Technology Scorecards: Aligning IT Investments with Business Performance

Chapter 5. Strategy

To develop a scorecard for an organization, it is of the utmost importance to develop a sound strategy. Business goals and objectives are established in light of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis, which is further quantified by benchmarking. Information provided in Part II can help you develop the scorecard by identifying the value drivers/independent key performance indicators (KPIs) that will deliver the benefits/dependent KPIs. Knowledge of technology functionality can be put side by side with the quantifiable and achievable value drivers and benefits. I consider this process to be the domain of information technology (IT) investment alignment with business performance. Now you have a scorecard that can be used to drive business performance. Chapter 5 covers these topics; the remaining chapters describe considerations that are part and parcel of realizing the business value.

Enterprise Strategy

Introduction

Both IT and management literature are awash with strategic alignment of systems with enterprise goals. Horror stories and failures have occurred when strategic alignment does not take place or systems and enterprise goals were in misalignment.

This chapter is about developing an IT strategy that is responsive to the business strategy. The IT strategy formulation, or its synchronization with the enterprise strategy, is based on business goals and SWOT analysis. This chapter is the driver for KPI, benchmarking and scorecarding, ...