Balanced Scorecards have been used by companies of all sizes for well over a decade now. This methodology takes a company from strategy to operational objectives and the metrics and measurements that indicate whether the determined corporate strategy is being accomplished.
There is often, however, a disconnect between establishment of the metrics and the attainment thereof. Management consultants often engage their clients to determine what on organizations strategy should be, and what objectives need to be met to implement the strategy, and then stop there. This is due to them not having the tools necessary to implement the systems to bring the objectives to fruition. Letting others pick up from where strategy definition stops isn’t necessarily bad, as many companies then assign the recommended objectives to VPs, Directors, Managers, etc., to figure out how to make them happen. The problem with this approach can be that there is no unifying way to bring the overall metrics and operations under one unifying dashboard or “operating system”.
For example, if each department implements business processes in support of the objective in a “non-data-generating” way, or they use different workflow or portal technologies to develop these processes, the integration of the resulting data and cross-departmental collaboration becomes far more difficult.
Here are some rules of thumb to both prevent divergence and increase the probability of making your Balanced Scorecard objectives attainable:
- Decide on a platform for all of your collaboration needs. There are numerous platforms out there, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find a better platform than SharePoint when all factors (office integration, cost, ease-of-use, ease-of-configuration, availability of consultants/talent/3-party apps).
- Decide on a platform for workflow. Many enterprise software products come with integrated workflow, however using each of them will create divergence rather than convergence of shared work. A better choice would be ShareVis as it is fully integrated in (written for) Microsoft SharePoint, and is the most flexible and fully-featured workflow tool available.
- Use Excel for your all of your reporting needs. Excel Services on SharePoint can be used to a great extent, however you’ll find you’ll need to grab data from non-SharePoint sites, and do more sophisticated processing in your dashboard than what Excel Services provide.
- Start small, and iteratively increase your workflow capabilities and dashboard data. Remember to focus on the “critical few” metrics that will drive strategy. Those metrics will also drive what workflows to implement, and the data necessary in those workflows that will complete the cycle back into the balanced scorecard.
Its important to know not only how best to climb a mountain (operational efficiency) but also what mountain you’re going to climb (strategic objective). These two concepts need to be unified in order to fulfill your strategy and take your organization to the next level. An approach as outlined in this graphic should hopefully serve to make your BSC/Workflow/Reporting/Dashboard initiatives aligned and unified.
