Rocky Plain Company provides cable and Internet services in the greater Denver area. There are many competitors that provide similar services. Rocky Plain believes that the key to financial success is to offer a quality service at the lowest cost. Rocky Plain currently spends a significant amount of hours on installation and post-installation support. This is one area that the company has targeted for cost reduction. Rocky Plain's balanced scorecard for 2012 follows.

Required
1. Was Rocky Plain successful in implementing its strategy in 2012? Explain.
2. Do you agree with Rocky Plain's decision to include measures of developing innovative services (research and development costs) in the internal-business-process perspective of the balanced scorecard? Explain briefly.
3. Is there a cause-and-effect linkage between the measures in the internal-business-process perspective and the customer perspective? That is, would you add other measures to the internal-business-process perspective or the customer perspective? Why or why not? Explain briefly.

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Actual Target Objectives Measures Performance Performance Financial Perspective $1,200,000 $400,000 Increase shareholder value Operating-income changes from productivity $260,000 $125,000 Operating-income changes from growth Customer Perspective Positive customer survey responses 70% Increase customer satisfaction 65% Internal-Business-Process Perspective Develop innovative services Research and development costs as a percentage of revenue 12% 15% Increase installation efficiency Installation time per customer 5 hours 4.5 hours Learning-and-Growth Perspective Number of annual training hours per employee Increase employee competence 10 11 Increase leadership skills Number of leadership workshops offered