Can Charities Use Enterprise Performance Management Systems to Improve Information Provision?

Charities are often complex and networked, and face an increasingly demanding environment. Providing stakeholders with timely and adequate information on activities and impact is therefore challenging. Based on case studies of six UK charities, this paper finds that small/medium charities can use Enterprise Performance (EPM) systems to support providing such information, despite some challenges to their use of IT. There is an increasing awareness in charities of the importance of data, though technical aspects of data management are taxing for them. Compared to SMEs, charities share many of the challenges for IT-enhancement, but benefit from additional encouraging factors. EPM thinking, which is the ability to use an integrated and strategic approach to IT-support for EPM, is extant in charities’ Leadership and Business Systems Thinking capabilities. Necessary capabilities related to IT sourcing are much weaker and need external support. The study identified two different approaches to data integration and business process modelling in EPM: the first focuses on standardising performance measures across activities and projects, the second on standardising reporting processes while allowing for diversity of measures. The use of BI is largely unsophisticated, though improving, and may need enhancing to address the increasingly complex internal and external need for information.