Chapter 4; Measuring The Success of Strategic Initiatives

Measuring Information Technology 's Success

- Key performance indicator – measures that are tied to business drivers.

- Metrics are detailed measures that feed KPIs.

- Performance metrics fall into the nebulous area of business intelligence that is neither

technology, nor business centered, but requires input from both IT and business

professionals.

Efficiency and Effectiveness

Efficiency IT metric – measures the performance of the IT system itself including

throughput, speed, and availability.

Effectiveness IT metric – measures the impact IT has on business processes and

activities including customer satisfaction, conversion rates, and sell-through increases.

Benchmarking- Base Lining Metrics

- Regardless of what is measured, how it is measured, and whether it is for the sake of 

efficiency or effectiveness, there must be benchmarks – baseline values the system seeks 

to attain.

- Benchmarking – a process of continuously measuring system results, comparing those 

results to optimal system performance (benchmark values), and identifying steps and 

procedures to improve system performance.

Benchmarking-base lining metrics

-E- government benchmark

Efficiency IT metrics

Effectiveness of IT metrics

The Interrelationships of Efficiency and Effectiveness IT

Metrics  

- Security is an issue for any organization offering products or services over the Internet

- It is inefficient for an organization to implement Internet security, since it slows down

processing

- However, to be effective it must implement Internet security

-Secure Internet connections must offer encryption and Secure Sockets Layers (SSL 

denoted by the lock symbol in the lower right corner of a browser)

Metric for strategic initiatives

Metrics for measuring and managing strategic initiatives include:

 >Web site metrics

 >Supply chain management (SCM) metrics

 >Customer relationship management (CRM) metrics

 >Business process reengineering (BPR) metrics

 >Enterprise resource planning (ERP) metrics

Websites metrics

Web site metrics include:

 >Abandoned registrations

 >Abandoned shopping cards

 >Click-through

 >Conversion rate

 >Cost-per-thousand

 >Page exposures

 >Total hits

 >Unique visitors

Customer relationship management metrics

Customer relationship management metrics measure user satisfaction and interaction and

include : 

 >Sales metrics

 >Service metrics 

 >Marketing metrics



BRP and ERP Metrics
- The balanced scorecard enables organisations to measure and manage strategic initiatives.