Decision Support Systems 25 1999.

7188

The balanced scorecard: a foundation for the strategic

management of information systems
Maris Martinsons a , Robert Davison
b

b,)

, Dennis Tse

a
Department of Management, City Uniersity of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Aenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
Department of Information Systems, City Uniersity of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Aenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
c
Information Systems and Serices, China Light and Power Company, Hong Kong, China

Accepted 28 September 1998

Abstract
The balanced scorecard BSC. has emerged as a decision support tool at the strategic management level. Many business
leaders now evaluate corporate performance by supplementing financial accounting data with goal-related measures from the
following perspectives: customer, internal business process, and learning and growth. It is argued that the BSC concept can
be adapted to assist those managing business functions, organizational units and individual projects. This article develops a
balanced scorecard for information systems IS. that measures and evaluates IS activities from the following perspectives:
business value, user orientation, internal process, and future readiness. Case study evidence suggests that a balanced IS
scorecard can be the foundation for a strategic IS management system provided that certain development guidelines are
followed, appropriate metrics are identified, and key implementation obstacles are overcome. q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V.
All rights reserved.
Keywords: Balanced scorecard; Performance measurement and evaluation; Strategic decision-making; Information systems success;
Multidimensional metrics; Case studies; Performance management

1. Introduction
Growing amounts of intellectual and financial
capital are being invested to collect, process, store,
and disseminate information. As the resource commitments to information systems IS. continue to
escalate, the following types of questions are being

Corresponding author. Tel.: q852-2788-7534; fax: q8522788-8694; e-mail: isrobert@is.cityu.edu.hk

asked more frequently than ever before: Is that investment in IS or information technology IT. really
worthwhile? Is that IT application we implemented a
success? Is our IS department or function. productive and effective? Should we use outsourcing?
Recent surveys indicate that issues such as measuring the value of IT and evaluating IS performance are of great importance to managers in places
like Hong Kong w8x, the United States w4x and the
United Kingdom w16x. Given the increasing role of
IT in achieving business goals, the extensive interest
of managers in measuring and evaluating both IS
processes and outcomes is not surprising. The recent

0167-9236r99r$ - see front matter q 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 1 6 7 - 9 2 3 6 9 8 . 0 0 0 8 6 - 4

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M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

professional and academic literature further suggests

that IS consultants and business professors are also
concerned about the lingering difficulties in trying to
determine the value of IT applications as well as
performance in the IS area see, e.g., Ref. w7x..
At another level of analysis, the productiity
paradox has become a contentious issue among both
economists and the IS community see Refs. w20,40x..
Several studies indicate that while the level of IT
investment is correlated to corporate revenues, it is
not correlated to either productivity or profitability
w45,46x. Simply stated, the huge overall investment
in computer and telecommunication technologies
does not appear to have significantly raised economic productivity or corporate profits. Similar findings in individual enterprises have led many to believe that IT applications are simply a black hole.
Managers have found it difficult to demonstrate tangible returns on the resources expended to plan,
develop, implement and operate computer-based IS.
For example, in one General Motors plant, US$650
million was invested in IT during the 1980s failed to
result in any significant productivity or quality improvements w37x.
This state of affairs may merely reflect the fact
that recently-implemented, computer-based IS enhance value in ways that are not captured by conventional inputoutput accounting methods. For example, since effectiveness doing the right things. and
innovation doing new things. cannot be readily
quantified in terms of traditional outputs, these improvements are not reflected in economic efficiency
statistics.
Business consultants and academics have also
suggested that the productivity paradox may stem
from the tendency to automate their existing ways of
doing work. Very few organizations have redesigned
their business processes in order to realize the full
potential of modern IT. Brynjolfsson and Hirt w5,6x
are among those who insist that many of the benefits
from a technology investment will not be realized
unless major organizational changes are made. Indeed, the growing popularity of this perspective contributed to the emergence of the re-engineering phenomenon in the early 1990s see Ref. w30x.. Nevertheless, the fundamental issue of measuring and evaluating IT applications and IS activities remains unresolved.

1.1. IS measurement and ealuation

Many methods and techniques have been suggested over the years to evaluate the investments
made in IT and IS. Traditional methods focus on
well-known financial measures, such as the return on
investment ROI., net present value NPV., the internal rate of return IRR., and the payback period.
These methods are best-suited to measure the value
of simple IT applications, such as transaction processing and office automation systems. The aforementioned types of IS were often the first to be
introduced in a given organization.
Unfortunately, evaluation methods that rely on
financial measures are not as well-suited for newer
generations of IT applications. These computer-based
IS typically seek to provide a wide range of benefits,
including many that are intangible in nature. For
example, it is difficult to quantify the full value of a
decision support system see Ref. w44x. or a knowledge-based system see Ref. w26x.. The productivity
paradox has prompted calls for new approaches to
measure and evaluate IT-related investments see
Refs. w3,36x..
One proposed approach is information economics
w38x, which should not be confused with the economics of information systems. Information economics seeks to account for a wider scope of IS
benefits, by including less tangible items such as
improved customer service or a higher degree of
competitiveness. It also prescribes that the benefits
and risks be separated into two domains, a business
domain and a technological domain, and that each
domain be evaluated separately. However, even the
two domains of information economics fail to fully
capture the range of business benefits offered by
contemporary IT applications. As a result, we suggest that it may be appropriate to use a balanced
scorecard to measure and evaluate IT and IS.
Robert Kaplan of Harvard University and David
Norton, an American management consultant, have
proposed the balanced scorecard as a means to evaluate corporate performance from four different perspectives: the financial perspective, the internal business process perspective, the customer perspective,
and the learning and growth perspective. They compare their approach for managing a company to that
of pilots viewing assorted instrument panels in an

