Soft Returns on InvestmentThere are three steps necessary to document soft returns: identify a process improvement opportunity, create a formula to calculate the benefits, and determine the costs of the process and net benefits. In addition to the three phases, there are various benefits of implementing electronic health records, such as improving the safety, quality, effectiveness and efficiency of care to meet patient expectations (satisfaction). In other words, the contribution of electronic health records to healthcare systems can improve the performance of organizations (Smith, 2009). According to Pecht & Jaai (2012), “soft returns” on investments function as indicators that provide the right measurement of intangible benefits for investors, such as improving reputation, connections with customers and influencing public image in projects without estimating the financial or physical advantages. On these returns, when documenting the justification of soft returns, the process includes soft costs (risk avoidance, patient safety, process improvement, customer goodwill, regulatory compliance, and support costs). Undoubtedly, soft analytics can measure all these benefits through the three steps that process soft return documents: (1) Identify process improvement opportunities, (2) Create a formula to calculate the benefits, and (3) Determine the process cost and net returns. Identifying process improvement opportunities It is really difficult to find and define the right opportunities to use to improve the process, especially when you have insufficient resources; however, organizations usually focus on the greatest possible cost savings. In fact, the best approach despite having scarce resources is to find areas for improvement and propose ideas to improve the process...... middle of the document ...... processing tool that shows the differences between the value current value of revenues and the current value of expenses. The project can be profitable when the net present value is positive. In other words, the present value of revenues is greater than the present value of expenses. The profitability index is another tool for evaluating investment projects, which is the ratio between the PV of benefits and the PV of costs. A project can be profitable if the profitability index is greater than 1. Furthermore, it has the same idea as NPV: in other words, the present value of the benefits is greater than the present value of the costs. However, these two methods (NPV and Profitability Index) were used to evaluate the proposed EHR implementation. Financial Analysis The following table shows the PV of costs, PV of benefits and NPV respectively, over a 5 year period for the investment: