How Citigroup Measures Itself

The “How Citigroup Measures Itself” business case in the Electronic Commerce text book focuses on how Global Corporate Investment and Banking (GCIB), which was a newly formed division of Citigroup, developed an internal system to monitor all IT and EC projects for all organizations that were brought together to form GCIB. The system, called Mystic (My Systems and Technology Information Center), was developed because of a need for reliable productivity checks and measures for all organizations within GCIB. Mystic's primary function is monitoring the performance of Citigroup GCIB's IT staff corporate-wide, while allowing project sponsors from the business side to check the status of their projects. Mystic provides a complete set of metrics and an all-around view of all IT and EC projects, with numerous tracking options including by project owner, delivery date, and budget. The metrics generated by Mystic, which allow tracking of expenditures and performance by individual, group, and department, are tailored to each individual's hierarchical level within the organization, but everyone can monitor their colleagues' performance.

According to the text, the productivity benefits resulting from the Mystic portal include a 15% improvement in on-time delivery and a 50% increase in project load within all organizations throughout GCIB as mentioned in the text. There are multiple activities performed by Mystic that work in unison to increase productivity. First, by tracking metrics for every employee, project, and manager, it gives users a set of performance management tools that helps develop goals for the organization and lets individual users know where they stand in respect to those goals. Mystic also manages Citigroup's technology assets from both external vendors and applications developed in-house. Another feature of Mystic is the Reusable Asset Manager (RAM) that tracks reusable code components by who developed them, what they are, what they do and where they're being used. This provides developers with an inventory of code components they can reuse to expedite future development projects. The text noted, “In 2003, RAM helped the IT staff identify reusable software components worth a total of $117 million, resulting in a significant savings to the business and improved quality and time-to-market.” Data tracking and organization within Mystic assists Citigroup GCIB's IT managers with watching key projects in their portfolio. Last but not least, Mystic has Knowledge Centres that provide a complete collection of internal development expertise. When a specialist in a specific technology is recognized, part of their job is to write down their knowledge of the system and function as an in-house specialist to other Citigroup developers.