Balanced Scorecard Solutions

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What is the Balanced Scorecard?

More than just a measurement system, the Balanced Scorecard is a management system that enables organizations to clarify their vision and strategy and translate them into action. It provides feedback from both the internal business processes and external outcomes in order to continuously improve strategic performance and results. When fully deployed, the Balanced Scorecard transforms strategic planning from an academic exercise into a powerful and useful business management tool. The Balanced Scorecard approach was developed in the early 1990's by Drs. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and David Norton. Recognizing some of the weaknesses and vagueness of previous management approaches, the Balanced Scorecard approach provides a clear prescription as to what should be measured in order to 'balance' the financial perspective. It has since become the most popular approach to organizational performance management.

The Balanced Scorecard allows you to:

Understand what your employees know and what they think about themselves and the organization as a whole.
Gain a useful and realistic view of your organization's current and future operational status.
Understand your customers' needs, expectations, and level of satisfaction.
Complement your financial perspective with operational information for a full and complete picture of your organization.
Accelerate critical information to executives to expedite strategic decisions and their implementation.
Prioritize investments to make operational decisions using future-oriented metrics.
Actively monitor accountability with pertinent information at your disposal

Developing a balanced perspective

The traditional model of reviewing financial reports is no longer the best way to understand if your organization is meeting its strategic goals. The traditional financial model presents two problems:

Financial data is essentially a lag indicator, providing after-the-fact information and allowing no time to adjust your current strategies.
Financial numbers alone do not deliver a complete perspective of your business, and can overlook critical indicators such as customers, process and learning, and growth information.

With experienced consultants helping you develop a Balanced Scorecard, Innovations, Inc. Business Intelligence Services gives you an integrated and balanced perspective on how successfully your strategic goals are being met (even before the financials are reported). Our consultants will identify the critical indicators that measure enterprise- and division-level progress as you move forward to achieve your goals.

Measuring financial and operational data for a total view

By measuring operational data in addition to financial data, you gain a better understanding of the factors that regulate and drive performance within your organization. Once you have a clear indication of the big picture, you can compare this information to other innovation and improvement activities to continually address and stay on top of ongoing organizational needs. You also can delve down to any level in the information structure to review how specific organizational mechanisms contribute to, or detract from, your organization's health.

Looking to the future

It is difficult to look into the future if your indicators only reflect the past. With a Balanced Scorecard, you can assess whether you are achieving your goals in the present, so you can look forward, prioritize investments, and make those important operational decisions that affect your company's future.

Monitoring your organization's performance

Through an understanding of how data interrelates within your organization, you can monitor whether your company is on target with its strategic goals. The Balanced Scorecard can increase the power of your thinking by identifying strategic relationships that exist throughout your organization. It defines links between financial, customer, business process, learning, and growth measurements across organizational units to give you a complete and balanced performance perspective.

Accelerating information delivery to those who need it

The most challenging aspect of managing effective performance lies in the timing of your decision making. To make informed decisions within the intensely competitive landscape of the e-business environment, you need information as soon as it becomes available. With the Balanced Scorecard, performance analysis information is delivered quickly to business executives, so they can make swift, accurate decisions. Automated data delivery allows decision makers to expedite changes in the strategic implementation process even more. You can exploit the value of your existing data warehouse, or Innovations, Inc. can build you a Balanced Scorecard data mart to achieve this goal. In both cases, data can be automatically selected and transformed into valuable business information as soon as it becomes available to your organization.

Contact Innovations, Inc.

Contact us and talk to one of our Business Consultants to find out how Balanced Scorecard can work for you and your organization.