It is a question often asked during budget season and all too often, it crops up during a conversation that involves the learning management system. I know, I’ve been there and provided an answer to one of my former provosts. But upon further reflection, did I answer his real question? As a former head of academic computing, I sought answers to the provost’s value question in data. I tracked adoption and utilization of all services I could measure, and not just the LMS. I cross-correlated computing lab logins with LMS traffic, media classroom use with electronic reserves, bandwidth consumption with faculty digital media support volume, and so on. What the data provided was a sense of return on investment: quantifiable measures that reflected short-to-medium benefit. But in terms of value, the data didn’t get to the heart of my provost’s question.