'm always interested by how people plan to cost justify their investments in technology (partly because so often projects seem to go ahead on a feeling of "it will be a good thing really" and partly because I've always tried to look for a cost-justification for expenditure on marketing projects).

One conversation with a potential customer this week pointed to an interesting basis for a business case. We quite often see people basing their justification on improved service or lower cost of operations in one way or another. Sometimes its about risk-avoidance or an insurance policy for regulatory compliance.This time the thinking was: using RFID we can be sure how much product we have delivered to our customer, that allows us to invoice the customer for work in progress sooner, improving our cash flow. In times of tight money, maybe we'll see more of that sort of thinking.