Web Based Scorecard Solutions for Effective Performance Management

Various web based scorecard solutions may have the answer to your performance management needs. They combine the effective method or approach of the balanced scorecard system with the flexibility and wide reach of a web based application.

The major benefit of web-based scorecard is ability to access any data from the scorecard from any point in the world.

The balanced scorecard approach is a management approach that aims to help managers consider not only the financial or accounting aspect of performance, but other aspects as well, to form a unified, whole picture. Typically, there are four aspects to be considered in a balanced scorecard: the financial aspect, the customer aspect, the learning and growth aspect, and the internal business processes aspect. These four can encompass nearly every activity and process within an organization; and hence, managers become able to monitor organizational performance very well and with context.

Within each aspect, management has to decide upon relevant goals and metrics related to those goals. These metrics are the meat of the scorecard because they are what can be measured and followed through time. For example, if the goal is to increase customer retention, related metrics could be the customer satisfaction ratio, the return customer ratio, and so on. However, how are these goals and metrics actually chosen? Are they just picked at random?

The very first generation of the balanced scorecard method presented only the four aspects and nothing else to help leaders select what should go in those four perspectives. Understandably, this made the process a little too abstract and unfocused and made it hard to justify the choice of whatever metrics for each perspective. Later revisions or modifications of the process would introduce the concept of strategy linkages or a strategy map, and then that of a vision or mission statement.

The latest version of the approach begins with the formulation of a vision. This is what management would like the organization to achieve or become in the future, and would end up directing the rest of the organization’s goals. A strategy map can then be drawn based on this vision, which will contain the various goals that different parts of the organization must strive for in order for the vision to come true. This map will also contain the linkages between these various goals. This process will continue cascading until the level of individual employee goals is aligned with all higher levels, up to the overall vision. This makes for a more coherent, useful performance management method.

Now, web based solutions facilitate the application of this approach by making the information easier to access. All the information can now be entered into a single database, regardless of physical location, as long as there is a connection to the web. This makes the balanced scorecard information more readily available to every branch of an organization, letting people keep track of their own and their colleagues’ performance. This makes it easier for one department to realize that their performance affects others, and thus inspires unity and collaboration. These web based scorecard solutions are effective implementations that any organization could find useful.