Every year a Balanced Scorecard survey is run by Intrafocus and 2GC Active Management. This year has provided some interesting and surprising results. The Balanced Scorecard, created over twenty years ago by Harvard professors Kaplan and Norton, is more than a scorecard, it is a strategic methodology. The basic principle has remained constant since the first definition, that is, for a business to thrive, business objectives and measures have to be considered across all areas of the business. In general, most businesses will concentrate on financial objectives/measures to the exclusion of anything else. The Balanced Scorecard attempts to create a ‘balance’ across four major areas: Financial, Customer, Processes and Capacity. The methodology then creates logical links demonstrating that improvements in the Capacity layer will result in improvements in Financial layer.
This years survey saw an increase in the use of the Balanced Scorecard as a strategic tool reflecting its adoption as a strategic methodology rather than a simple scorecard. This conclusion was further support by numbers of users who said they created objectives/measures across the four major areas (called Perspectives).
A very large proportion of the responders reported that they used the Balanced Scorecard in conjunction with Planning and Budgeting processes. This is very encouraging as it demonstrates clearly that the methodology is being embedded into both internal processes and culture.
It was also noted that, although most Balanced Scorecards are still based on spreadsheets, there has been a significant increase in the use of dedicated software such as QuickScore to manage implementations more effectively.
The 2015 Balanced Scorecard Survey is available on the Intrafocus and 2GC websites.
