The Balanced Business Scorecard as a Management Tool

Any business in today's professional realm just cannot be without a balanced business scorecard. There are a lot of people out there who think that the balanced scorecard is just another tool that has become popular just because of all the hype it receives. This is not true at all. The main reason why the balanced scorecard does get all that hype is that it is indeed an important tool for any organization to have.

The balanced scorecard is one of the premier performance management tools any business can ever use. This tool is very much needed in ensuring the growth and the productivity of the organization as a coherent whole. At the inception of the organization itself, the founders, owners, and stakeholders had surely set corporate goals and objectives that the organization was to achieve with the passing of time. The implementation of the balanced scorecard is a constant reminder of the organization's progress, when placed against these corporate goals and objectives. This is because the balanced scorecard would hold KPIs or key performance indicators. These KPIs, in turn, are quantifiable aspects that are used to measure the performance of the organization, in relation to the goals and objectives once set.

Developing a balanced business scorecard is not as easy as it seems. If only it were easy to develop, businesses would no longer feel lost at one time or another, especially when they check on their progress and performance. This is why it is a must for businesses to know just how to develop a scorecard that is as balanced as it should be.

When it comes to KPIs or key performance indicators, you actually have so many that you can choose from. Because these are so many in number, it is actually easy to assume that using many KPIs for your balanced scorecard is perfectly fine to do. This is actually not the case. In fact, when you use many KPIs, it would be easier for measurement to become clouded because you would have to take into consideration a lot of factors at hand. Thus, it is better to limit the number of KPIs to use on your balanced scorecard. For the most part, it is recommended to use just 5 KPIs, so make sure to choose the most relevant ones in your business.

If you are not too sure about what particular KPIs to use for your balanced scorecard, you can go online and browse through many available templates. Of course, these templates should just serve as a guide. You would still have to develop your own balanced scorecard, picking out the relevant KPIs that you might find from these templates. For discussion's sake, the most common KPIs used can include Product Return Rate, Average Customer Satisfaction Score, Number of Customer Complaints, and so many more. If you would take a look at balanced scorecard templates, you would definitely see these KPIs under the perspective of Customers. And this is just one of the many perspectives you would have to consider when dealing with the balanced business scorecard. The proper implementation of the scorecard will definitely help any business go a long, long way.