The Innovation Value Institute (IVI) is a consortium of leading industry, consulting, not-for-profit and academic organizations that has been developing and testing new ways to more firmly align IT investments with IT results. Key IVI members include: Microsoft, Chevron, SAP, BP, Ernst & Young, and Boston Consulting Group.

As a patron member and co-chair of several critical process workgroups, Microsoft supports IVI’s efforts to drive industry standardization and create best practice methodologies and solutions for helping business executives realize more value through IT enabled innovation.

IVI has launched the IT Capability Maturity Framework (IT-CMF). The IT-CMF provides a concise management roadmap to optimize business value derived from IT investments. The IT-CMF consists of a five-stage maturity model which is used to organize and structure a framework for mapping IT improvement efforts. The holistic approach of the IT-CMF is shown through four macro process for each of the five maturity stages. These consist of Managing the IT Budget, Managing the IT Capability, Managing IT for Business Value, and Managing IT like a Business. Altogether, 36 individual processes are managed by the framework.

The main issue CIOs face in today’s recessionary climate is trying to derive greater demonstrable business value from IT spend amid challenged tighter IT budgets While today’s stark economic outlook makes optimizing IT’s value a top priority, there currently is no integrated, standardized framework for making and evaluating investment decisions strategically from a holistic perspective at the corporate level.