W. Van Grembergen

IT Governance Structures, Processes and Relational Mechanisms: Achieving IT/Business Alignment in a Major Belgian Financial Group

IT governance is one of these concepts that suddenly emerged and became an important issue in the information technology area. Some organisations have started with the implementation of IT governance in order to achieve the fusion between business and IT. This paper describes how an organisation can implement IT governance, using a mixture of processes, structures and relational mechanisms, and analyses the IT governance implementation at KBC, a major Belgian financial group.

Introduction to the Minitrack "IT Governance and its Mechanisms"

IT governance is the organizational capacity exercised by the board, executive management and IT management to control the formulation and implementation of IT strategy and in this way ensuring the fusion of business and IT.

Measuring and managing e-business projects through the balanced scorecard

The balanced scorecard (BSC), initially developed by Kaplan and Norton is a performance measurement system that supplements traditional financial measures with the criteria that measure performance from three additional perspectives: customer perspective, internal business perspective and innovation and learning perspective. In recent years, the balanced scorecard has been applied to information technology in order to ensure that IT is fairly evaluated. The proposed methodology can also be applied to e-business projects. In this paper, it is illustrated how the BSC can be used to measure and manage e-business projects. A generic e-business balanced scorecard is proposed and its development and implementation is discussed.

Aligning business and information technology through the balanced scorecard at a major Canadian financial group: its status measured with an IT BSC maturity model

The balanced scorecard (BSC) initially developed by R. Kaplan and D. Norton (1996), is a performance management system that enables businesses to drive strategies based on measurement and follow-up. In recent years, the BSC has been applied to information technology (IT). The IT BSC is becoming a popular tool with its concepts widely dispersed by international consultant groups such as Gartner Group, Renaissance Systems, Nolan Norton Institute, and others. As a result of this interest, the first real-life applications are starting to emerge. The development and implementation of an IT BSC within an Information Services Division (ISD) serving a Canadian financial group is described and discussed. On the basis of this case study, a maturity model for the IT BSC is introduced and the necessary linkage between the business and IT scorecard is clarified.

Information Technology Governance Best Practices in Belgian Organisations

IT governance is one of these concepts that suddenly emerged and became an important issue in the information technology area. Some organisations started with the implementation of IT governance in order to achieve the fusion between business and IT. This paper interprets some important existing theories, models and practices in the IT governance domain and derives research questions and research propositions from it. They are the basis for pilot case research in Belgian organisations. Conclusions from these pilot cases are presented in this paper together with implications for further research.

Process integration through information technology at the Générale de Banque of Belgium

The Generale de Banque of Belgium has undertaken a number of major business reengineering projects (BPR) within their Strategic Systems Plan. In this article, the case of its Corporate Credit Project is described. The objective of this case analysis is to identify the why, what and how of this BPR project and to assess how successful it is. In addition, we examine how the findings are compared with the most important aspects arising from the BPR literature: process integration through information technology, empowerment of employees, the specific BPR project organisation, and typical BPR analysis (uncovering the pathologies of the old system and reengineering the old system taking into account the strategic limitations). The Generale considered this project a success with productivity gains as high as 25 and 30%, respectively.

Prioritising and Linking Business and IT Goals in the Financial Sector

IT governance and strategic alignment are issues that are high on the agenda in many organisations. To address those challenges, it is important that an organisation has a good view on its business goals and how IT goals and IT processes support the achievement of those goals. This research is aimed at providing guidance in building up such a cascade of business goals, IT goals and IT processes. This research builds on the list of business goals and IT goals, provided in COBIT4.0, and further validates and elaborates this material leveraging the Delphi research method

Introduction to the minitrack "IT governance and its mechanisms" HICSS 2002

The Minitrack “IT Governance and its Mechanisms” within the “Organizational Systems and Technology” Track is introduced at the HICSS conference in 2002. The goal of this Minitrack is to enhance publications on the issue of IT governance and its mechanisms. It is expected to get submissions from academics and practitioners involved in research on IT governance, Business/IT alignment, IT Balanced Scorecard, COBIT implementations, ITIL implementations,, applications of the Capability Maturity Model for IT processes, and typical IT governance mechanisms such as IT steering committees. Submissions on IT audit issues are also solicited.. This year 20 submissions were received of which 12 were accepted.