Critical success factors revisited : an experiment in their application for information management strategic planning

Abstract

With this introduction in the Harvard Business Review, the concept of success factors (later to be dubbed 'critical success factors' or CSFs) was born. Daniel, a Harvard professor who later went on to become managing director of McKinsey & Company conceived this idea as a means of selectively focussing on data of strategic value necessary to shape/support those vital aspects of firm performance.

Despite this glamorous entry, CSFs have proved to be a bit of an enigma in the bathroom cabinet of managerial concepts. In the early eighties they enjoyed some attention as the result of work done at MIT on their use for information requirements analysis by John Rockart. The mid-eighties witnessed a mini CSF fad. You name it, CSFs were applied to it. Corporate governance, principal/agent issues, health care management, marketing management all had a turn. CSFs looked like a cure-for-all-ills elixir. But as the eighties drew to a close, CSFs had again retreated back into the twilight zone, failing to really gain traction as a mainstream managerial concept.

This research project sought to apply CSFs in the general area they were originally conceived for - strategic information planning in profit maximising enterprises.

For while CSFs themselves had proved somewhat mercurial, the general problem area that begat them is still very real. Strategic information management and planning is firmly in the spotlight For every 'big break' in the strategic use of information technology (IT) such as Federal Express, ASB or Bennetton there numerous cases 'big IT mistakes'. Paradoxically, the competitive advantage anticipated often transpires to be a competitive burden in reality.