M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

airplane cockpit: both have a need to monitor multiple aspects of their working environment.
Many companies are adopting the balanced scorecard BSC. as the foundation for their strategic
management system. Some managers have used it as
they align their businesses to new strategies, moving
away from cost reduction and towards growth opportunities based on more customized, value-adding
products and services. The BSC has even been coded
into a software program that enables business performance indices to be created by extracting data from
computer-based IS w33x.
Martinsons w27x has suggested that the BSC may
also help managers evaluate IT investments, as well
as the performance of an IS organization, in a holistic manner. This paper builds upon that suggestion
by elaborating a framework for evaluating IT and IS
based on the BSC concept. We detail how the BSC
can serve as a decision support tool for IS managers.
It may be applied not only to assess the contribution
of a specific information system or IS project, but
also to evaluate the performance and guide the activities of an IS department or functional area.

2. The balanced scorecard

Kaplan and Norton w2123x have presented the
BSC concept in a series of articles published in the
Harard Business Reiew. They have argued that
traditional financial accounting measures like the
ROI and payback period. offer a narrow and incomplete picture of business performance, and that a
reliance on such data hinders the creation of future
business value. As a result, they suggest that financial measures be supplemented with additional ones
that reflect customer satisfaction, internal business
processes, and the ability to learn and grow. Their
BSC is designed to complement financial measures
of past performance with measures of the drivers of
future performance w24x, p. 8..
The name of their concept reflects an intent to
keep score of a set of items that maintain a balance
between short- and long-term objectives, between
financial and non-financial measures, between lagging and leading indicators, and between internal and
external performance perspectives w24x, p. viii..

73

Management attention to such a broad set of performance measures should not only help to ensure good
short-term financial results, but also to guide a business as it seeks to achieve its strategic goals.
During the evolution of their BSC concept in the
1990s, Kaplan and Norton have demonstrated an
increasing awareness of the assumptions and theories
that underlie business process re-engineering BPR..
Many advocates of BPR contend that traditional
industrial age competition is being supplanted by a
new form of information age competition see Refs.
w12,18x.. Business success in the past was largely
based on the efficient allocation of financial and
physical capital in order to achieve economies of
scale and scope w10x. However, the ability to mobilize and exploit softer and less tangible intellectual
assets is becoming more important see Table 1..
As a result, information age companies must focus on specific market segments or use technologyimproved processes in order to efficiently produce
and deliver their products and services. For example,
Martinsons and Revenaugh w31x, p. 81. point out
that rather than driving down employee numbers . . .
and cutting costs., it is ultimately necessary for
organizations to deliver superior value. They must
improve the numerator in the productivity equation.
BPR stresses the role of quantitative goals and measures to guide the development and implementation
of a new business model.
Kaplan and Norton appear to have taken the
prescriptive re-engineering literature to heart by progressively enlarging the range of potential benefits

Table 1
Competitive advantage in the information age
Intangible assets enable a business to . . .
develop and maintain customer relationships
develop and maintain supplier relationships
develop and maintain strategic alliances
identify the products and services desired by different market
segments
develop innovative products and services for designated market
segments
produce highly-customized products and services that can be
offered at attractive prices
deliver highly-customized products and services to designated
market segments
continuously improve core business processes

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M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

Table 2
The four perspectives in a balanced scorecard
Customer perspective value-adding view.

Financial perspective shareholders view.

Mission: to achieve our vision, by delivering value to

our customers

Mission: to succeed financially, by delivering value to

our shareholders

Internal perspective process-based view.

Learning and growth perspective future view.

Mission: to satisfy our shareholders and customers

by promoting efficiency and effectiveness in our
business processes

Mission: to achieve our vision, by sustaining our innovation

and change capabilities, through continuous improvement and preparation
for future challenges

From Refs. w23,24x.

that come from using their concept. Recently, they

proposed the BSC not only as a tool for clarifying
and communicating strategy, but also as a foundation
for actively managing it. A BSC-based system could
come to resemble an organizational actiity support
system see Ref. w9x.. Despite the hype that has

started to accompany some published reports about

BSCs, such an action-oriented framework, which
focuses on customer-based business processes rather
than just financial results, should help managers to
monitor and improve business performance on a
real-time basis see also Ref. w41x..

Fig. 1. Relationships between the four perspectives in the balanced scorecard based on Ref. w21x..

M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

Future-oriented, process-based metrics are seen as

a key element in a strategic management system that
drives performance improvement and enables the top
management team to make well-informed decisions
that prepare their organization for the future see
Refs. w7,42x.. Such a strategic management system
should include the following major elements: mission: that gives a sense of purpose to their organization e.g., be a supplier of information management
training and consulting services in Vancouver.; ision: an image of what the organization will look
like and do in the future; strategic objecties: the
mission and vision are translated into strategic objectives e.g., to provide innovative seminars to senior
managers in the retail industry.; performance measures: the objectives can be measured through wellchosen indicators e.g., number of senior managers
from the retail industry enrolled in seminars, client
satisfaction with the seminars..
Table 2 outlines the four perspectives included in
a balanced scorecard, and Fig. 1 shows the relationships between them.

