Английский язык. Практический курс для решения бизнес-задач

Пусенкова Нина

 – The Financial Perspective – includes measures such as operating income, return on capital employed, and economic value added.

There is a logical connection between these four perspectives – learning and growth lead to better business processes, which in turn lead to increased value to the customer, which finally leads to improved financial performance. Each perspective of the balanced scorecard includes objectives, measures of those objectives, target values of those measures, and initiatives that are aimed at meeting the objectives.

Double-Loop Feedback

In traditional industrial activity,

«quality control» and «zero defects» were the watchwords. In order to shield the customer from receiving poor quality products, aggressive efforts were focused on inspection and testing at the end of the production line. The problem with this approach is that the true causes of defects are never identified, and there are always inefficiencies due to the rejection of defects. Variation is created at every step in a production process, and the causes of variation need to be identified and fixed. If this can be done, then there is a way to reduce the defects and improve product quality indefinitely. To establish such a process all business processes should be part of a system with feedback loops. The feedback data should be examined by managers to determine the causes of variation, what are the processes with significant problems, and then they can focus on fixing that subset of processes.

The BSC incorporates feedback around internal business process outputs, as in TQM, but also adds a feedback loop around the outcomes of business strategies. This creates a «double-loop feedback» process in the balanced scorecard.

Why Do Executives Love Balanced Scorecard?

The BSC does its magic by focusing the organization on the issues which the leadership team decides are key to its success. It does this through the process of implementing the scorecard – so a human element is the key.

There are other benefits – stronger communication (through the cascading and measurement tracking processes), warning of opportunities ahead (from watching key performance indicators), less «information overload» (from focusing on the most important measures), and greater alignment (from agreement on key objectives).

A sheet of paper with numbers on it can be created by one person and implemented by sheer force of authority. However, the point of a BSC is to:

– Align all members of an organization around common goals and strategies

– Link initiatives to the strategy, making prioritization easier

– Provide feedback to people on key issues – areas where they can have an impact

– Be an essential decision-making tool for everyone in the organization

The best process is to first create a clear business model, and then to select measurements based on that model. This increases commitment, brings more agreement on the direction of the organization, builds accountability to company goals, and increases the speed of change. The first part of the process is creating a model for the scorecard. First, review and clarify strategies. The next step is agreeing on what capabilities are needed within the company to actually pursue the strategy. The final part is creating the actual model. This is where you set up a simple diagram that reflects how you think the business works.

Larger organizations usually adopt a top-down approach: a balanced scorecard is first installed at the top, where commitment is most vital to success. It is then cascaded throughout the organization, to align departments’ goals with the overall company goals. For single stores or small companies, this step might be unnecessary.

The final step is getting people to use the scorecard as a routine matter – making it part of the culture. This is where most management initiatives go wrong, leading to this sage advice: If you want something to be a useful tool, make it the only initiative you try this quarter, give it your full attention, and don’t take any shortcuts. Otherwise, an initiative becomes a fad and eventually appears in the Dilbert cartoons.

Once created, the scorecard should become a part of your business’ daily life; it should be embedded into a company’s operations as a standard decision-making tool. The BSC leverages common sense into a substantial competitive advantage.

Source: www.quickmba.com, www.balancedscorecard.org, Paul Arveson, 1998

Happy customers are good, but profitable customers are much better.

The Balanced Scorecard introduced customer metrics into performance management systems. Scorecards feature all manner of wonderful objectives relating to the customer value proposition and customer outcome metrics – for example, market share, account share, acquisition, satisfaction, and retention.

Yet amid all these measures of customer success, some companies lose sight of the ultimate objective: to make a profit from selling products and services. In their zeal to delight customers, these companies actually lose money with them. They become customer-obsessed rather than customer-focused. When the customer says

«jump,» they ask «how high?» They offer additional product features and services, but fail to receive prices that cover the costs for these additional features and services.

How can companies avoid this situation? By adding a metric that summarizes customer profitability.

Consider the situation faced in the 1990s by one of the nation’s largest distributors of medical and surgical supplies. In five years, sales had more than tripled to nearly $3 billion, yet selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenses, thought by many to be a fixed cost, had increased even faster than sales; margins had declined by one percentage point and the company had just incurred its first loss in decades.

The experience of this company is hardly unique. Companies often capture additional business by offering more services. The list is wide-ranging: product or service customization; small order quantities; special packaging; expedited and JIT delivery; substantial pre-sales support, etc. While all of these services create value and loyalty among customers, none of them come for free. For a differentiated customer intimacy strategy to succeed, the value created by the differentiation has to exceed the cost of creating and delivering customized features and services.