The evil twin of ROI

An evil twin, clad in black and perhaps sporting a goatee, sets out to deceive everyone who trusts the protagonist. It sounds like the plotline to a campy ‘70s or ‘80s television show, and it is—but it also isn’t: Don’t trust total cost of ownership (TCO). It’s the evil twin of return on investment (ROI). Nucleus reviewed a cross-section of the past three years’ worth of published ROI analyses of deployments of technology in human capital management (HCM). In every case, the decision to buy was defensible in terms of ROI, but fewer than one-third were justifiable by TCO alone.