3. Evaluating business functions, departments and

projects
The BSC concept can also be applied to measure,
evaluate and guide activities that take place in specific functional areas of a business. It can even be
used to shed greater light on performance at the
individual project level. The remainder of this article
illustrates the application of the BSC concept to IS
activities. We develop a BSC framework which can
be adapted to IT application projects as well as the
IS department or functional area as a whole.
The BSC-for-IS framework presented here is
structurally similar to the BSC framework at the
corporate management level. However, we have
made substantial modifications to the perspectives
and measures proposed by Kaplan and Norton. The
changes stem from our view that: 1. the IS department is typically an internal rather than external.
service supplier; and 2. IS projects are commonly
carried out for the benefit of both end-users and the
organization as a whole rather than individual customers within a large market..

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The following four perspectives have been suggested for a balanced IS scorecard: user orientation,
business value, internal processes, and future readiness w27x. Other modifications to the framework
include the reanalysis of the internal businessrprocess perspective such that it focuses on efficiency.
Operational effectiveness more naturally belongs to
the user orientation perspective, i.e., are we doing
the right things and thereby satisfying customer
needs. A framework based on these four new perspectives is shown in Table 3 and the relationships
between them are illustrated in Fig. 2. The remainder
of this article considers the development and implementation of a balanced IS scorecard.
The value or contribution of IS to the business as
a whole must be considered from top managements
point of view. This evaluation is comparable to the
general management evaluation suggested by Dickson and Wetherbe w14x. They discuss the key success
factors of the IS function and indicate that measures
such as system availability and downtime may be
appropriate to evaluate these factors. However, the
approach presented here goes further, in that a traditional IS focus on internal processes and business
value is augmented with the user orientation and
future readiness perspectives. Each of the four perspectives should be translated into corresponding
metrics and measures that reflect strategic goals and
objectives. The perspectives should be reviewed periodically and updated as necessary.
Potential IS measures are considered in the sections that follow. These measures are generic in
nature, because each corporate mission and the
strategic goals related to it will require a unique set
of measures w3,24,25x. The proposed metrics are
extracted from the mainstream IS management literature as well as the emerging literatures on information economics w38,39x and IS success w2,13,43x.
The balanced IS scorecard does not only integrate
these different approaches; it also extends them in
two important ways: 1. by adding a future readiness
perspective that incorporates concepts such as innovation and learning; and 2. by proposing that the
monitoring and control of all the key measures be
undertaken on an on-going basis. In fact, the measures included in a given BSC should be tracked and
traced over time, and integrated explicitly into the
strategic IS management process. This will let man-

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Table 3
The four perspectives in a balanced IS scorecard
Business value perspective managements view.

Mission: deliver value-adding products and services to end-users

Key question: Are the products and services provided by the IS
departmentrfunctional area fulfilling the needs of the
user community

Mission: contribute to the value of the business

Key question: Is the IS departmentrfunctional area
accomplishing its goals and contributing
value to the organization as a whole?

Objectives
Establish and maintain a good image and reputation with end-users
Exploit IT opportunities
Establish good relationships with the user community
Satisfy end-user requirements
Be perceived as the preferred supplier of IS products and services

Objectives
Establish and maintain a good image and reputation with management
Ensure that IS projects provide business value
Control IS costs
Sell appropriate IS products and services to third parties

Internal processes perspective operations-based view.

Future readiness perspective innovation and learning view.

Mission: deliver IT products and services in an efficient and

effective manner
Key question: does the IS departmentrfunctional area create,
deliver and maintain its
products and services in an efficient manner?

Mission: deliver continuous improvement and

prepare for future challenges
Key question: Is the IS departmentrfunctional area improving
its products and services, and preparing for potential
changes and challenges?

Objectives
Anticipate and influence requests from end-users and management
Be efficient in planning and developing IT applications
Be efficient in operating and maintaining IT applications
Be efficient in acquiring and testing new hardware and software
Provide cost-effective training that satisfies end-users
Effectively manage IS-related problems that arise

Objectives
Anticipate and prepare for IS-related problems that could arise
Continuously upgrade IS skills through training and development
Regularly upgrade IT applications portfolio
Regularly upgrade hardware and software
Conduct cost-effective research into emerging technologies and their
suitability for the business

M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

User orientation perspective end-users view.

M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

77

Fig. 2. Relationships between the four perspectives in the balanced IS scorecard based on Ref. w27x..

agers know what is happening and why it is happening, enabling them to base their decisions and actions
on solid information rather than intuition.

