FCIL Balanced Scorecard integrates the four key perspectives: financial, customer, internal processes, and learning & growth metrics. This comprehensive framework empowers organisations to drive strategic alignment, monitor performance, and ensure continuous improvement across all areas.
The balanced scorecard (BSC) is a strategic performance management tool that identifies and improves various internal business or organisational functions and their outcomes. It translates the mission and vision of organisations into measurable actions. The balanced scorecard is anchored on four perspectives: Finance, Customer, Internal Process, Learning & Growth. Analysing these perspectives will enable the top-level management to make meaningful decisions that shape the organisation's future.
This perspective includes any key objective that is related to an organisation's financial health and performance. Organisations should continually generate revenues and meets goals such as developing new revenue sources and improving profitability. Steps taken to achieve such goals are tracked and evaluated.
Example: Using the financial perspective of Balanced Scorecard a manufacturer tracked cost-reduction targets alongside revenue growth, ensuring profitability improved without sacrificing investment in innovation.
The customer perspective in BSC monitors and analyses how the business entity provides value to its customers. It also determines the percentage of customer satisfaction with the company's products or services. Customer satisfaction indicates an organisation's success; how well a company treats its customers can affect its profitability.
Example: By applying the BSC customer perspective, a retailer measured satisfaction scores and aligned them with service improvement initiatives, which directly supported financial outcomes.
The internal processes of a company define how well it functions. An important aspect of this perspective is that it answers "What are we good at"? The answer to this question helps the organisation formulate marketing strategies and drive innovations that result in new and improved ways of meeting customers' needs.
Example: With the Internal Process Perspective a logistics company monitored delivery times as a key internal metric, improved efficiency, and balanced it with higher customer satisfaction and cost savings.
A balanced scorecard's learning and growth perspective is the basis of any strategy. It focuses on an organisation's intangible assets, particularly the internal skills and capacities required to support value-creating internal processes. The learning and growth perspective is mainly concerned with the enterprise's human capital, information capital, and organisation capital.
Example: Using the learning and growth perspective of BSC, a healthcare provider focused on staff training and IT upgrades, creating capabilities that sustained better processes and long-term performance.
We have heard the term 'Balanced Scorecard' (BSC). What exactly does a balanced scorecard bring to an organisation. Let us have a look at what a balanced scorecard is, how it adds value to your business and whether your organisation should be using it.
In simple terms, a Balanced scorecard is a framework that organisations widely use to track and manage their strategies. It is anchored on the four perspectives: Finance, Customer, Internal Process, Learning & Growth. Organisations define their strategic objectives & outcomes, assign KPIs and monitor them regularly to get the desired results. These indicators will tell you whether you are on the right path in achieving the set strategic goals. Using a balanced scorecard, organisations can describe and measure strategies by continuously monitoring the actions initiated to improve the end results. Balanced scorecard, the strategic performance management system, has three components.
The origin of the balanced scorecard can be traced back to the early 1990s. It was Robert S Kaplan and David P Norton who developed a Balanced Scorecard model to help organisations analyse and measure performance using both financial and non-financial data. Kaplan and Norton outline the five foundational principles required for building Strategy-Focused Organisations:
A balanced scorecard enables an organisation's vision, mission, and strategy to be translated into quantifiable goals and action plans. For the following reasons, the Scorecard is described as "balanced":
Selecting KPIs is about ensuring that what you track truly represents progress towards strategic objectives. A good KPI is specific, measurable, and aligned with long-term goals rather than short-term activity.
Key points for selecting KPIs:
This approach ensures that KPIs not only reflect performance but also drive decisions and improvements in the right areas.
Once the right KPIs are selected, the next step is to measure them consistently and meaningfully. Measurement should be based on reliable data sources and presented in a way that supports real-time decision-making.
Ways to measure KPIs effectively:
There is nothing like "Whether your organisation needs a balanced scorecard or not?". Irrespective of which industry or what kind of business you run, all can benefit from a balanced scorecard framework. The relevant question that needs to be asked is which version of the balanced scorecard should you be using? Is it the paper-based, excel, PowerPoint or digital version?
