Strategic flexibility, information system flexibility and enterprise performance management

Abstract

Enterprise performance management (EPM) helps organization to achieve its strategic goals by efficient use of its resources. The competitive business environment is putting tremendous pressure on organizations to improve and outperform. The strategic flexibility allows the firm to meet the uncertainties around its environment. The enterprise performance measurement and management system allows to monitor and control the performance to achieve strategic objectives of the organization. Information system (IS) flexibility is the flexibility in terms of flexibility to use, flexibility to access and flexibility to change the system helps organization to effectively monitor the performance. The paper is based on empirical study in Indian upstream oil industry to identify the effect of strategic flexibility and IS flexibility on enterprise performance measurement and management using univariate and bivariate analysis such as descriptive statistics, correlation, and regression. The dimensions of EPM effectiveness identified based on literature review are: strategic alignment, strategic monitoring, and perspectives such as financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth. Macro and micro independent and dependent variables are found to be strongly correlated. Strategic flexibility and IS flexibility are found to be contributing to EPM effectiveness. At micro level, government policies and control, global opportunities, global competition, competitive strategy, market forces, computerization, EPM system functionality, flexibility to access system, flexibility to change system, and minimal investment for change are predictors of EPM effectiveness. The results are encouraging and the study may be extended to other sectors.