4. Measuring and evaluating business value

It is useful to distinguish between two categories
of ITrIS performance evaluation: the short-term
cost-benefit evaluation that is commonly applied to
individual projects, and the longer-term perspective
relevant to both IT applications and the IS department or function as a whole. Many of the business
value measures fall into the latter category, as evident from Table 4. For example, although Cost
control and Selling to third parties may be evaluated in the short-term, many of the measures within
the Business value dimensions will require an extended evaluation time frame.
The traditional financial perspective encompasses
the control of the IS budget as well as the benefits

arising from the sale of IT-related products and

services to third parties. Although some pundits have
encouraged the IS department or functional area to
take on commercial activities, these remain the exception rather than the norm. Popular financial metrics are the IS budget expressed as either a percentage of sales turnover or as a percentage of total
expenses.
Benchmarking to other companies in the industry
w35x or even other economies around the world w29x
may provide useful insights. However, differences
that are identified should be interpreted with care,
since they may be due to company-specific factors.
A critical attitude towards these figures is necessary
even if a number or a percentage is at the same level
as the industry average.
Value is a much broader concept than benefits,
and IS projects can generate business value in many
ways. For example, the implementation of a menudriven customer database may reduce the amount of
IS specialist support needed to execute an ad hoc

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M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

Table 4
Measures for the business value perspective
Cost control
Percentage overrunder overall IS budget
Allocation to different budget items
IS budget as a percentage of revenue
IS expenses per employee
Sales to third parties
Revenue from IT-related products and services
Business alue of an IT project
Financial evaluation based on traditional measures
e.g., ROI, payback period.
Business evaluation based on information economics
- Value linking
- Value acceleration
- Value restructuring
- Technological innovation
Strategic match with business contribution to:
- Product or service quality
- Customer responsiveness
- Management information
- Process flexibility
Less
Risks
- Business strategy risk
Unsuccessful business strategy
- IS strategy risk
Unsuccessful IS strategy
- Definitional uncertainty
Low degree of project specification
- Technological risk
Bleeding edge hardware and software
- Developmental risk
Inability to put the pieces together
- Operational risk
Resistance to change
Humanrcomputer interface difficulties
- IS service delivery risk
Business alue of the IT departmentr functional area
Percentage of resources devoted to strategic projects
Percentage of time spent by IS manager in meetings with
corporate executives
Perceived relationship between IS management and top
management

query, and generate a modest amount of direct benefits. However, the real value of such a database will
be reflected in marketing and sales performance.
Salespeople would be expected to integrate the
database into their activities, thereby improving the

productivity of the sales process, and consequently

raising revenue levels andror profit margins.
A new concept called business value complementarity has been devised by Barua et al. w3x, using a
business value modeling approach to assess the impacts of re-engineering variables on performance
measures. It is argued that IT is complementary with
organizational characteristics and processes, and
therefore IT investments will not produce significant
improvements if they are undertaken in isolation.
Referring to the concept of ideal types w34,50x, it is
suggested that exogenous changes, such as technological advances, provide the opportunity to achieve
a better design via complementary changes. The
whole notion of complementarity can be addressed
by the question: Does the value derived by increasing one factor increase by increasing the other factors in appropriate directions? w3x, p. 416.. What is
important is that the changes introduced through the
complementary factors must be coordinated. This
synergistic approach, that takes advantage of the
value created through the synergy, presents a distinctly new method of supporting decisions about
change.
Notwithstanding such benefits, value also implies
risk. IS benefits have traditionally been measured by
quite simple at least in theory. financial measures
like the return on investment andror the payback
period. However, these types of financial measures
limit themselves to the financial benefits rather than
the broader concept of business value. Information
economics has sought to address this deficiency
w38,39x.
The information economics method is a scoring
technique whereby value and risk categories are
attributed a numerical score between zero and five.
For a value category, 0 would signify no positive
contribution while a 5 would represent a large
positive contribution. For a risk category, 0 would
mean no risk while a 5 would signal a large
risk. Each of these categories is assigned a weight.
By adding the weighted scores of the value categories and subtracting the weighted scores of the risk
categories, one can calculate the total score of each
project.
The value of the information economics method
lies with the fact that the scores are assigned by all
parties involved. End-users score risks and values in

M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

the corporate domain, while IT specialists score ITrelated categories. This way, the business contribution of the project can be assessed jointly, and a
consensus reached on the evaluation of a specific
project. Most value and risk categories associated
with information economics are quite unambiguous.
However, for a few of them, a short explanation may
be appropriate see also Ref. w39x..
Value linking incorporates the benefits and costs
in other functional. areas. A typical example of
alue acceleration is the interest savings that can be
achieved by repaying an outstanding loan with the
accelerated recovery of accounts receivable. Meanwhile, alue restructuring refers to the efficiency
and effectiveness of employees: Does the new system free up more time for employees to execute their
own jobs? Strategic IS architecture assesses the degree to which the project fits into the IS plan.
Business strategic risk and IS strategic risk refer
to the degree of risk in terms of how well the
company and the IS department, respectively, succeed in achieving their strategic objectives. Definitional uncertainty indicates the degree of risk in
terms of how clearly the functional requirements and
specifications have been agreed upon. Technical uncertainty relates to the risk associated with dependence on immature, bleeding edge technologies.
Operational risk or business organization risk. and
IS serice deliery risk reflect the degree of risk in
terms of how well the company and the IS department, respectively, will be able to adapt to the
changes invoked by the project.
The principles of information economics are
clearly useful in determining the business value of an
IS project or the IS function as a whole. However,
they fail to account for other perspectives that are
also important to IS measurement and evaluation.
Measuring and evaluating IS from multiple perspectives cf. Ref. w3x. and in assorted ways is helpful to
assess its efficiency, effectiveness and transformative
potential, both at present and in the future. Our
balanced IS scorecard includes three additional perspectives that are detailed in the sections that follow.
5. Measuring and evaluating user orientation
The end-user of an IS may be an internal customer or in another company that is utilizing an

