The IT Balanced Scorecard: Customer/Partner Metrics Revisited

In the Balanced Scorecard framework, IT value is driven by satisfied customers. For many IT organizations, satisfying customers has become more challenging as the definition of an IT customer has grown to include many different constituencies both inside and outside the firm. At the same time, satisfying customers has become crucial because few IT organizations retain their monopoly status in light of the increasing competition from outsourcers, systems integrators, hosted solutions, and other external providers, platforms, and solutions (i.e., the cloud). Originally called the "user" perspective, in revisiting the subject, we have changed the name to "customer/partner" to more accurately reflect the expanded marketplace that IT organizations serve. When developing customer/partner metrics, IT needs to push beyond the usual internal customer satisfaction survey. Additional service delivery, applications delivery, IT/business partnership, and external customer satisfaction metrics should be developed as leading indicators of performance.