More than five decades have passed since computers began to be used in business, yet the discussion about their influence on commerce, business value in general and corporate performance in particular has been a big issue. Only a few years ago, companies put a high priority on coming up with innovations in information technology. A new solution, software program or piece of hardware could almost guarantee these companies a competitive advantage, at least in the foreseeable future. Yet as companies started to realize that information technology was becoming a necessary part of their business, these windows of opportunity for short-term advantage began to disappear. IT innovation became easily duplicated, and IT, while clearly necessary, began to look like just another necessity to conduct business. It is not clear why computerization had little effect on industrial productivity for four decades and then, in the mid-1990s, suddenly seemed to become the driving force behind a sharp acceleration in U.S. productivity. It is also not sure why the recent productivity gains have been so unevenly distributed, appearing in certain industries and regions that have invested heavily in information technology but not in others that have also spent great sums on computer hardware and software. Information technology has changed the way companies carry out many important activities, but perhaps the most critical question in information technology business value research is whether or not IT investments cause increases in firm’s productivity and performance and how IT helps creating business value (Brynjolfsson, 2003). This paper analyzes how information technology helps creating business value for companies all over the world, what benefits it brings and how companies deal with IT technologies in order to gain competitive advantage and business values. It further shows that businesses implementing Information Technology in their enterprise substantially cut their labor costs and working capital, creating a better work environment including better customer service, innovation and enhancing core business practices. While IT may be correlated with increased performance, determining if it creates business value is essential to understanding whether IT pays off , what advantages wt brings with it and whether investment in IT is simply a byproduct of success stemming from other root causes. Case studies, which outline how firms change and improve their performance in concert with IT investments, are useful but difficult to generalize. Just like productivity proponents can cite IT success stories, skeptics can cite cases of reverse causality, in which IT investments are enabled by excess cash flow, but in the long term doe not enhance competitive advantage or increase productivity and sales, therefore not increasing business value.  It has been shown that implementing IT technologies does not necessarily improve the business value in non economical and financial terms. Businesses having implemented an IT strategy that is not supporting their goals and mission is not going to increase value although IT has been implemented (Carr, 2004). Companies started to realize that information technology was becoming a necessary part of their businesses and that just the mere implementation will automatically bring business value. Business value in this paper is considered to include all forms of value that determine the health and well-being of the firm in the long-run. It expands beyond economic value and includes other forms of value such as employee value, customer value, supplier value, channel partner value, alliance partnerships, managerial value, and societal value. Business value also includes intellectual capital and a firm's business model. Many of these forms of value are not directly measured in monetary terms and therefore businesses are facing the dilemma on how to calculate the actual business value generated by IT implementation (Wikipedia, 2007). Business in today’s world requires that information be accessible in real time to customers as well as employees to make fast and educated business decisions, form strategies or close contracts. In order to get that, businesses are implementing more and more technology, sophisticated IT solutions, implementing information sharing through knowledge management, data warehousing and business intelligence solutions to analyze data. Social network solutions are used to identify the most efficient resources and or bottlenecks throughout a project and are considered to be an important asset that will decide if a business fails or succeeds. Business can no longer survive without technology, and a current research from Gartner estimates that two-thirds of all major technology investments will not achieve their intended result. It was also noted that over the next five years, a major reason why companies will fail to maximize value from IT investments, will be that the value IT delivers is inadequate or not properly recognized (Lutchen, 2004). According to Gartner companies will continue to deploy industrial age approaches to evaluate and measure IT investment, benefits and business values. Services provided by IT can be categorized into three areas: utility, enhancement and frontier. Each has a unique value. However, while utility applications can be measured with traditional return on investment analysis, for enhancement and frontier applications, business value is often not only in terms of direct financial metrics. It enables improvement of the business models and ability to gain a competitive advantage. High-performance businesses view IT not only as a business value improvement but also as a strategic asset. It is considered to be a source of both operational excellence and competitive advantage and not just a financial measurement of value (Brynjolfsson, 2003). When evaluating IT variables focusing on the use of technology, not merely its presence, and include communications volume, the size and shape of email contact networks, professed ability to use database technology, and relative time spent on various information seeking tasks, the results demonstrate that information flows and IT use do show significantly higher levels of economic productivity. As information work represents a growing proportion of the GDP, and is increasingly