Technology Scorecards: Aligning IT Investments with Business Performance

Chapter 2. Strategic Enterprise Management

Introduction

Chief financial officers and chief information officers have long struggled to satisfy the strategic information requirements associated with managing in an organized, structured, and efficient manner. The promise of integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to fulfill these requirements has been only partially realized. Companies have reduced cycle times and costs while increasing service and customer satisfaction levels. Yet many fundamental strategic questions about customer, channel, segment, service and product profitability, and the financial and nonfinancial performance of key business segments remain unanswered. Strategic Enterprise Management (SEM) deals with the higher-level tasks to:

• Measure business performance against simulations, targets, and benchmarks, using a Balanced Scorecard, value drivers, and management. Balanced Scorecard is a performance measurement technique; the SCOR card is similar but applies to the supply chain domain and is based on the supply chain operations reference model.

• Automate and accelerate the entire business consolidation process.

• Control and monitor business using value-based management principles.

• Change static operational planning cycles into continuous, rolling forecasts.

• Integrate business strategy with operations, planning, and employee goals and incentives.

SEM is a suite of tools designed to enable advanced cost management and performance measurement capabilities while ...