Citrix Online White Paper Sample

Executive Summary

CIOs frequently ask what IT should measure and report to business executives. The key to success is choosing a small number of metrics that are relevant to the business and have the most impact on business outcomes. The five metrics that meet the criteria for relevance and impact are investment alignment to business strategy, business value of IT investments, IT budget balance, service level excellence, and operational excellence. These five metrics should form the core of an IT performance scorecard.

Metrics for IT's Performance Must Measure Relevance and Business Impact

Most IT metrics efforts lack relevance to the business and are not well linked to business outcomes. They tend to be IT-centric and operationally focused on the underlying technologies, such as WAN availability or server downtime. It’s difficult for the business to understand how these measures relate to its objectives, and they provide little insight into the value that IT delivers. As a result, the business typically focuses on the one metric that they understand — the cost of IT and how to reduce it — and this leads to a continuous cycle of cost reductions. To break this cycle, CIOs must create a scorecard that is:.....