Many firms are unable to accurately measure the return on investment (ROI) they are making on the technology management systems they have implemented, a new report has found.

The survey by PMP Research looked at 100 organisations of various sizes, quizzing them on IT management, electronic content management (ECM) and workflow processes they had installed.

Not one of the respondents to the new survey said they found it 'very easy' to measure the ROI that these system management schemes had brought to their business, while just four per cent considered rating their ROI in these areas as 'easy'.

By contrast, a vast majority of firms found keeping up-to-date with how ECM and workflow schemes were performing tough, with 32 per cent stating it as 'difficult' and another 26 per cent classing it as 'very difficult'.

The survey found that, while a quarter of companies thought their IT management systems had delivered the business benefits as expected, the same amount has been disappointed by their service.

Most firms, however, remained in the dark over the progress of their IT management investments, with 41 per cent admitting that they were unsure over the exact ROI that their business had achieved since implementing such schemes.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'