5.1 Introduction

Information age organizations are built on a new set of operating assumptions.

Robert Kaplan and David Norton ^[1]

Industrial-age control ratios persist as a way of thinking about IT costs (but) the effects of computers are systemic.

Paul Strassmann ^[2]

My overall conclusion is that our scorecard experience was highly successful in terms of engendering a strong performance culture, and in significantly improving the performance of the IT Division in a way which could not have been achieved without the use of a highly structured scorecard program.

Senior IT Manager, GenBank

The attraction of the balanced business scorecard approach promoted by Kaplan and Norton ^[1] has been its claimed ability to provide an holistic and integrated set of measurements linking disparate organizational activities with key corporate goals. Many organizations have now taken up this approach or their own specific variants. Consider the following examples from our research base.

• The Unipart Information Technology (UIT) group pursued the implementation of a scorecard by trying to follow a generic scorecard format. After a year invested in the process, UIT management recognized that the scorecard effort was not providing the desired results. Instead the process had become mechanistic and not that useful. Consequently, UIT management focused its subsequent efforts on identifying measurements to address the primary UIT issue: that of removing cost from the business. The resulting CAPRI program encompassed three programmes: (1) delivering more value to the customer; (2) increasing internal productivity; and (3) becoming a preferred employer.