When Tom Murphy, CIO of Royal Caribbean Cruises, was forced to scaleback his IT team last fall in the face of declining travel bookings,he decided to get scrappy. As part of battening down the hatches toefficiently support a 28,000 person company with 25 cruise ships,Murphy created a swat team within IT to identify quick hits - low-cost,high-return efforts.

The idea, as Murphy put it, was to "reinforce that you've got an ITteam that's thoughtful, creative and can do more with less." That ideahas worked. By Murphy's count, the team has returned more than $3million to the company's bottom line so far. "It's been a hugesuccess," he says.

In the current economic climate, IT executives are pushed harder thanever to provide a quick return on small, well-planned technologyinvestments. Vendors, smelling opportunity, have jumped in with a widearray of low-cost - $100K or less - quickly deployable products andservices. "There are a lot of vendors trying to convince you thatthere are quick wins out there right now," says Matt Kesner, CIO ofFenwick and West, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based law firm. While some quickwins are real, others are elusive - or even nonexistent.

We asked CIOs where their company found a big bang for relativelysmall bucks and how CIOs can make sure quick wins don't turn intoquicksand. It's advice you can bring to the bank.

Password to Savings