First Look at Balanced Scorecard Software

As you begin to realize your dream the business grows. At some point in time, most business owners notice that their heads no longer have “all the information” about the business. If success follows upon success, effectively tracking and evaluating the independent aspects of “the business” or “the enterprise” becomes nearly impossible.Balanced Scorecard Software, claims to be the SuperHero designed to tame all the wild beasts and capture all the evil villains lurking throughout “the enterprise.” Well, they don't actually say it that way, but the various producers of Balanced Scoreboard Software are claiming some pretty big and important advantages for management. The balanced scorecard software solutions allow management, (on all levels, in all departments), to check the real status of their own department/division against Corporate goals and against other departments/divisions. The goal is to be able to install a reporting and management system that will allow looking at the enterprise across divisional lines, in the same way by using the same metrics for each aspect of the enterprise. According to devotees of the Balanced Scorecard the purpose is to enable a business to ensure that is operating under “best practices” guidelines to attain Enterprise goals with the least waste.The problem with most of these reporting systems in the past has been the trade-off between “doing” and “documenting” when it comes to business activity. Doing lots of work to produce lots of products has often required at least some degree of shortchanging the documentation. Losing track of costs of labor, or other specific items has often plagued business. The developing black holes in the corporate budget, into which millions of dollars are sucked is not only a common issue, but is often associated with an organization which is turning a favorable balance sheet.The Corporate world has always sought a solution which could produce real-time metrics on diverse aspects of the corporate structure in meaningful slices. “Is HR profitable?” is often an unanswerable question. We hope it is but can we measure its profitability on a day by day basis? Without some really good and accurate reporting and metrics system, we can only guess.A Balanced Scorecard will (should) offer a tool to check performance, financials and all other characteristics of each segment/department of the entire enterprise. As with all solutions, the biggest and hardest part of setting up and running a balanced scoreboard is determining how and where to implement the solution. In the case of balanced scorecard, the big decision is to adopt the solution. After that, it becomes clear that it must be implemented enterprise-wide to reap the full benefits of the concept.Adopting the Balanced Scorecard concept may be the biggest corporate decision you make in the next few years. It may be the way to turn your enterprise around by rethinking your corporate goals as part of aligning goals to performance and performance to goals, as Balanced Scorecard is designed to do.Taking a serious look at Balanced Scorecard is worth the effort. It would also seem to be worth the while to look at this solution carefully before jumping into it, head first.