comment on Mike N.'s cost-justifications - Productivity

While Mike N. did hit the general points for justifying an IdM project, he seemed to miss-out on the value of end-user productivity. Most companies have left this as a "soft dollar" item. Manufacturing organizations, however, realize that this is a "hard dollar" item. It's tied not only to expenditure (e.g. payroll), but to revenue (e.g. if there's a strike, can't make product, can't sell product). Lost Engineering Hours, Lost Units Produced, Lost Days Worked are all units of measure which can have average salaries applied, and can be directly used to drive the ROI model for an IdM project.