Usually, organisations start their strategic planning and management process with a paper-based, excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint. But as the organisation grows, the previously mentioned solutions might restrict the scope of a balanced scorecard. Be it paper-based, excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint, they are not appropriate for the long term strategic planning and execution process. Without the collaboration of real-time data and retrieval of automated reports, the process becomes highly time-consuming and limits the entire organisational performance view. These traditional templated of Balanced Scorecard lacked features such as:
Below given are a few signs that your organisation is outgrowing the traditional balanced scorecard system:
Annual Strategic Planning Update
Annual strategic planning is a process that organisations undertake to assess their current performance, plan for the future, and set goals for the upcoming year. The process involves assessing the organisation’s current state, analysing the external environment, and setting goals that should be achieved in the upcoming year. Strategic plans are developed for 3 to 5 years and are reviewed. These plans may aim for a long-term goal, often broken down into short-term goals. Quarterly strategic reviews are a part of these strategic plans and implementation where necessary updates and changes are made to the ultimate strategic plan.
Strategic meeting
Strategic meetings bring together key stakeholders to determine a plan of action for the upcoming year. The agenda includes the following:
Operational Meetings
Operational meetings are an essential part of any business. They provide an opportunity to discuss the progress of current projects, brainstorm solutions to everyday challenges, and review the organisation's overall performance. It is important to ensure that all members of the organisation who need to be involved in operational meetings are present and that the meetings are productive. Weekly operational meetings or huddles ensure the targeted short-term goals are met.
Organisational strategy can be aligned by cascading to different tiers within the organisation. Cascading involves communicating the strategic plan from the organisational level to the departmental level and then to the individual level within the organisation.
Organisational level ( Tier 1 )
The strategy is defined in a top-level strategy map and scorecard, which has a complex idea about the concepts within the vision and mission of the organisation. The complex concept is then broken down into objectives at the departmental level.
While considering a balanced scorecard, you will be confronted with the following terms, Objectives, Measures, Initiatives and Action Items. Let us have a look at what these terms mean regarding organisational strategic planning and management process.
To sum it up, An organisation will have a high-level goal in their mind, that is, objective; measure denotes how you are going to achieve that objective whether they are achieving it or not. Initiatives answer the question, “ What actions should be taken to achieve or accomplish the objectives. And lastly, action items help delegate jobs that help complete the initiatives.
Note: There can be multiple initiatives that are focused on improving measures and achieving objectives. If those initiatives are not helping you improve the focus areas, then you may have to rethink the overall strategy.
An ideal case of a Balanced Scorecard will have organisations set four perspectives; for each perspective, there will be 3-4 objectives, for each objective 2-4 measures and for each measure, 4-6 initiatives. Once the organisation identifies what they need to achieve and how they are going to achieve it, the Balanced scorecard is ready to be implemented.
A strategy map is a core component of the Balanced Scorecard framework that visually defines how organisational goals are interconnected and how they are planned to meet their future goals.
It translates an organisation’s strategy into a clear, visual story, showing how objectives across different areas connect to drive long-term success. Unlike generic diagrams, a strategy map aligns directly with the four BSC perspectives—Financial, Customer, Internal Process, and Learning & Growth—and places them in a cause-and-effect sequence. At a glance, strategy maps can tell both the leadership and employees how they are performing and how well the goals are being achieved.
Strategic planning defines the organisation’s vision, outlines initiatives, allocates resources, and aligns teams to move towards common objectives. Research shows that over 55% of strategies fail during implementation, highlighting the need for a clear bridge between strategy design and execution. But executing the oragnisational strategy with the help of Balanced Scorecard’s perspectives aids better achivement of results. Here is how:
A strategy map template is typically designed in formats such as Excel, PowerPoint, or diagram sheets, where strategic objectives are listed under the four Balanced Scorecard perspectives. These objectives are then connected with arrows to show cause-and-effect relationships, helping teams understand how one goal drives another. Organisations can fill in the template by writing objectives in the relevant perspective boxes and linking them to create a clear roadmap.
Alongside these manual formats, many organisations now use digital strategy map software or dashboard-based templates, which allow real-time updates, easy collaboration, and automatic alignment with performance data, making strategy execution more transparent and trackable.
As mentioned earlier, there are four perspectives of balanced scorecards: finance, Customer, process, and Learning & Growth. These perspectives include a mix of financial and non-financial indicators that aid in the growth of a business. Organisations assign key performance indicators (KPIs) to these perspectives and regularly track them to see where they are in their journey to achieve strategic goals. Finance, Customer, Process, and Learning & Growth are all interconnected in a loop. They work together to generate a result that aligns with an organisation's goals and strategy.
