IT measures and metrics
Develop a dashboard to elevate IT’s importance
To meet these business challenges, we have set some critical success factors for IT at Reed Elsevier, which our projects must contribute to. These are the development of demonstrably superior external products, systems to enable collaboration and global working, and a cost-effective technology infrastructure.
As part of an IT management system measuring technology performance to ensure IT activities and investment support business objectives and results, the Reed Elsevier Technology Dashboard measures the efficiency, effectiveness, and alignment of the delivery of these success factors. By establishing a set of specific and consistent metrics covering technology functions, this business process serves two views of IT: An internal view to communicate within the IT organization to direct and manage IT performance, and an external view to communicate outward about the IT contribution to achieving business objectives.
IT performance measures are at different stages of development and maturity within each of Reed Elsevier’s four global divisions. Each division’s IT organization manages measures that matter to the business based on business process measures, product innovation, and return on investment. A set of specific and consistent metrics covering the technology function provides a Technology Dashboard at divisional and corporate levels. These have been developed to cover the following key areas:
Electronic products: Metrics covering revenues, usage, market penetration, usability; supporting investment decisions; and providing a framework to ensure that operational performance is matched to the business importance.
Operational performance and resilience: Metrics covering both product platforms and employee-facing infrastructure allow monitoring of the quality of service provided to external customers and internal users. These include various tiers of service allowing the quality of service to be matched to business importance.
Cost of technology provision: Metrics covering the provision cost of the product platforms and employee-facing infrastructure provide comparison of the total cost of ownership both internally and externally. This provides objective input to discussions concerning the appropriate level of IT expenditure which can be damaging to the business if they are either too low or too high. It also covers metrics associated with the cost of IT provision from strategic partners.
Project delivery: Providing tracking of key milestones, costs, and deliverables to allow performance on project delivery to be monitored. This ensures visibility of projects in the areas identified earlier, supports the execution of these business critical IT investments, and allows time-to-market to be tracked.
Developing these metrics throughout the organization elevates the strategic importance of IT, improves the ability to serve customer segments, proactively manages IT priorities, enhances project sponsor relationships, aligns staff performance objectives, and raises overall IT performance.
