Measuring the Immeasurable? the Intangible Benefits of Digital Information

Abstract

The benefits of digital information are mostly viewed as intangible, meaning that they can be hard to measure. This lack of measurements makes the benefits difficult to compare and communicate, creating problems for e.g. decision-making and the strategic development of specific digital information. Therefore, I conducted a literature review to find out how the combination of intangible benefits and measurements are dealt with in the information systems field. I found that we measure the intangible benefits of information systems or information technology. Here, the measurement method is divided into input, rule, and output. The input consists of predetermined individual benefits, areas of predetermined benefits, or interpreted benefits from respondents. The rule follows an accepted theory or contextual adjusted rules, and the output (benefit) can be seen as either financial or non-financial. The avenue for further research focuses on the digital information as the primary resource, not information systems or information technology