Balanced scorecard - your nerve centre

The balanced scorecard can be the nerve centre of your business. It is a strategic planning and management system widely used to align effort with vision and strategy. It is a measurement system (not just a management system) that provides feedback on internal business processes and external outcomes, to generate continuous improvement.

The balanced scorecard analyses an organisation
from four perspectives:
 

• The Learning & Growth Perspective
  This includes employee training and corporate cultural attitudes related to both individual and corporate self-improvement.

• The Business Process Perspective
  This refers to internal business processes. These metrics allow managers to know how well their business is running and whether its products and services conform to client needs.

• The Customer Perspective
  This covers client focus and customer satisfaction. If clients are not satisfied, they walk. Poor performance from this perspective is a leading indicator of future decline, even though current financials may seem acceptable.

• The Financial Perspective
  Timely and accurate funding data remains a priority, ideally supported by risk assessments and cost-benefit data.

Your new strengths and abilities

• Awareness of the four balanced scorecard perspectives by businesses should be measured. People can be assessed by their skill base in managing and measuring each perspective.

Did you know?

The balanced scorecard was originated by Dr. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and Dr. David Norton as a performance measurement framework that added strategic non-financial performance measures to traditional financial metrics to give managers and executives a more 'balanced' snapshot of organisational performance.

Who would benefit?

Leaders and managers. Anyone involved with raising the bar by generating a strong forward order book - supported by products and services that are of genuine value to your clients.