79

inter-organizational system. However, in contrast to

the large potential market for the products and services of most companies, an IS department or function usually has limited opportunities to attract new
customers, although we acknowledge that this may
change in the expanding electronic marketplace.
Given these circumstances, the satisfaction of existing customers will be much more important than
building up market share or acquiring new customers. Indeed, it will be critical to monitor existing
customer satisfaction on a frequent basis, especially
if they can select among alternative suppliers of IS
services. As a result, we suggest that the metrics for
the user perspective focus on three areas: 1. being
the preferred supplier for applications and operations; 2. establishing and maintaining relationships
with the user community; and 3. satisfying end-user
needs.
The percentage of IT applications that are managed and delivered by the IS department will depend
heavily on the company-specific situation. When a
company sets the ratio of internal vs. external development, it makes a strategic choice. During this
process, decision makers are likely to employ heuristics such as wanting to develop and support strategic,
highly competitive projects with in-house expertise
while outsourcing routine and non-strategic projects
w28x.
IS specialists will need to establish and maintain
relationships with the community of current and
potential users in order to understand and anticipate
their needs. Such a relationship will also be the basis
for building up the credibility of the IS department
and function and creating trust between developers
and users.
User satisfaction should play an important role in
the overall evaluation of the IS department or function. From the end-users perspective, the value of IS
will be based largely on the extent to which it helps
them do their jobs more efficiently and effectively.
For example, managers will rely on IS outputs to
monitor and control both the internal and external
business environment, and help them make better
decisions.
A broad cross-section of end-users and ideally
every member of the user community. should be
surveyed periodically using quantitative methods. In
addition, semi-structured interviews are recom-

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M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

mended in order to gain deeper insights. If the IS

department loses an important customer, detailed
follow-up efforts to ascertain the reasons behind this
loss would be appropriate.
The indices resulting from involvement surveys
are very important, but they must be treated with
care. It is useful to distinguish between objective and
subjective measures see Ref. w17x.. The indices resulting from surveys are clearly subjective measures,
as opposed to many of the other measures that are
part of a balanced IS scorecard. More objective
measures may be obtained from systems usage data.
BSC does not explicitly prescribe a set integration of
objective and subjective measures, since management must decide what it wants to do with the
information presented, for example when weighting
different measures in a DSS.

6. Measuring and evaluating internal processes

Internal operations may be assessed by measuring
and evaluating three of the basic processes performed by the IS department: 1. the planning and
prioritization of IS projects; 2. the development of
new IT applications; and 3. the operation and maintenance of current IT applications. Other processes
may also be considered, such as hardware and software supply and support, problem management, user
education, the management of IS personnel, and their
usage of efficient communication channels.
The IS department or function should aim to
deliver high-quality services to its users at the lowest
possible cost. This can only be achieved by managing its processes in a cost-efficient manner. Areas for
improvement by monitoring the operational measures displayed in Table 5. These measures should
not only be followed through time, but should also
be compared to industry standards and averages. It is
also important to use a standard set of metrics.
Our recommendations can be illustrated by considering software development. The lack of reliable
size and complexity metrics in this activity area has
contributed to notorious difficulties in setting and
adhering to project budgets and schedules w49x. Standard metrics such as lines of code or function points

Table 5
Measures for the internal process perspective
Planning
Percentage of resources devoted to planning and review of
IS activities
Deelopment
Percentage of resources devoted to applications development
Time required to develop a standard-sized new application
Percentage of applications programming with re-used code
Time spent to repair bugs and fine-tune new applications
Operations
Number of end-user queries handled
Average time required to address an end-user problem

have proved to be useful in overcoming these difficulties and enabling the evaluation of software programming productivity w49,51x.
The lines of code metric has several variations,
such as counting only executable lines or logical
lines. Differences in counting methods can make it
difficult to precisely define the number of lines of
code. Perhaps more importantly, this metric is subject to misinterpretation, because more lines of code
may reflect programming inefficiency rather than
additional functionality or programming features. In
the same way, the different levels of expressiveness
inherent in different languages will also affect the
number of lines of code that are typically generated
for a given program. Given these provisos, however,
it is a relatively simple and straightforward operational measure.
Function points measure software size based on a
structured evaluation of user requirements w47x. They
are independent of the development methodology,
tools or language used to build the software. Function point analysis is used widely to measure the
number of inputs, outputs, inquiries, and files used in
an application. Such an analysis enables a calculation
of the function points that a given programmer has
completed in a specific unit of time. Despite its
popularity for benchmarking the productivity of programmers, it must be recognized that the effort
associated with the development of a given IT application will also be based on factors such as the
language, tools, and methods employed, and the
skills of the project team.

M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

The measurement and evaluation of IS planning,

development and maintenance activities should yield
useful data about the productivity of different resources. Managers can be informed about the performance of specific people and technologies on specific projects and compare the productivity of internal staff with that of contractors. This will enable
them to pinpoint problem areas more easily and
produce better estimates of the time and resources
needed to complete specific projects.
Demand for services can be expanded in two
alternative ways: by finding new customers for existing services or providing additional services to existing customers. By monitoring both the customer and
internal process perspectives, IS managers will know
what the demand is for different services and how
efficiently they can provide those services. As a
result, this will put them in a better position to
decide what services they will provide, and to whom,
and what resources will be needed to meet particular
levels of service demand.

