Impact of Strategic Alignment on Company Performance: An approach based on performance indicators system design

In today's dynamic environment, most organizations are forced to constantly realign their information systems with their business strategy to remain competitive. These strategies are defined by the actors of the company who have a global vision and think in terms of goals or results to be achieved. To steer the implementation of the strategy, stakeholders need a performance indicators system “PIS”. PIS is a set of indicators that are used to evaluate the degree of achievement of the current strategic objectives of a company. However, these actors (decision-makers) who participate in the strategy definition have neither the same language nor the same vision as the system engineers. Eventual misunderstandings lead to the production of systems that do not present the performance expected by the company. In this article, we focus on the impact of strategic alignment on business performance. We propose a generic approach for PIS development that links the strategic level defined by strategic objectives and the functional level composed by a set of indicators. The approach is supported by a metamodel of concepts linking the two levels together and an iterative and incremental process covering the different steps of PIS development mainly the design, implementation, and exploitation steps of the PIS; adjusting actions can be conducted on the strategy to meet the objectives set. The proposed approach is illustrated on a case study.