Introduction
This report outlines the what the balanced scorecard is and how it is used as a tool used in the business industry. It outlines its historical development and analyses its usefulness and how it can be applied to key decisions.
The Balanced Scorecard
The balanced scorecard is a performance management tool that assists in the management of an organisation’s business strategy using traditional financial measurements combined with non-financial information (Candle 2008). Kaplan and Norton (1992), the creators of the concept, introduced the business scorecard as 4 main perspectives, customer, learning and growth, financial and internal business process. They breakdown the meaning behind each perspective is as follows: The customer
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By collecting and analysing the information found, organisations can keep track of their management system to create opportunities and improve on any shortcomings, making their business more efficient and effective.
Historical Development of the Balanced Scorecard
The balanced scorecard was brought into attention by Robert Kaplan and David Norton (Kaplan and Norton 1992). In 1990, the Naplan Norton institute sponsored a one year study, “Measuring Performance in the Organization of the Future” (Robertson 2005). This was organised due to concerns that quantitative financial tools were becoming less useful. David Norton was the study leader whilst Robert Kaplan was the academic consultant. Many companies, from varying industries, took part in this study in an effort to establish a more effective performance strategy tool. This led to the creation of the balanced scorecard and a Harvard Business Review article on the balanced scorecard in 1992 by Kaplan and Norton (Cobbold and Lawrie 2002). In 1996, a book was published by Kaplan and Norton where a modified version, the second generation, of the scorecard was introduced as it did not give a more distinct definition of what a balanced scorecard was and how to apply it (Ahmadgourabi, Efteghar and Poureisa 2013). Using strategy maps, cause-effect chains were added to provide more contextual reasoning behind decisions to make it
There are four perspectives when it comes to balanced scorecard. First one is learning and growth which means how the information and knowledge are processed and turned into competitive advantage against other companies. Second is about product manufacturing and making sure that all the products are made the same without any defaults. Third one is about customer satisfaction and making sure that customers are happy with product, service and price. Fourth one is about financial performance and making sure that company’s financial data is used properly.
A balanced scorecard is a performance measurement system, which takes into account the customers, internal business processes, learning and growth, as well as financial
A balanced scorecard derives its name from the perceived need of firms to balance financial measures that are oftentimes used exclusively in strategy evaluation and control with nonfinancial measures such as product quality and customer service. An effective Balanced Scorecard contains a carefully chosen combination of strategic and financial objectives tailored to the company’s business. (David & David, 2017) Auditing is defined as a systematic process of objectively obtaining and evaluating evidence regarding assertions about economic actions and events to ascertain the degree of correspondence between these assertions and established
The Balanced Scorecard Institute reports that in the 1950’s General Electric was the first to use the Balanced Scorecard approach, but it was not until the 1990’s when Dr. Robert Kaplan a Harvard Business School professor and Dr. David Norton officially titled it the Balanced Scorecard. Once used as only a measurement tool for organizations, it is now a complete strategic planning and management system (Balanced Scorecard Institute, n.d.). Originally, businesses looked at the financial reports to distinguish whether it was a quality company or not. Kaplan and Norton however believed the financial reports only showed past history and an organization must also track how it is performing currently and look at ways to constantly improve future performance. Kaplan and Norton established there are four business segments or perspectives to measure and make improvements on. The four segments
Chavan, M 2007, "The balanced scorecard: a new challenge", _Journal of Management Development_, Vol. 28 No. 5, pp. 393-406.
“Putting the Balanced Scorecard to Work,” Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, Harvard Business Review, September-October, 1993, pg 134-147.
“The balanced scorecard should translate a business unit’s mission and strategy into tangible objectives and measures. The measures represent a balance between external measures for shareholders and customers and internal measures of critical business processes, innovation and learning and growth. The measures are balance between outcome measures, the results of past efforts, and the measures that drive future performance. And the scorecard is balanced between objective, easily quantified outcome measures and subjective, somewhat judgmental, performance…”
The use of balanced scorecard has been developed from the early use as a simple performance measurement framework, a complete strategic planning and management systems. The "new"
A Balanced Scorecard can be defined as a “performance management tool which began as a concept for measuring whether the smaller-scale operational activities of a company are aligned with its larger-scale objectives in terms of vision and strategy” (Wikipedia 2009, ¶ 1). Scents & Things will need to develop a balanced scorecard that will assist in meeting and help define the company’s values, mission, vision, and SWOT analysis. The balance scorecard is made up of four perspectives; financial, customer, learning and growing, and internal process. This paper will define each of the four perspectives objectives, performance measures, targets, and initiatives. The paper will also show how the perspectives relate
The point of the balanced scorecard is to move beyond financial measures for evaluating corporate performance. The underlying assumption of the model is that there are a number of outputs that contribute to the financial objectives, and those outputs can be classified as being oriented towards customers, learning and growth and internal processes. Niven (n.d.) notes that there are three main things that should be taken into consideration when developing strong measures for the customer perspective. The first is "who are the customers?", something that we will assume these organizations have answered. They may also wish to ask "who is not a customer but should be?" in order to drive growth in the business, but it is not a fault that they do not ask this. The second question is "what do our customers expect from us?" and the third
Every organizations invests millions every year to gather information, be it about their own organization or about competition, in order to enhance their productivity. Organizations have learnt the importance of the intangible assets available and have started investing in them as aggressively as they would in any tangible assets. Balanced scorecard helps an organization in exploiting all these assets for its benefit. It not only gives the management a financial overview of the organization, but also from three other perspectives which include customer, internal business process and learning and growth (Kaplan & Norton, 2007).
A theory and management approach of the Balanced Scorecard was first “proposed in the Harvard Business Review by Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton (1995)” (Knapp, 2001). In the book called ‘The Balances Scorecard’ Kaplan and Norton (1996) translated organization’s mission and strategy into comprehensive set of performance measures. That
The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that was developed by Dr. Robert S. Kaplan and Dr. David P. Norton in the early 1990's. Their goal was to provide organizations with a clear understanding of what to measure in order to improve performance and results (Balanced Scorecard Institute 2014). The balanced scorecard is a framework that allows an organization to measure performance and compare it to the organization’s strategic objectives and goals (Kinney and Raiborn 2013, 10).
The leading organizations use performance measurement with the aim of gaining insights to their organizations and the efficiency of their people, programs and processes. The organizations do not only collect and analyze data but they also use performance management to transform various strategies into actions and to improve their operational processes (Northcott and Ma 'amora Taulapapa 2012). Accordingly, performance management is used to manage the organizations. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a prominent performance management system in the contemporary world and it was developed by Dr. David Norton and Dr. Robert Kaplan at Harvard business school. Compared to other systems of measuring performance, the BSC considers various
Kaplan and Norton (1996c) defined Balanced Scorecard as a framework that helps organizations translates strategy into operational objectives that drive both behaviour and performance. They realized that although traditional financial performance measures worked well for the industrial era, but were proving to be insufficient in measuring the abilities and competencies essential for survival in changing economic environment. Traditional performance indicators tend to measure financial and accounting aspects, impacting long-term productivity and profits, whereas, Balanced Scorecard provides the measures of synthetic indicators which companies should focus on, such as customer reactions, profits, quality and flexible production selection (Martin,