7. Measuring and evaluating future readiness

In addition to managing current performance, there
is also a need to measure and evaluate the readiness
of the IS department or function for the future. The
future readiness perspective is concerned with: 1.
continually improving the skillset of IS specialists in
order to prepare them for potential changes and
challenges in the future; 2. regularly updating the
applications portfolio; and 3. putting effort into
researching emerging technologies and their potential value to the organization. Taken together, such
preparations can establish an organizational vision
for the assimilation and application of a new technology, such as knowledge-based systems see Ref.
w32x., or the re-engineering of a particular business
process set w48x.
The idea of a knowledge-based systems application may be extended to develop an enterprise modeling system, which is essentially a knowledge
centric, enterprise wide decision support system
w1x, p. 100.. This system is designed to operate in
conditions that are imprecise and uncertain, where
human factors play a major role in business pro-

81

cesses and the economic environment is incompletely known, while there is a considerable degree
of ambiguity relating to future events. Such a system
would automatically build and execute task-specific
models in response to user requests employing AI
techniques see also Ref. w19x..
Clearly, the ability of IS to deliver quality services and to lead new technology assimilation efforts
in the future will depend on the preparations that are
made today and tomorrow. IS managers must assess
future trends and anticipate them. Unanticipated circumstances can probably be dealt with through extensive external often high-priced. support. However, the preferred course of action is to train and
develop internal people so that when specific expertise is needed, it can be found in-house.
Table 6 reflects the need to 1. continually enhance the skills of IS specialists; 2. periodically
upgrade the applications portfolio in order to take
advantage of technological advances; and 3. gain a
thorough understanding of emerging technologies as
well as their specific suitability to the companys IS
architecture. Meanwhile, Fig. 3 illustrates how innovation and learning efforts can raise competence
levels that in turn will improve business performance

Table 6
Measures for the future readiness perspective
IS specialist capabilities
IS training and development budget as a percentage of the
overall IS budget
Expertise with specific existing technologies
Expertise with specific emerging technologies
Age distribution of IS staff
Perceived satisfaction of IS employees
Turnoverrretention of IS employees
Productivity of IS employees
Applications portfolio
Age distribution
Platform distribution
Technical performance of applications portfolio
User satisfaction with applications portfolio
Research into emerging technologies
IS research budget as a percentage of the overall IS budget
Perceived satisfaction of top management with the reporting
on how specific emerging technologies may or may not be
applicable to the company

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M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

Fig. 3. How innovation and learning lead to future performance improvements.

in the future. Perhaps paradoxically, the current indicators of competence. may be more difficult to
measure than either the leading innovation. or lagging performance. indicators.
8. Building a balanced IS scorecard
In building a company-specific balanced IS scorecard, the following steps are recommended:
1. create an awareness for the concept of the balanced IS scorecard among top management and
IS management;

2. collect and analyze data on the following items:

corporate strategy, business strategy, and IS
strategy;
specific objectives and goals related to the
corporate, business and IS strategy;
traditional. metrics already in use for IS performance measurement; and
potential metrics related to the four balanced
IS scorecard perspectives;
3. clearly define the company-specific objectives and
goals of the IS department or functional area from
each of the four perspectives;

M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

4. develop a preliminary balanced IS scorecard based

on the defined objectives and goals of the enterprise and the approach outlined in this paper;
5. receive comments and feedback on the balanced
IS scorecard from management, and revise it
accordingly;
6. achieve a consensus on the balanced IS scorecard
that will be used by the organization; and
7. communicate both the scorecard and its underlying rationale to all stakeholders.
It is essential to have a common understanding of
the corporate-level strategy and the IS strategy, and
have well-defined specific goals related to each before developing the balanced IS scorecard. Such a
scorecard need not dictate the relative emphasis that
should be placed on the four perspectives, but will
likely be useful to remind both business and IS
managers that these different perspectives do exist.
The metrics included in the balanced IS scorecard
should meet three criteria. They should be quantifiable, easy to understand, and ones for which data can
be collected and analyzed in a cost-effective manner.
It is recognized that certain attributes, such as the
quality of decision-making, do not have metrics that
can be measured directly in quantitative terms. In
such cases, it will be important to relate these attributes to other ones that can be quantified, like the
perceived effectiveness of a manager, as rated by
others on a pre-determined scale.
Kaplan and Norton w24x also stress the importance
of adhering to three principles in order to develop a
balanced scorecard that is more than a group of
isolated and eventually conflicting strategies and
measures:
build in cause-and-effect relationships;
include sufficient performance drivers;
provide a linkage to financial measures.

