Scoring IT Success at Bowne & Co., Inc.

Ruth Harenchar explains how a measures- and scorecard-driven strategy has

enabled Bowne IT to become a key strategic partner, with the full support of
senior management

By: Ruth Harenchar

(Issue Details: Volume 6, Issue 1, March 2004).

Ensuring the quill pens were sharp, the parchment was dry, and the horses
pulling the delivery cart were better fed than the competition's - that was shared
services benchmarking in 1775, the year Bowne & Co., Inc. was founded. Today,
as the world's largest financial printer and the leader in providing high-value
document management solutions that empower client communications, Bowne
requires maximum performance from each business unit and the infrastructure of
services they share.

Performance

For the Bowne Information Technology Platform (Bowne IT), that means
continually moving beyond productivity, quality, and cost-reduction to measurable
agility, growth focus, and innovation. Meeting these demands requires fresh
measurement tools which track information in support of management decisions,
utilization, productivity improvements, infrastructure construction, and delivery.
Simultaneously, Bowne IT must respond to complex new regulatory requirements
including financial reporting, accelerated filing, foreign filing, customization,
personalization, and growth.

Balanced Scorecard Meeting these requirements has enabled Bowne IT to

evolve into a key strategic partner that has earned the full support of senior
management. This evolution was accomplished with the Balanced Scorecard - the
compass enabling Bowne IT to locate its own true north of success (see Figure 1).
The scorecard is mapped directly to Bowne's IT strategy and has five primary
categories:

• financial
• project performances
• operational performances
• end user satisfaction and
• talent management

Each category contains a list of objectives, clearly defined metrics, a description

of how those metrics are measured, owners of each metric, and most importantly,
a list of initiatives IT must undertake to accurately measure performance in each
category.

For example, the "project" category includes several metrics that highlight the
direct link between IT project work and corporate benefits. These include
measurements of both competitive and IT value creation, and of external
partnership-building. Competitive value-generation gauges collaboratively
developed, technology-enabled solutions that differentiate Bowne in the
marketplace. It is measured by development investments that will ultimately
result in new corporate products or services. Likewise, the IT value-generation
metric assesses the potential business impact of new technologies as measured
by the percentage of technology research and development investments which
lead to new IT operational services.

Finally, external partnership-building tracks IT's collaboration with technology

vendors and industry experts to identify business users for specific technologies.
This is measured by the percentage of vendors on Bowne's partner "ecosystem"
map with whom IT has existing partnerships. The map also documents additional
relationships, current spending levels, and contacts at other organizations Bowne
wants to partner with.

Additional scorecard categories are measured in similar ways. Financial

performance assesses the annual percentage of operational savings for specific IT
services, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of IT products and services compared
to industry benchmarks, and the percentage variance in actual returns versus
business case estimates.

Operational performance measures system availability, the number of help desk

calls per application, and the percentage of existing systems conforming to
architectural standards.

Talent management evaluates the percentages of individual training objectives

met, employees with individual development plans, and product/customer
knowledge based on surveys of performance. Finally, user satisfaction metrics
include both business-sponsor and end-user satisfaction scores.

Accurate Measurement

In all of the categories, specific initiatives are prescribed to enable accurate

measurements. Under talent management, for instance, one objective is to
recruit and train a diverse, high-performing workforce. A related metric is
"regretted turnover," and the initiative is an assessment of management needs
for new hire selection skills. Initiatives in other categories are structured similarly.

Each initiative and its measurement has a designated owner to ensure

accountability for execution and data collection; initiatives are thoroughly
delineated to enable accurate reporting; and the results are posted in clear,
nontechnical language. Thus, the value creation IT provides for Bowne business
strategies in its contribution to more efficient operations is clear.

Scorecard Lifecycle

This success continues to build because the Bowne IT scorecard is a process, not
a document. Initiated in 2000 as part of a corporate-wide scorecard initiative, the
IT annual scorecard lifecycle involves seven steps:
1. kick-off meetings for the IT staff, emphasizing the alignment of unit and
corporate strategies;
2. ongoing strategy mapping in which IT develops its strategies based on the
corporate strategic plan;
3. metrics selection to track IT's progress against each strategic pillar;
4. metrics definition, including measurement technique and tracking;
5. assignment of metric ownership to individuals involved directly in scorecard
creations and updates;
6. data collection and quality assurance, the frequency of which depends on the
individual metric; and
7. scorecard revision and review undertaken by the CIO and other Bowne
corporate officers every six months.

In addition, the applicability of the metrics is reviewed annually by the CIO and
her team. This closed-loop balanced scorecard process, combined with an
umbrella model of external benchmarking, has allowed Bowne IT to enhance its
value as a credible, breakthrough strategic partner.

Integrating Corporate Strategy - Organizational Impact

Indeed, as a "business-within-a-business", with ownership of its own scorecard,
Bowne IT now uses its performance to help Bowne business units leverage their
technology investments. Within IT itself, the scorecard cascades strategies to all
levels of daily operations, enhances employee initiatives, and allows IT to
promote technology as a strategic investment based on the ongoing release of
competitive features, application of best practices, product development,
anticipation of future needs, and other advantages.

More importantly, as IT is not a traditional profit center, its results are often
considered intangible. The scorecard dramatically alters that. It integrates Bowne
corporate strategy throughout the IT organization; supports partnerships with
business units, operations platforms, and corporate services; creates
extraordinary productivity improvements; promotes breakthrough growth, high
performance, and integrated, superior quality solutions with unsurpassed speed
and efficiency. The result is that IT has become a true strategic partner in
Bowne's value-driven quest for success.

About the Author

Ruth Harenchar is Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for
Bowne & Co., Inc. She is a corporate officer reporting to the Office of the
Chairman. As CIO, Ms. Harenchar directs all strategy and operations of Bowne’s
Technology, Information Security, and Knowledge Platforms. It is her
responsibility to see that all four of the company’s business units and their
customers have access to the most effective and advanced technical capabilities
and solutions. Ms. Harenchar joined Bowne from Ernst & Young LLP, where she
served as Director of Information Technology Account Management Services.
Previously, she served for 17 years in a wide range of management positions with
Electronic Data Systems, the leading global information technology services
company.Ruth.Harenchar@Bowne.com

Copyright © 2008 SSON. All Rights Reserved.

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