【正文】 nefits. Bresnehan, Brynjolfsson and Hitt found a similar result for firms that have greater levels of skills and those that make greater investments in training and preemployment screening for human capital . In addition, strategic factors also appear to affect the value of IT. Firms that invest in IT to create customer value (. improve service, timeliness, convenience, variety) have greater performance than firms that invest in IT to reduce costs.　　 While these studies are begining to explore how the performance of IT investment varies across firm, particularly due to organizational and strategic factors, little attention has been paid to the technology decision making process.How Financial Firms Decide on Technology(Part Four) 　　IT Investment Decisions　　While there is no concise definition of best practice in IT investment decisions, there are a number of consistent arguments advanced in the IT management literature that can be synthesized into an understanding of the conventional wisdom.　　For the pruposes of discussion it is useful to subdivide the process of IT management into seven discrete, but interrelated processes. The first six processes are oriented around the proposal, development and management of IT projects, while the last process is about maintaining the capabilities of the IT function and its interrelationships with the rest of the business:　　 of IT opportunities　　 opportunities　　 IT projects　　 makebuy decision　　 IT projects　　 IT projects　　 and Develop the IT Function　　This subdivision loosely corresponds to many of the major issues in IT management such as outsourcing, line managementIT alignment, software project management, and evaluating IT investments.　　In addition, this list loosely corresponds to frameworks for the management of IT. The primary difference is that this list views the IT management process as managing a stream of projects rather than focusing on the function of the IT department overall or the role of the CIO, the typical perspective in the previous literature. For example, a mon framework used to align IT to business starategy, the critical success factors(CSF) method, include three workshops: the first to identify and focus objectives, the second to decide and prioritize on systems investment, and the third to develop, deploy and reevaluate prototype systems. Boynton, Jacobs and Zmud(1992) identify five critical IT management processes: setting strategic direction, establishing infrastructure systems, scanning technology, transferring technology and developing systems. Rockart, Earl and Ross(1996) propose eight imperatives for the IT organization which can be grouped into managing the ITbusiness relationship, building and managing systems and infrastructure, managing vendors, and creating a high performance IT organization. Thus, while previous work has subdivided the process in different ways, collectively the studies cover all the seven processes we examine.　　We will discuss each of the individual points in detail below.　　Identificant of Opportunities　Historically, the IT function was primarily reactive, responding to requests by business units. A business unit. A business unit manager would identify a need for a new system or a repair/enhancement to an existing system and municate this need to the IT function. The IT personnel would then evaluate the idea for technical feasibility and develop a project proposal include an initial determination of resource needs, cost, and delivery time. While this makes effective use of IT personnel in evaluating particular ideas, it provides only a limited role for IT personnel to aid in the identification of technologybased business opportunities. 　　For that reason, some authors have suggested that the IT function should play a larger role in the identification of technological opportunities. For example, Davenport and Short (1990) emphasize that IT capabilities should inform business needs as well as the business units placing demandson the IT function. Fockart, Earl and Ross and Boynton, Jacobs and Zmud identify the role of technology scanning and technology education as an important ponent of a centralized IT department。 also they generally tend to be highly technical and thus the natural responsibility would also fall on the IT department.How Financial Firms Decide on Technology(Part Five) 　Evaluating Oppoutunities 　　Once a project is at least initially defined, there is a process by which the initial idea is converted into a proposal that can be evaluated by management for approval or rejection of funding.　　In the last ten years, it has bee more or less standard practices to develop a business case or business plan for any substantial IT investment (some small maintenance projects are simply done on request), although the content, sophistication and formality of this process varied substantially. The most typical of these project proposals (assuming a midsize to large project) take the form of a business plan which includes a qualitiative description of the objectives, petitive environment, a description of the opportunity and, in some cases, an implementation plan. While the form of these plans varies widely, there are some general points of parison.　　For the qualitativ