8.1. Cause-and-effect
A strategy is a set of assumptions about causeand-effect. If cause-and-effect relationships are not
adequately reflected in the balanced scorecard, it will
not translate and communicate the companys vision
and strategy. These cause-and-effect relationships can
involve several or all four of the perspectives in the

83

BSC framework. For example, better staff skills

future readiness perspective. will reduce the frequency of bugs in an application internal operations
perspective.. An application with fewer bugs will be
more likely to meet end-user expectations user orientation perspective.. This in turn will enhance the
support of core business processes business value
perspective..
8.2. Performance driers
A well-built balanced scorecard will include an
appropriate mix of outcome measures and performance driers. Outcome measures like programmers productivity number of function points per
person per month. without performance drivers like
staff education number of educational days per person. do not communicate how the outcomes are to
be achieved. Furthermore, performance drivers without outcome measures may enable the achievement
of short-term operational improvements, but will fail
to reveal whether the operational improvements have
been translated into enhanced financial performance.
An IS services department may invest significantly in staff training in order to improve employee
productivity. If, however, there is no outcome measure for employee productivity e.g., lines of code or
function points., if it will be difficult for IS management to determine whether its strategy has been
effective. Outcome measures are more or less generic
user satisfaction, productivity, employee satisfaction., but performance drivers are more companyspecific and will often be based on the particular
strategy that is being pursued.
8.3. Linkage to financial measures
The ultimate aim of many balanced IS scorecards
will be to support the management of IS performance in a manner that improves the overall financial outcomes of the enterprise. A failure to convert
improved operational performance into improved financial performance should send executives back to
the drawing board to rethink the companys strategy
or its implementation plans w24x. Further, we must
continuously keep in mind the fact that measure-

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M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

ments are not enough, since they must be used and

acted upon by management. The balanced scorecard
is not only an operational tool, but it can also be the
foundation for a strategic management system.
The following steps may be appropriate in order
to implement effectively the balanced IS scorecard
as a strategic management system w24x:
Clarify and translate the vision and strategy into
specific action programs;
Link strategic objectives to team and individual
goals;
Link strategic objectives to resource allocation;
Review performance data on a periodic basis, and
adjust the strategy as appropriate.
8.4. Format and content of outputs
The balanced scorecard that we are presenting
here is essentially non-prescriptive, since all organizations are unique and management will weight different measures accordingly during its decision-making. However, we can envisage a situation where a
balanced scorecard is implemented, for example, as
an Executive Information System with data feeding
into the system on-line rather than in quarterly or
other asynchronous reports. Referring to Fig. 2, a
manager would therefore be able to click on the
goals or measures of one of the perspectives, and
thereby drill down to extract current data on measures previously selected as being relevant to those
goals. Brynjolfsson et al. w7x note that managing and
coordinating increasingly complex systems requires
increasingly sophisticated tools. These tools must,
however, be supported by mutually reinforcing practices. Existing practices may need to change and it is
the cultural characteristics of a business organization
that will determine its receptiveness to change. This
organizational distinctieness or uniqueness will influence both the format of outputs and the way that
they are used.

9. Putting our proposal into practice

A few pioneering organizations have applied the
balanced scorecard concept to their information sys-

tems management. The authors have recently observed the implementation of balanced IS scorecards
in three large companies in Hong Kong. The evidence from these cases suggests that several common errors must be avoided when implementing this
concept. Three of these errors are discussed below:
1. failure to include specific long-term objectives;
2. failure to relate key measures to performance
drivers by means of cause-and-effect relationships; and
3. failure to communicate the contents of, and rationale for the balanced IS scorecard.
A balanced IS scorecard can easily become part
of the operational-level management system rather
than serving as the foundation for a strategic management system. In two of the three observed cases,
this was due largely to the absence of specific longterm objectives, particularly related to the future
readiness perspective. With a continuing emphasis
on short-term goals, the performance objectives are
unlikely to represent much of a change from business as usual see Ref. w15x..
The strategic performance objectives in the organizations we observed were sub-optimal and rather
modest, or else peripheral to improvements in systems performance. As a result, we believe that the
effectiveness of a BSC for IS will be enhanced by
including stretch goals that require significant improvements in key areas.
Each of the observed companies was only able to
identify a few cause-and-effect relationships and performance drivers during their development of a balanced IS scorecard. In one case, system availability,
responsiveness to user requests, and timely delivery
of new IT applications were agreed to be performance drivers for user satisfaction. However, the
management team neglected to specify how the performance in these three areas would be improved.
We would suggest that such improvements are
possible through different mechanisms, including the
development of employee skills, the adoption of new
development tools, andror the employment of better
project management methods. As a result, we propose that explicit cause-and-effect relationships be
identified before a balanced IS scorecard is implemented. It is critical not only to relate performance
drivers to the performance measures in each key
area, but also to consider how each of the perfor-

M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

mance drivers will significantly improve one or more

key measures of performance.
We also observed a surprising lack of intraorganizational communication as the balanced IS
scorecards were being developed. For example, in
two cases, the draft version of the balanced IS
scorecard was only circulated to two or three members of the top management team and the IS managerrchief information officer. The IS specialists
were not told about the scorecards content or rationale. Not surprisingly, they had little enthusiasm for
a commitment to this concept.
Moreover, individual performance objectives and
appraisal criteria for the IS specialists were not
linked directly to the balanced IS scorecard. As a
result, we wish to stress the importance of broadly
communicating both the purpose and content of the
scorecard and firmly integrating it into the companys
performance management system. Scorecard templates and results that are communicated to employees using electronic mail or bulletin boards can
motivate their efforts and reward them for meeting
targets. Our discussions and limited testing with staff
members in the three companies also suggest that
graphical rather than tabular presentation formats be
employed.
The cases we studied reinforced a belief that
while the specifics of a balanced IS scorecard will
differ from company to company, it is beneficial to
build upon a standard framework, such as the one
presented here, rather than starting from scratch. In
one case where a clean-sheet approach was employed, the user perspective contained some measures that were clearly related to internal operations,
the business value perspective was poorly developed,
and the internal operations perspective neglected
measures for hardware acquisition, problem management, and user training.
Additional case studies are likely to reveal other
barriers, obstacles and errors that can hinder the
success of balanced IS scorecards. We would like to
encourage further study in this area as well as reporting that not only focuses on implementation barriers,
but also considers the ways and means that may be
used to overcome them. In particular, many organizations have now established software measurement
systems that could serve as a useful foundation for
the broader and more difficult task of developing and

85

successfully implementing a balanced IS scorecard.

