Balanced
Scorecards
Balanced
Scorecards are management systems that enable organizations to
clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action.
Balanced Scorecards provide feedback around both the internal
business processes and external outcomes in order to continuously
improve strategic performance and results. When fully deployed, the
Balanced Scorecards transform strategic planning from an academic
exercise into the nerve center of an enterprise. In sum, Balanced
Scorecards are certainly winning
mind-share.
Balanced
Scorecards have emerged as proven tool in meeting the many
challenges faced by the modern organization. Using the Balanced
Scorecards framework is a good place to start — allowing you to
align and support key processes — and to translate strategy into
operational objectives, measures, targets and initiatives.
There are three
keys to making implementation of Balanced Scorecards successful:
·
Get Buy-In at All Levels: They know you've
got those at the top signed on. Here's an easy way to get everyone
else on board: Tie Balanced Scorecards objectives to individual
compensation. Works like a charm – and gets employees to think
strategically about their jobs.
·
Follow Through: Don't let the Balanced
Scorecards metrics languish. Update them as major company goals
shift with the times.
·
Use the Right Tools: You can buy or build an
application that will help you track metrics. The Balanced
Scorecards Collaborative certifies vendor offerings, which you can
check out on their website.
Balanced
Scorecards are new management concept which helps managers at all
levels monitor results in their key areas. An article by Robert
Kaplan and David Norton entitled "The Balanced Scorecard - Measures
that Drive Performance" in the Harvard Business Review in 1992
sparked interest in the method, and led to their business
bestseller, "The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into
Action", published in 1996.
There's nothing
new about using key measurements to take the pulse of an
organization using Balanced Scorecards. What's new is that Kaplan
and Norton have recommended broadening the scope of the measures to
include four areas:
·
Financial
performance
·
Customer
knowledge
·
Internal business
processes
·
Learning and
growth.
Companies that
use the Balanced Scorecards methodology, get a more accurate,
comprehensive view of their business performance. Balanced
Scorecards approach relies on the monitoring of critical
business-strategy-oriented metrics, such as quality, customer
satisfaction, innovation, and market share—measurements that can
often reflect a company’s economic conditions and growth prospects
better than its reported earnings.
Balanced
Scorecards methodology is more than a set of metrics; it is a system
of linked objectives, measurements, targets, and initiatives that
collectively communicate and measure an organization’s business
strategy. When you implement it effectively, this methodology can
help your company face both internal and external challenges—such as
responding to increased competition and more demanding customers,
translating your vision into measurable objectives, prioritizing
initiatives and allocating resources, and communicating business
strategies.
Uses of
Balanced Scorecards: Balanced Scorecards analysis for the Microsoft
business intelligence platform offers the following
benefits:
·
Make faster, more informed decisions.
Balanced Scorecards solutions that are powered by Office XP provide
a uniform interface for conducting queries and reporting, and make
these services accessible to the broadest possible user base. They
also offer document management, a collaboration environment, and
search capability that you can use to manage the knowledge easily.
·
Gain a more holistic and accurate view of
business. Balanced Scorecards solutions that are powered by Office
XP help businesses deliver the Balanced Scorecards approach
throughout the enterprise. With all employees are using the same
system, it's easier to analyze your business's progress as a whole.
By employing a flexible and open architecture, Microsoft products
offer rapid deployment and the flexibility to adapt balanced
scorecard metrics to your particular business needs.
·
Quickly identify and resolve potential
problems. You can use Balanced Scorecards solutions that are powered
by Office XP to go beyond the metrics and analyze the underlying
data, so you get both flexible and targeted analysis options. You
get a foundation for data analysis that integrates and standardizes
data from multiple sources and provides an easy way to explore the
data for insights.
