Economic Effectiveness Evaluation In Projects Consisting In Automating Settlement Systems. The Example Of A Financial Centre Of An International Automotive Company

Economic effectiveness has become a decisive factor in feasibility studies for IT projects due to deteriorating economic situation. This paper characterises such an assessment on the example of an automated settlement system for a supply chain. The described project was carried out by a financial centre – located in Poland – of an international company operating in the automotive industry. It aimed at applying EDI technologies to automate logistics. The project was initiated due to increasing cost of settlement processes and difficulties (of legal and formal nature) in transferring self-billing solutions – which are in use in other countries (e.g. Germany, France or Spain) and result from: EU Directives (2001/115/EC and 2006/112/EC), European invoicing regulations (CWA15668:2007) and standards for the automotive industry (including VBA4908) – onto the Polish market. The final part of the paper presents evaluation of economic effectiveness JIBC December 2010, Vol. 15, No.3 2 for the forgoing project based on cost-benefits analysis (CBA) and discounted financial measures (i.e. NPV, IRR and MIRR).