Question

Select an AIS system segment (such as purchasing, sales or payroll), investigate and write a report on the tangible and intangible cost and benefits associates with your selection.

Answer 1

Report:

Tangible refers to the ease with which costs or benefits can be measured. An outlay of cash for a specific item or activity is referred to as a tangible cost. They are usually shown as disbursements on the books. The purchase of hardware or software, personnel training and employee salaries are examples of tangible costs. They are readily identified and measured.

Costs that are known to exist but whose financial value cannot be accurately measured are referred to as intangible costs. For Example, employee morale problems caused by a new system or lowered company image is an intangible cost. In some cases, intangible costs may be easy to identify but difficult to measure. For example, the cost of the breakdown of an online system during banking hours will cause the bank to lose deposits and wase houman resources. The problem is by how much? In other cases, intangible costs may be difficult even to identify, such as an improvement in customer satisfaction stemming from a real-time order entry system.

Benefits are also classified as tangible or intangible. Like costs, they are often difficult to specify accurately. Tangible benefits, such as completing jobs in fewer hours or producing reports with no errors, are quantifiable. Intangible benefits, such as more satisfied customers or an improved corporate image, are not easily quantified. Both tangible and intangible costs and benefits, however, should be considered in the evaluation process.

Management often tends to deal irrationally with intangibles by ignoring them. According to Oxenfeldt, placing a zero value on intangible benefits is wrong. Axelrod reinforces this point by suggesting that if intangible costs and benefits are ignored, the outcome of the evaluation may be quite different from when they are included. Its a hypothetical representation of the probability distribution of tangible and intangible costs and benefits. It indicates the degree of uncertainty surrounding the estimation of costs and benefits. If the project is evaluated on a purely tangible basis, benefits exceed costs by a substantial margin; therefore, such a project is considered cost effective. On the other hand, if intangible costs and benefits are included, the total tangible and intangible costs exceed the benefits, which make the project an undesirable investment. Furthermore, inlcuding all costs increases the spread of the distribution (compared with the tangible-only distribution) with respect to the eventual outcome of the project.