Business Benefits and Return on Investment (ROI)

To undertake an SOA project often implies notable changes.  It is thus important to take into account all the anticipated profits to calculate the potential ROI and obtain the support of top management.  In addition to the fact that SOAs are known to offer a better alignment of IT with business processes and making a company more competitive, here is a short presentation of the attributes of a SOA and their tangible benefits:

Re-Use Benefits:

• The elimination of redundancies owing to shared services provides a reduction in development and quality assurance costs when comes the time to implement changes as well as important economies in regards to maintenance costs for shared services
• Having to make changes or add functions to only one service that is shared by many applications allows for quicker turnaround, providing a better response to business needs
• Although the improved reaction to market pressure is sometimes difficult to estimate in financial terms, we believe that the reduction in development, testing, and maintenance costs are easier to estimate

Composite Application Development Benefits:

• The bundling of multiple services for the introduction of new applications enables substantial savings in term of integration
• Here, again, the financial impact comes as much from a reduction in development costs as well as an increase in revenues due to a better response time

Loose Coupling Benefits: 

• Provides a flexibility that makes the enterprise more agile because it isolates the necessary IT interventions and enables iterative development
• Allows for budget savings because the professionals involved do not need to master the technologies of each implicated service
• Facilitates internal and external connectivity, increasing automation and business partnership potential.

In summary, a business model to justify a SOA project should include the following elements:

1.  Business Efficiency

• Increased agility and better response to market dynamics
• Improved efficiency in processes
• Better deployment of IT resources

2.  Cost Reductions

• Maintenance and development costs reduction
• Reduction of required efforts to support business process changes
• More flexible technological choices on account of loose coupling

3.  Risk Reduction

• Higher level of IT service quality
• Iterative deployment
• Quicker development ensuring a faster ROI