Balanced Scorecard Spreadsheet – Screenshots

Why Use a Balanced Scorecard Spreadsheet?

If you really want your company to grow then you have to be sure your Strategy is aligned with your business processes and operations. Too many companies fall into the trap of measuring results after the event, that is, measuring things that they cannot influence. They also only measure financial results, which in itself is a good thing to do, but not by itself. Finally, they don’t ‘balance’ measures across the whole business. The Balanced Scorecard forces you to think about measurement in a different way. It does three things well:

1. It looks at metrics across Financial, Customer, Internal Process and Learning & Growth perspectives and balances the scores

2. It forces you to look at your Strategy first and only then look at metrics, those metrics that will influence and support your strategy

3. It causes you to think about metrics you can influence, the leading metrics (if you do this, it will result in that)

Where to Start?

Don’t start by selecting a set of existing measures and trying to force fit them into the four Balanced Scorecard perspectives! If you already have a set of metrics then leave them alone, they are being monitored (they may or may not be useful, but that is a different subject). The key to a good Balanced Scorecard implementation is to start with something that you want to achieve in your business; a Strategic Objective. As time goes by you will add more strategic objectives and categorise them into the balanced scorecard perspectives; Financial, Customer, Internal, Learning and Growth. You will then be in a position to create a Strategy Map for your business. For more information on strategy maps, there is an Intrafocus guide in the Documents section of this website.

For now, start small, define no more than three strategic objectives, for each of the strategic objectives define no more than three metrics. These will become your Key Performance Indicators. What is a Key Performance Indicator? The clue is in the title: Key. Be sure to think hard about the quality of your metrics. Of the three metrics, make sure at least one is a leading metric, something you can change in-flight and will make a difference. For more on lead and lag metrics, you will find an Intrafocus guide in the Documents section of this website.

What to do next?

A great place to start is with a Balanced Scorecard Spreadsheet. Most businesses rely on spreadsheets for many of their administrative tasks and this should not be an exception. Spreadsheets are easy to use and very flexible. To kick-start your activity, use the Intrafocus Balanced Scorecard Spreadsheet. You will soon find that creating and updating the Balanced Scorecard Spreadsheet is easy and will help you drive your business strategy. Once you have mastered the basics you will want to move on to an application that allows you to quickly and easily share your information in the form of dashboards and reports. At that time you should consider a web-based tool like Spider Impact. What is the difference between the two? Nothing in terms of functionality, however, QuickScore uses the terminology recognised by the Balanced Scorecard Institute and Scoreboard uses a more generic performance management language.