leveraged with IT, understanding IT and productivity in the context of information work is especially important. It was also proven that employees that use databases also conduct more work simultaneously and finish projects faster. Although these measurements cannot be directly displayed in financial values, the amount of work that is done in correlation with time, indicated an increase of business value (Hinds & Kiesler 2002). But also business value represents the value of the business itself and that includes information and data available to the business and their employees. And this, especially in today’s world is supported mainly by the IT systems. In our ever changing and fast acting business world and society, information needs to be provided to business partners and customers preferably in real time. Real time management is about getting information where it needs to be and when it needs to be. A real-world, real-time system must manage both intrinsic and urgency value. The intrinsic value determines the required level of certainty that data will be protected and available. This is typically accomplished through various kinds of redundancy. Managing urgency, however, means allocating IT resources to support rapid access to urgent information and low-cost access to less urgent information. The fundamental purpose of IT in this case, when looking at value consisting of information, is to create value; it also has a responsibility to protect the value it creates (Brynjolfsson and Hitt, 2000). When looking at the overall business value, including information, processes, ROI, financial data and the human factor, a value of a business can be divided into Operational Efficiency, Customer Support, Value Chains, Innovation and Core Business Practices. The operation efficiency can be achieved by implementing IT system which optimize business process, e.g. reducing overhead costs and maintaining thoughtful and cost-sensitive production methods. This will lead to an improved value as staff can work more productively both at the office and in the field, and overall processing times can be reduced the bare minimum. Customer support is another main factor contributing to the overall assessment of a business value. Now more than ever, customer loyalty is at a premium, making it important for all businesses to seek ways to better understand and serve their customers. Technology increasingly plays a decisive role in connecting businesses with consumers, governments with constituents, and academia with students—a role that goes far beyond Web pages and e-mail. Connecting IT systems behind the scenes in order to offer customers simple, user-friendly interfaces to enhance their service or shopping experience, many companies have gained trust from customers by providing fast services, customized interaction and having an easier, faster, and less costly process to provide this important interface between business and customers. Another way to connect with customers is by providing new functionality based on customer feedback. Many ecommerce businesses have implemented their site visitors with accurate tax and shipping costs including instant online sales support (Lutchen, 2004). The third main component of business value is reaching out across value chains. This is a very important aspect, especially when considering that beyond the supply chains of physical goods, parts, and suppliers are the supply chains of information. These information supply chains exist everywhere - among partners, dealers, distributors, employees, and customers. No matter what industry is tracking records, preferences for particular products, or inventory numbers in a supplier's database, information takes on greater importance as businesses work to streamline and integrate their business in today’s economy. Without innovative software, which gives the businesses the ability to connect these information supply chains while also providing the tools to turn information into knowledge and action, businesses would have a very hard time keeping up and staying on top of today’s interlinked, global and constantly changing business world (Wharton School of Business, 2004). Innovation and driving product leadership is another major aspect of creating business value. Keeping at the forefront in any product-driven industry requires that companies cannot only imagine great new products, but they have to get them from the vision stage into full production in the most efficient possible manner. This includes reducing cycle times to enhancing new products. IT systems and software provides an engine for driving innovation, enabling products to be designed quickly and collaboratively. IT technology also allows business to interconnect with suppliers or research facilities to be able to stay on top on innovation, researching the latest customer and market trends and being able to respond to them in a fast and efficient way (Brynjolfsson and Hitt, 2000). The last but as equally important aspect of how IT increases business value is the enhancement of core business practices. Garnering insights, capturing and using information, making decisions based on current and analyzed information, establishing new business connections and analyzing bottle necks and shortcomings throughout a life-cycle are the fundamental business practices at the heart of how people conduct business. Together with software and IT systems in place many of these tasks can be performed almost instantly. Such IT environments provide the promise and opportunity to improve the current business and identify new and improved processes. Increases in processing power and the decrease in the size of chips make it easier to embed new software-based functionality in the existing systems and therefore constantly improving and increasing productivity, work processes and efficiency in business practices (Wharton School of Business, 2004). Optimizing business process, reducing overhead costs, creating innovation and maintaining thoughtful and cost-sensitive production methods with a well balances customer service will lead to increased business value. Although this cannot be easily measured and visualized in numbers and return of investment, business values are increasing if IT systems are implemented with the right IT strategy to enhance the above discussed areas.