Financial KPIs reflect an organisation's financial outcomes and performance and also give information on expenses, profit, sales, and cash flow, in order to optimise and meet the organisation's financial goals and objectives. It is important to keep track of financial KPIs as it will help identify and remove monetary bottlenecks and maintain a healthy condition concerning the financial aspect of the business.
Satisfied customers = Successful Business. Customers are the backbone of every business, as the relationship with its customers directly affects the business's success. Customer KPIs are an excellent indicator of what is going well in a company. Customer KPIs measure how efficient the respective team is handling various service requests relating to customers. It provides you with the necessary information about your team's grey areas and upgrades plans and training sessions to meet customer service benchmarks.
Internal Process KPIs evaluate the internal organisational goals and strategies that are put in place to deliver finance and customer-related objectives. By monitoring and analysing process KPIs, you will be able to understand what needs to be done to improve performance.
Choosing the right KPIs is important when designing learning and development programs and evaluating their effectiveness. KPIs aligned with organisational strategies and initiatives will help you drive better business results. Learning & Growth (KPIs) are used to assess the impact of organisational training and development programs on the employees. The KPIs measure whether employees are engaging and benefiting from the initiatives. A well-run program will be beneficial to both the employees and the organisation.
By combining accurate definitions, reliable data, and digital monitoring, organisations can measure KPIs in a way that ensures accountability and supports strategic alignment.
When the organisation grows, and more people are involved in the strategic planning and management process, it becomes difficult to manage all the data in a traditional template. Without proper planning and coordination, a complex strategic plan tends to fail in the long run. The chances are high that the organisation will confront various measures and KPIs that feed into each other. A balanced scorecard software hierarchically organises these strategy elements and gives you a clearer understanding of the relationship between your measures and goals. Successful strategy implementation and execution result from the combined effort of both bottom and top-level management. Hence it is crucial to have a solution that combines both and gives a better outcome. A balanced scorecard software visualises the organisation's journey and helps individuals understand the importance of their performance or inputs in achieving the organisation's strategic goals. The effort put forth by employees is measured and valued. Using Digital Balanced Scorecard, the organisation can stay up-to-date, track relevant information, improve efficiency, and gain visibility over each perspective, their objectives, measures and initiatives throughout the strategic planning and execution process.
Improving strategic performance with Balanced Scorecard and KPIs requires a structured approach that aligns your organisation's vision, mission, and strategy with your actions and outcomes.
Revisiting Mission, Vision and Strategy
Take time to review your organisation's vision, mission, and strategy. This will help you determine the critical success factors for achieving your goals.
Identifying and Choosing SMART KPIs
Identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to your organisation's critical success factors. Choose specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound KPIs.
Setting Targets
Set targets for each KPI aligned with your overall goals and objectives. These targets should be challenging but achievable.
Developing Action Plans
Create initiatives or action plans to enhance performance on each KPI. These strategies must be tailored to bridge current and target performance gaps.
Tracking Performance with BSC
Monitor progress towards your targets and adjust your initiatives as needed. Use the Balanced Scorecard framework to track performance across Finance, Customer, Internal Process, and Learning & Growth perspectives.
Ensuring Effective Communication
Continuously communicate your progress to stakeholders, including employees, customers, and investors. This will help build support for your strategic performance improvement approach.
Reviewing and Updating KPIs
Regularly review and update your KPIs to ensure they remain relevant to your organisation's goals and objectives.
Departmental level ( Tier 2 )
The departmental level consists of departments, business units and other support units. When strategy for business is aligned with objectives, opinions and work progress within the departmental levels, the teams work together to achieve the common goal and focus efforts to reach those.
Teams and Individual level (Tier 3)
These are personally aligned objectives defined by job descriptions and work assignments. It helps to align goals and objectives at the individual level for each organisation member. It creates a sense of ownership and accountability among members of an organisation.
The Hoshin Kanri X matrix in Balanced Scorecard is a valuable tool for strategic planning that aims to communicate strategic goals throughout an organisation and implement them effectively. This matrix is designed to align long-term needs with strategic initiatives and identify improvement areas. The name of this framework comes from the X that divides the matrix into four parts: long-term goals, annual objectives, top-level priorities, and metrics to improve. By utilising the X matrix, organisations can establish a clear roadmap for achieving their strategic objectives while effectively allocating their resources.
