Balanced Scoreboards

Service Description

The “Balanced Scorecard (BSC)” is a relatively new approach to strategic management that was developed in the early 1990’s by Drs. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and David Norton. The BSC approach provides a clear prescription as to what companies should measure in order to ‘balance’ the financial perspective.

The BSC suggests that we view the organization from four perspectives, and develop metrics, collect and analyse data related to each of these perspectives:

• learning and growth perspective;

• business process perspective;

• customer perspective; and

• financial perspective

In this context, Megacom works in close collaboration with its clients’ teams (Corporate and Departmental teams) to develop the corporate and departments balanced scorecards. This would be achieved in 5 distinct steps;

• Build the Strategic Linkages; or building the strategy maps. This activity captures the currently existing strategies and documents them. A strategy map describes what the organization needs to do to be successful.

• Determine the Indicators of Success; a successful scorecard would start with indicators and not measures. For example, how many litres of fuel a car consumes each 100 KM could be considered as an indicator of the car shape, not a measure, as indicators may cover a wide range of causes (poor engine performance, soft tires, etc.)

• Identify Processes, Projects and Measures; to define the core processes in the organization and decide which of them is critical to the strategic objectives on the strategy map. This would enable the organization to learn the strategic impact of each process.

• Build the Scorecard Process; and integrate it with other existing processes (e.g. financial analysis, budgeting, etc.)

• Launch the Scorecard; it is most important that the scorecard would be in the hands of the organization as soon as possible. Launching the scorecard should involve public presentation, management open support and building a consensus for the next steps.