Economic Benefits and Risks for Future Strategy Alternatives  
A number of important benefits can be derived from a structured, formal, proactive approach to reevaluating the current software environment and the potential for continued process improvements in business processes and work practices.  The potential benefits are based on increased system flexibility and the ability to implement continuous improvements. These benefits can be placed into four categories:

• Savings in the computer infrastructure;
• Productivity enhancements;
• Improved data products and services; and
• Increased commonality of State systems.

This section presents some of the quantitative and qualitative benefits for implementing some of the alternatives described in the technical alternative economic analysis; these include the data warehouse, the Geac client/server solution, and the combined data warehouse and Integrated Systems solution. The risks for each solution are stated in terms of implementation costs, performance in production, system capability, or new training requirements. In addition, we have presented an estimate of the potential statewide impact of implementing these three solutions.