Günümüzde tüm dünya genelindeki sağlık kurumları, hizmet kalitelerini iyileştirmeyi ve maliyetleri düşürmeyi amaçlayan bilişim teknolojileri yatırımlarının önemini kavramışlardır. Sağlık sektörünün sürekli yükselen standartları ve sigorta sistemlerinin artan gereksinimleri karar vericileri, hastanelerde Kurumsal Kaynak Planlama (KKP) sistemlerinin sağlık sektörünün gerek ve ihtiyaçlarına göre uyarlanmış ve geliştirilmiş hali olan Hastane Bilgi Sistemi (HBS) yatırım uygulamalarını dikkate almalarını zorunlu kılmaktadır. Bu tür yatırımların ekonomik değerlemesi karmaşık yapıları nedeniyle her zaman zor olmuştur. Bununla beraber bu yatırımların, bünyelerinde barındırdığı ve firmalara rekabet ortamında avantajlar sağlayan birçok faydası da mevcuttur. Geleneksel iskontolanmış nakit akışı yöntemleri, bu sistemlerin içinde varolan ve yatırım kararını haklı çıkartacak, yönetsel ve stratejik esnekliklerin değerini dikkate almamaktadır. Reel opsiyon yaklaşımı karar vericilere, geleneksel değerleme yöntemlerindeki bu yetersizliklerin üstesinden gelme olanağını sunmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, reel opsiyonları temel alan bir yaklaşımla, birden fazla opsiyonun birarada yer aldığı bir KKP sistemi yatırımının değerlemesine imkan tanıyan bir model önerilmektedir. Binom ağacı modelini temel alarak geliştirilen değerleme modelinin yapısı KKP yatırım fırsatının bünyesindeki birleşik opsiyonları değerlemeye imkan tanıyacak şekilde genişletilmiş ve dolayısıyla karar vericilere yeni bir katma değer sunulmuştur. Geliştirilen modelin potansiyel uygulaması gerçek bir HBS yatırımı değerlemesiyle gösterilmektedir. Yapılan uygulama geleneksel değerleme yöntemlerince kabul edilir görülmeyen yatırımların bile, bünyelerinde barındırdıkları stratejik ve yönetsel unsurlar sayesinde ve gelecekte oluşması muhtemel koşullar dahilinde kabul edilebilir bir hal alabileceğini ortaya koymaktadır. Anahtar Kelimeler: KKP yatırımlarının değerlemesi, reel opsiyonlar, birleşik opsiyonlar, opsiyon değerleme modelleri.Nowadays in order to improve the quality of care delivery and reduce costs, healthcare organizations globally recognize the importance of investing in information technologies (IT). The key drivers of healthcare sector like continuous improvement of healthcare standards and insurance systems have introduced new requirements for hospitals, which in return provided a solid ground for decision-makers to consider implementing hospital information system investment. Hospital information systems (HIS) are the customized and improved versions of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, designed according to the needs and the requirements of healthcare sector. It has been always difficult to value such investments in monetary terms due to their complex nature. This type of investments also has many inherent benefits that can provide significant competitive advantages. These inherent benefits can only be viable for decision support if strategic and managerial flexibilities can be utilized. However, traditional capital budgeting techniques, such as net present value (NPV), do not enable decision-makers to consider these flexibilities. Due to its idle valuation approach, NPV only considers a static scenario that ignores the possible dynamic changes in the market affecting future cash flows and interest rates. NPV's passive commitment strategy also forces the decision-makers pre-committing today to a "go" or "no-go" decision considering information only available today. Thus, it is clear that the traditional NPV methods ignore the value of managerial and strategic flexibility inherent in the investments which undermines a company's strategic opportunities. Investment science experts agreed that it is a must to integrate financial and strategic issues and study them together for making an investment decision. Recognizing the shortcomings of traditional NPV methods, real options (RO) technique has been suggested as an alternative approach. RO whose methodology is based upon financial options theory enable the decisions makers to analyze the true value of a real life investment opportunity through better modeling of the uncertainty within the investment. RO method does not only value the managerial flexibility through the investment horizon, it also supports and expands the firm's strategic frame. It gives a road map to the managers to optimize the medium and long-term strategies according to the expectations. RO can be categorized to six main managerial options according to the flexibility they have: option to defer, option to stage, option to expand/contract, option to abandon, option to switch and growth option. In a real-life investment scenario it is usually viable to have more than one real option concurrently. The first applications of real options are about mining and operating natural resource investments. Besides, the new application areas for RO are growing rapidly. Regardless of an industry, it can be used in many cases like entering a new market, deciding the initial scale of an investment, scaling up or down in the future according to the needs, managing multi-staged complex projects, and freezing up or completely ending an investment. Developing with dynamic market conditions due to the continuous improvements, IT investments are also an appropriate application area for RO. This study introduces a RO based methodology that enables decision-makers to value an ERP system investment incorporating multiple options. The option valuation model developed in this study extends the binomial lattice framework to model an ERP investment opportunity with compound options. The potential application of the proposed model is presented to evaluate an HIS implementation project of a Turkish health care organization. For this purpose, considering the ever changing dynamics of the market affecting possible cash flows, a computer-based decision support framework is developed to provide a flexible and efficient solution to decision-makers. In this manner, for simulating various possible future market conditions, different scenarios are generated via triggering conditional changes in model variables and parameters. Results are interpreted with tables and graphs for submitting a thorough road map to decision-makers that can be utilized as a managerial asset for understanding the interactions between model parameters. Further investigations have shown that even an investment that is not approved to be undertaken with traditional valuation methods, can be valuable for a firm considering the strategic and managerial flexibilities inherent in the investment, with the effect of the possible market conditions in the future. Thus, it is also emphasized that real options approach generally presents a new point of view for valuing IT investment projects. Keywords: Evaluation of ERP investments, real options, compound options, option valuation models
