The role of IS performance management systems in today’s enterprise

The paper deals with the different roles that IS Performance Management Systems can play in an organization. These systems can be used to measure how IS contributes to business value but they can be also management tools which help IS department to manage and improve its own processes and services and as a consequence IS performance. These roles are both important but usually the second role mentioned is considered a priority, in fact the most common reason which leads to the implementation of IS Performance Management Systems is to support a Governance approach to IS. The fact depends on several reasons: logical sequence of implementation process, organizational readiness, IS maturity of users, power conflicts, information asymmetry, etc. The paper analyses these aspects through the case study of an Italian insurance group