Despite the number of user-centric methods available, most IT departments are still overwhelmingly technology focused. If UX considerations are so critical, why are they so often overlooked? Some IT investment decisions will always be technology driven: some maintenance investments will always be necessary that are not directly visible to end users (upgrading network capacity or improving the stability of e-mail servers, for example). After all, when the e-mail server goes down, everyone notices, and the effect is visible and immediate. For most IT departments, measures such as "percentage of down time" are the most critical and perhaps only indicators of success. Solely relying on these measures leads to a disproportionate focus on simply making technology available rather than providing technology that is easy to learn or that delivers the most value to end users.

Furthermore, the effects of deploying unusable business solutions, such as lost end-user productivity or high volume of tech support calls, more easily go unnoticed. Few enterprises have the type of metrics and measurement systems in place to capture these impacts and accurately convert them into financial terms. Although there are loose references to training and customer support costs within most Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) equations, the estimates typically used do not come close to truly accounting for the productivity loss and frustration that occurs as a result of deploying solutions that do not match user's needs. Even more difficult to detect and quantify is the result of deploying a capability that doesn't provide anticipated value and as a result is underutilized, leading to non-approved tools and procedures. In essence, productivity loss and other negative consequences of unusable or under utilized applications do not have the same "voice" as technical or business concerns. However, the undeniable truth is that the value (and potential return) of investing in a new capability can only be realized if end users adopt and utilize a new capability to more effectively complete business objectives [6].

Even when the driving force behind IT investment is to directly deliver end-user value, often times an IT solution is mistakenly selected to address a non-IT problem. For example, a common scenario driving investment in a new capability is the goal of improving overall business (and hence individual employee) performance. Attributing existing performance inefficiencies to technology (or a lack thereof), management believes that productivity will improve if employees are provided with state-of-the-art software. However, in many cases, the root causes of existing inefficiencies are not tool related but instead can be attributed to the culture or structure of the organization, or to business process issues. In these scenarios, the expected improvements to overall business performance by deploying a new capability will never materialize.

A slightly different scenario often is the deployment of the next release of a software package simply because it is available; the assumption typically being that new functionality equals increased productivity. However, if the new functionality is not providing additional value to the end user, not only does it go unutilized (wasting development time and money), it also increases overall product complexity, and can require additional training to learn how to use it. In the end, applying a technology solution to a non-technology problem will result in few, if any, improvements in business performance. In fact, sometimes these types of deployments can result in a net financial loss, with resources being spent to deploy them and users taking time to learn functionality that does not deliver its intended value.

In the past, many corporate IT groups, including Intel IT, have worked to meet employee needs by building highly customized applications for different user populations. Although this method allows users the ability to input exactly the needs and features they felt were most important, the overall development process is costly and time consuming. In addition, although optimization occurred for certain job roles and business units, the result is typically overall sub-optimization because of the complexity associated with integration across end-to-end business processes. To offset the cost and complexity of customized development, Intel IT began purchasing and deploying more industry-standard IT solutions. However, even in these scenarios, development teams found themselves coding additional functionality to facilitate infrequent exception steps and processes. In fact, recent usage data from Intel IT indicates that employees had never used over 40% of post-purchase modifications on a large third-party solution. These data highlight the fact that a significant amount of development and support effort can be wasted on functionality that is not delivering value to end users. In addition, since end users directly requested these modifications, it shows that even end users themselves may not have the proper insight and visibility into their work to determine their most critical needs.