The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business and industry, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organization performance against strategic goals.

It was originated by Drs. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and 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' view of organizational performance.

The Balanced Scorecard suggests that we view the organization from four perspectives, and to develop metrics, collect data and analyze it relative to each of these perspectives:

• Learning & Growth
• Business Process
• Customer
• Financial

Since the original concept was introduced in 1992, Balanced Scorecards have become a fertile field of theory, research and consulting practice. The Balanced Scorecard has evolved considerably from its roots as a measure selection framework. Nowadays, the model includes linkages between the Strategic, Tactical and Operational levels within organizations through Scorecards and Dashboards that provide drill down / up capability to identify sources and root causes for under-performing scorecard metrics. It's possible to give focus on measures to the here and now, day-to-day operational and tactical levels.

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The benefits of the Balanced Scorecard have been identified by many organizations:

• Improve communications, both internally and externally;

• More emphasis on strategy and organizational results;

• Provide strategic feedback and learning;
• Integrate strategic planning and management;
• Drive strategy execution;
• Clarify strategy and make strategy operational;
• Identify and align strategic initiatives;
• Link budget with strategy;
• Conduct periodic strategic performance reviews to learn about and improve strategy;
• Reduce the vast amount of information the company IT systems process into essentials.

The concept of the Balanced Scorecard supports strategic planning and implementation by federating the actions of all parts of an organization around a common understanding of its goals, and by facilitating the assessment and upgrade of strategy. When fully deployed, the Balanced Scorecard transforms strategic planning from an academic methodology into the backbone of an enterprise.

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The following challenges/issues may impact a company in its registration efforts:

• Obtain a balance between leading and lagging indicators;
• Obtain only the indicators that reflect strategy and are most critical;
• Involve the whole organization in the implementation process;
• Keep the development process short;

• View the scorecard as a long-term journey rather than a short-term project;

• Obtain executive sponsorship and commitment;
• Emphasis on financial measures rather than nonfinancial;
• Too many objectives defined and too many performance metrics being measured;
• A business strategy that is poorly understood and therefore impossible to execute.

To deal with all these challenges an integrated and automated management system can certainly be of great help.

SoftExpert Excellence Suite provides organizational efficiency, process control, and flexibility to help simplify the tasks involved in managing data and information. It also helps your organization make better decisions in managing the content and process that drive your business.

SoftExpert CPM Suite can help you define a strategy and measure performance against goals, monitor progress on a regular basis, and communicate across your entire enterprise. Administrators can create a metric, process diagram, scorecard and Balanced Scorecard once and use it across the organization to ensure everyone is working with the same definitions and to the same targets.

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