The Balanced Scorecard provides organisations with a comprehensive view of their performance, allowing them to measure progress and identify areas for improvement. The Balanced Scorecard helps organisations achieve greater alignment, improved communication, and better performance. In the following ways, a Balanced Scorecard system is useful for better Strategic Planning and Strategy Execution:
Strategic performance refers to how an organisation measures its success in achieving its goals and objectives. This involves analysing key activities and processes to determine their performance against predetermined targets. By doing so, organisations can identify improvement areas and make necessary changes to reach their desired outcomes. It's essential to continuously monitor and review Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to identify the gaps in strategic performance. It helps organisations to make the necessary adjustments to achieve their goals more effectively.
Organisations must adopt a Strategic Performance Management System to ensure long-term success. Strategic performance management is a systematic approach to managing an organisation by setting and tracking goals and objectives. By establishing clear goals, organisations can measure their activities' progress, identify improvement areas, and develop strategies to achieve their desired outcomes.To effectively implement a strategic performance management system, organisations need to take the following steps:
Tracking strategic performance is crucial for the success of any organisation. Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is an effective tool to facilitate a holistic approach to performance measurement by considering multiple perspectives, such as financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth. The BSC offers several benefits, including enhanced communication, strategy alignment, improved decision-making, and increased accountability and transparency. Here are some of the benefits of using BSC to track strategic performance:
KPIs are an effective way to monitor progress and measure success when you seek to improve strategic performance. By integrating KPIs into your strategic performance framework, you'll better understand how your organisation is performing and equipped to achieve your goals.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be a powerful tool for organisations to measure their performance against their goals. KPIs are measurable values that track the performance of the organisation over a period of time. By tracking KPIs, organisations can identify areas of strength and areas that need improvement to ensure success. KPIs can provide valuable insights into the performance of an organisation. For example, they can measure customer satisfaction, revenue growth, operational efficiency, employee engagement, and more. By tracking KPIs, organisations can measure their progress and make informed decisions about improving performance.
Organisations can use KPIs to benchmark their performance against competitors, set goals for improvement, and monitor progress. They can also use KPIs to evaluate the effectiveness of certain initiatives, such as marketing campaigns or product launches. By tracking KPIs, organisations can identify areas to make changes and improvements to achieve tremendous success.
KPIs can also be used to motivate employees and help them stay focused on the organisation’s goals. When employees have clear goals and KPIs to track, they have a greater sense of accountability and are more likely to put in the effort to reach those goals.
By tracking KPIs and using them to measure performance and set goals, organisations can ensure that they stay on track and make the necessary changes to succeed.
RAG—or red, amber, green—statuses are KPI traffic lights. This report can be quickly developed using a balanced scorecard. When a red status is shown, it indicates an issue or problem that requires immediate attention. On the other hand, an amber or yellow status signals caution and suggests potential issues that must be addressed. Finally, a green status means that everything is proceeding smoothly and that progress is being made as planned. A RAG measure report is used to analyse areas lacking performance. The report identifies all Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) with a red or amber-coloured indication. This allows teams to identify and refocus their efforts on areas where they are underperforming. By focusing on these areas, teams can make the necessary changes to improve their overall performance and achieve their goals.
What are the challenges faced by organisations to improve Strategic Performance?
Organisations face many challenges to improve their strategic performance. A rapidly changing external environment is one of the most prominent challenges businesses face. Organisations must adjust their strategies as the market changes to keep up with the competition. This can be difficult for organisations, especially those with limited resources.
Many organisations also face the challenge of continually monitoring their strategies. The data and information about the performance of an organisation and its competitors are essential to this process. It also requires organisations to be able to interpret this data and make informed decisions about the most effective strategies to pursue.
Organisations must also be able to implement their strategies effectively. Coordinating various departments and functions is a complex process. It also requires organisations to have the right personnel and resources to implement the strategy effectively. Finally, organisations must also be able to measure the success of their strategies. The impact of a strategy on an organisation's performance can often take time to measure accurately. Organisations need to identify areas of improvement and adjust their strategies accordingly to overcome any challenges they face.
The Data Point Balanced Scorecard is a strategic management tool designed to help organisations measure and manage their performance effectively. It provides a comprehensive view of an organisation's performance by tracking key data points across four perspectives: Financial, Customer, Internal Processes, and Learning & Growth. By integrating these diverse metrics, the Data Point Balanced Scorecard enables organisations to align their activities with their strategic goals, identify areas for improvement, and make informed decisions that drive success. This holistic approach ensures that all aspects of the business are considered, promoting balanced growth and long-term sustainability.