A new twist to IT’s digital ROI? Making actual money

Nearly every digital project proposal includes a return on investment statement that outlines how and when initial investment will be recouped, typically through operational savings. But with boards expecting CIOs to be more business savvy and able to contribute both to operational savings and revenue increases, it’s time for CIOs to up the ante on digital projects to ensure real money can be made.

How do you do this when so many digital projects are of a back office, time-saving nature, likely to never “pay out” in any other way but in reducing operational costs? There will always be those projects — such as manufacturing automation, or digitizing document workflows — but there are also opportunities for projects that contribute directly to corporate revenue.

Here are some real-world examples of how IT leaders are driving new revenue:

From e-commerce stores to car rental agencies, IT organizations have been building digital portals that enable customers to buy products and book reservations. In most cases, companies create separate profit and loss (P&L) centers for these portals so they can track the revenue generated by these channels and compare them to traditional brick-and-mortar channels — and the digital channels have produced phenomenal results. This is the easiest path to digital monetization to date.

At one major credit card provider, new digital card products that generate revenue are being developed — to the point where IT has split off one of its groups into a separate P&L center that tracks and manages revenue from new digital products.

Large credit unions have successfully digitized their banking operations by moving them to a cloud-based SaaS environment, offering paid subscriptions to these platforms to smaller credit unions that can’t afford banking systems of their own. These paying customers produce revenue streams for the larger institutions that can offset and even exceed what the institutions pay for their own systems.

Zelle, a peer-to-peer digital money transfer platform, provides ease-of-use that boosts transactions — and fee making — for its partner banks. Is Zelle a direct P&L center? No. But the increases in transactions and fees for its member banks are traceable to Zelle digitalization. How much? Thus far in 2025, Zelle has processed more than $1.92 trillion in transactions, a 20% growth rate year over year, showing the revenue-generating potential of creating digital services for an industry that can use them.

Getting to revenue

With IT’s long history of a “back office” role, it isn’t easy for CIOs to shift their thinking to revenue generation as an outcome of their digital projects. It is also true that many digital efforts are of a back-office, operational savings nature — but it is equally true that CIOs,CEOs, and other C-level executives have tended to leave a lot on the table by failing to imagine how their digital projects could contribute to corporate revenue.

Some years ago as CIO, I lead a digital project that we transformed into a SaaS offering, with other smaller companies agreeing to pay subscription fees for our product and support services. The vision was to expand this project so that more customers could be added, possibly outside of our immediate industry sector — but the CEO preferred at that time to limit our SaaS to a handful of business clients, with a modest goal of breaking even from revenues to cover expenses.

This is an example of a digital push for revenue that failed to achieve its full potential at the time — but that would be more actively supported today, when companies are more open to what digitalization can do for them, including top-line growth.

Shifting to a revenue-generation mindset

Every digital project CIOs propose should be evaluated for its revenue-generating potential as well as for its operational savings. Here are a few tips for doing so.

Encourage creative and entrepreneurial thinking in IT: When I was CIO, there were several times when staff members came up with innovative ideas we could monetize. In one case, the systems programming staff developed an infrastructure module that other companies also needed — and were willing to purchase from us.

In another case, we developed an API module for a particular vendor’s software that the vendor wanted to license and pay us for.

Some of the best entrepreneurial ideas come from IT staff who are “on the ground” and can see what is needed — which is also likely needed by others. Involve and encourage them in seeking revenue opportunities tied to your digital projects and possibilities.

Understand revenue isn’t just about sales — it’s about cash flow: Dozens of digital projects have been undertaken to streamline shipping and billing processes. These projects have cut administrative lead times and have billed and collected from clients sooner, but do CIOs talk about that? Seldom! Instead, they focus on operational efficiencies gained, when they should be talking up revenue enhancements because the new digital technology is speeding up cash flows into the company, thereby building revenues.

This is a prime example of leaving too many project “positives” on the table because you don’t focus on the revenue side of the equation.

Develop active partnerships with execs in sales, marketing, and finance: Cementing close working relationships with executives in the organization who are highly focused on revenue and profit helps CIOs keep a finger on the revenue pulse. In turn, this helps with identifying and obtaining the most out of digital projects and their revenue potential.