For example, managers at Motorola identified seven
software development goals and then developed metrics for specific attributes, such as the effectiveness
of the defect detection and fault containment processes w11x. Research of efforts to subsequently expand these software measurement programs into a
balanced IS scorecard is likely to interest a wide
range of business practitioners and academics.

10. Conclusions and implications

We have proposed the application of the balanced
scorecard concept to business functions, departments
and even individual projects. This paper has considered the use of a BSC framework to measure and
evaluate IT application projects and the IS department or functional area as a whole. A concept initially proposed as a decision-making tool for senior
business managers see Ref. w21x. was examined in
the IS management domain by proposing and detailing four IS evaluation perspectives: business value,
user orientation, internal processes, and future readiness. We have also considered specific metrics for
each of the perspectives.
At this early stage of theorizing, the four perspectives and especially the related metrics represent a
template rather than a definitive strategic IS measurement and management system. Future research is
recommended in order to determine whether the
proposed perspectives and measures are a necessary
and sufficient set. Nevertheless, the framework does
represent a strategic IS management tool that can be
used to monitor and guide specific projects as well
as general performance improvement efforts.
The balanced IS scorecard will allow managers to
see the positive and negative impacts of IT applications and IS activities on the factors that are important to the organization as a whole. The value of the
balanced IS scorecard rises if it is used to coordinate
a wide range of IS management processes, such as
individual and team goal-setting, performance appraisal and rewards for IS personnel, resource allocation, and feedback-based learning. The management
of both IS people and projects are likely to benefit

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M. Martinsons et al.r Decision Support Systems 25 (1999) 7188

from a systematic framework based on goals and

measures that are agreed upon in advance.
Measurement is a prerequisite to management.
Kaplan and Norton w24x, p. 21. suggest that If you
cant measure it, you cant manage it. As a result,
we are convinced that the balanced scorecard concept can be useful to IS managers as well as general
managers. However, our experience indicates that
the implementation and maintenance of a balanced
scorecard, at either the enterprise or sub-enterprise
level, faces several key obstacles. Business success
with a balanced scorecarding approach requires a
substantial commitment from key stakeholders. The
total cost of implementing such a tool may be relatively small if data for many of the agreed-upon
metrics is already being collected for other purposes.
Few of the metrics and measures considered here
are new. However, with the balanced IS scorecard,
they are used and combined in a novel way. The
framework presented here builds upon a literature
that goes back about two decades to Hamilton and
Chervany w17x. They defined the primary IS goal as
the development and maintenance of information
systems that support corporate goals, and also distinguished between efficiency and effectiveness measures, doing things right and doing the right
things, respectively.
Building upon this viewpoint, IS can be evaluated
in terms of 1. the efficiency of the activities associated with IS development and operations; and 2. its
contribution to the effectiveness of those that use IS
to improve personal productivity and strive to help
attain corporate goals. The balanced IS scorecard
integrates these two dimensions. Efficiency is most
directly addressed by the internal processes perspective while effectiveness is addressed by the business
value and user orientation perspectives. Significantly
though, the future readiness perspective in our
framework adds a dynamic and strategic dimension
to earlier IS evaluation models by recognizing the
importance of innovation and learning.

Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at
the 1996 International Association of Management

conference. The authors are grateful for the comments provided by delegates to that conference, Master of Arts in Information Systems Management.
students of the City University of Hong Kong, and
the anonymous reviewers of our journal submissions.

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Maris G. Martinsons is a professor of management at the City

University of Hong Kong and Research Director of the Pacific
Rim Institute for Studies of Management. His research and insights have been published in many English-language journals and
translated into Chinese, French, Japanese, Latvian and Russian.
He was cited recently as one of the most productive and influential management scholars in Asia. Maris also has extensive consulting experience, including recent projects for clients based in
Canada, China, Latvia, Mongolia, and Sweden. His research and
consulting focus on information management, business communications, Chinese management systems, cross-cultural technology
transfer, and the strategic management issues that arise from
IT-enabled organizational change. As the Pacific Rim Editor of
the Journal of Applied Management Studies, Special Issues Editor
of the Journal of Management Systems and regional representative of the Academy of Management, Maris has been active in
cultivating a global community that bridges the professional practice and research of management.

Robert Davison received his PhD in Information Systems from the

City University of Hong Kong in 1998. His current research
interests span the academic and business communities, examining
the impact of group support systems on group decision-making,
learning and communication, particularly in cross-cultural and
developing country settings, and informed by interpretive research
methods. His previous work has been published in Information
and Management, the Journal of Global IT Management and
Group Decision and Negotiation.

Dennis Tse holds a BSc degree from the University of Waterloo

in Canada and a Masters of Arts degree from the City University
of Hong Kong. Until recently, he was Deputy Manager of Information Systems and Services at China Light and Power in Hong
Kong. Dennis is now an independent consultant specializing in IS
planning as well as the measurement and evaluation of IS performance.