The balanced scorecard is a strategic management tool developed in the early 1990s by Robert Kaplan and David Norton to provide a more holistic view of an organization beyond just financial measures by including additional perspectives such as customer, internal business processes, and learning and growth; it helps organizations translate their strategy into actionable objectives and measures across multiple perspectives and provides feedback to improve performance over time.
2. Introduction to Balanced Scorecard
Developed by
Robert Kaplan (Harvard) and David Norton
early 90s
Earlier measurements focused mainly on financial
measures
The balanced scorecard is a strategic management
system (not only a measurement system)
Internal assessment, improvement and reporting system
Key is the link to the strategic plan
System to turn strategy into action
3. The balanced scorecard retains traditional
financial measures. But financial measures tell the
story of past events, an adequate story for
industrial age companies for which investments in
long-term capabilities and customer relationships
were not critical for success. These financial
measures are inadequate, however, for guiding
and evaluating the journey that information age
companies must make to create future value
through investment in customers, suppliers,
employees, processes, technology, and
innovation. Kaplan & Norton
4. How does a Balanced Scorecard help?
Comprehensive view of the organization
Covers financial and non-financial perspectives
Covers short-term and long-term planning and measurement
Lag and lead indicators
Translating the vision
Forces managers to agree on metrics for operationalizing company vision
Communicating and linking
Connects individual and departmental performance measures to corporate vision
Business Planning
Integration of functions so that budgets support long term goals
Feedback and Learning
Helps course correction and rethink measures
5. Perspectives
The balanced scorecard suggests that we view the
organization from four perspectives:
The learning growth perspective
The business process perspective
The customer perspective
The financial perspective
Develop metrics, collect data and analyze relative
to each of these perspectives
7. Learning and Growth Perspective
Development of the human resources
This perspective supports the concept that people are
a company's main resource and most valuable asset
metrics defined for this perspective must measure
various aspects of employee improvement, growth,
and satisfaction.
personnel training and improvement
cultivation of corporate culture
organizational development, including the nurturing of
corporate experts, gurus, and mentors
setting up of fast and efficient knowledge transfer
infrastructure
opening up of communication lines among personnel
8. Business Processes Perspective
Internal business processes
These metrics, which measure various aspects
(efficiency, speed, quality, etc.) of how well the
company's products, services and internal
support systems are produced or delivered
9. The Customer Perspective
Focus on customer satisfaction.
Rigorous data analysis to understand the
customer
Difficult to reflect the true sentiment of the
customer
10. Financial Perspective
Indicates if the transformation of strategy leads
to economic success
Define the financial performance that the
strategy is to achieve
Revenue growth
Cost reduction
Cost reduction from energy efficiency
Measures the effectiveness of the other
perspectives
11. Characteristics of good metrics
reflect the true present status of the company from many
different perspectives
provide constructive feedback to various company
processes, leading to continuous improvement
show trends in company performance over time,
facilitating adjustments to changes
quantify many things, making analyses more accurate and
solutions more effective
12. Close the loop
Once the metrics have been defined and
implemented
scorecard data becomes available
follow-through becomes imperative
Movements in the metrics must be analyzed to
identify their causes
Causes that produce positive (negative) changes
must be sustained or enhanced (eliminated)