1. Build a Balanced Scorecard for the unit of the organization for which you work, or have worked. Unless you are in senior management, focus on the unit with which you are most familiar rather than the organization as a whole. Identify the strategic objectives of the entire organization and the secondary objectives for the unit. Develop three specific objectives within each of the four perspectives for the unit. Each objective should have at least one quantified target metric associated with it.

It is essential to understand what metrics are. Be sure to study the lecture material on "More Information on metrics" In this assignment, the specific information needed to calculate each metric should be explained. For each metric state the appropriate target value and the actions that need to be taken to achieve the target. The paper should be no more than 15 pages.

Metrics

Develop three specific objectives within each of the four perspectives for the unit. Each objective should have at least one quantified target metric associated with it.So your table should contain 4 perspectives, each with 3 specific objectives, and a target value of the metric for each objective.

Week 6 Balanced Scorecard Part I - Due Mar 13, 2016 11:59 PM DMBA 620 9047 Effective Financial and Operational Decision Making (2162) Required Reading: http://www.netmba.com/accounting/mgmt/balancedscorecard/ http://www.quickmba.com/accounting/mgmt/balancedscorecard/ This Power Point presentation also explains the balanced scorecard Read the lecture material "More Information on Metrics" posted in this week's module. Assignment (8%): Part I. Create Balanced Scorecard 1. Build a Balanced Scorecard for the unit of the organization for which you work, or have worked. Unless you are in senior management, focus on the unit with which you are most familiar rather than the organization as a whole. Identify the strategic objectives of the entire organization and the secondary objectives for the unit. Develop three specific objectives within each of the four perspectives for the unit. Each objective should have at least one quantified target metric associated with it. It is essential to understand what metrics are. Be sure to study the lecture material on "More Information on metrics" In this assignment, the specific information needed to calculate each metric should be explained. For each metric state the appropriate target value and the actions that need to be taken to achieve the target. The paper should be no more than 15 pages, including the reference list, and be formatted in accordance with the APA guidelines as modified for the MBA program (http://info.umuc.edu/mba/public/MBA-apa.html). Please format your paper in Microsoft Word as a XXX.doc or XXX.rtf file, and place the paper in your assignment folder. Metrics Develop three specific objectives within each of the four perspectives for the unit. Each objective should have at least one quantified target metric associated with it. So your table should contain 4 perspectives, each with 3 specific objectives, and a target value of the metric for each objective. If you would like to see a sample table of metrics, here is one example: Sample Table of Metrics for an Example Business Unit Perspective Financial Current Ratio Long-term Solvency Increase Number of Customers Long-term Debt/Equity Annual rate of Customers Increase Maintaining Transaction Size Average Transaction Size > $600 > 90% Improve Customer Satisfaction Product Improvement Median Score: Customer Survey % R&D Expense to Revenue > 4% Ratio of New to Old Products Ratio of New to Old Products Learning % EBIT/Sales Short-term Solvency Internal Metric Annual Rate of Growth Operating Profit Growth Customer Objective Revenue Growth > 8% Maintain Market Share Employee Training > 24% > 30,000 Employee Turnover Employee Compensation Market Share % Annual Hours of Employee Training Employee Turnover Average Compensation Target Value > 6% > 7% > 2.0 5% $38,000 Running head: Balance Scorecard SWAPNIL PATEL Erickson Living - Balance Scorecard Week 6 Individual Assignment UMUC DMBA 620 2013 Running head: Balance scorecard 2 Running head: Balance Scorecard 1 Table of Contents Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................2 Introduction......................................................................................................................................3 Finance Perspective.........................................................................................................................6 Customer Perspective......................................................................................................................9 Internal Business Process Perspective...........................................................................................12 Innovation, learning and Growth Perspective...............................................................................14 Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................15 Balance Scorecard 2 Executive Summary The Balance Scorecard approach, by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, maps organizations strategic goals and objectives to the organization's financial and non-financial measures (Epstein and Manzoni, 1997). These measures are broken down into four perspectives: Financial perspective, customer perspective, internal business process perspective, and Innovation, Learning, and Growth perspective. Balance scorecard approach can be utilized in small and large organizations. The balance scorecard is a strategic tool for organization for its long term objectives drives through organization's mission statement and vision. Organization I work for is Erickson Living: Retirement Communities. They offer services in assisted living and retirement apartment homes. Their focus is on the middle income retirees who need help during their retirement life. Erickson Living has many communities in different states. Currently Erickson living has 16 campuses in 9 states. The mission statement for the organization is \"to change the way Americans view aging by consistently offering services and resources that make growing older something to look forward to\" (Erickson living, 2013). Erickson living is a community for retirees (where they can live with other seniors and can \"enjoy\") to who can live with other seniors where they can \"enjoy resort-style amenities, unparalleled health and wellness services and an abundance of opportunities to stay active and involved in life in maintenance-free apartment home\" (Erickson living, 2013). I work in the finance corporate division. Our division mission statement is to \"provide effective management, control, and planning of the organization's finances and to provide finance services to all stakeholders and work together to benefit all\" (Erickson finance department, 2013). Organization's objective is not to go after high profits but to look to reduce cost and increase consumer base. Helping the seniors is the main goal and the Erickson Living founder, John Balance scorecard 3 Erickson, believed that because money runs out at some point in life because of unforeseen expenses and need for continuous healthcare, he vowed to never put any seniors out of community if they run out of money and cannot pay their share. Instead, the organization holds a gala to fund those in need each year. All amenities offered are on par with luxurious hotels and service is available 24/7 365 days for apartment maintenance, food, shopping, and many more things. I work for finance division and our main stakeholders are other departments, HR (Human Resources), Dining Services, Quality Management, Operations and Maintenance, Seniors living in community, Sales & Marketing, and Management. Each of these divisions has needs like timely finance reports for management, funding for dining services and operations and maintenance, billing and helping finance seniors for their continuous stay at our community. Introduction Assisted living industry has been on rise and has very favorable growth in its future (Retirement communities, 2013). A recent survey shows that 93% people living in assisted living homes are happy with their life and they \"have an active and engaging day in a safe, independent and social environment\" (Allmon, 2013). The following are our organization objectives for balance scorecard: Perspective Finance Objective Cost savings in dining Metric Actual vs. budget Target The variance services variance should not be more than + or - 5% for Growth in Gross Profit Sales any month Increase by 7% in next 5 years Balance scorecard Customer 4 Customer Service to Number of complaints Reduce complaints Senior council (Rank service between by 8% by end of 1-10, 1 being 2016 dissatisfied and 10 New Markets in being feels like home) New customer New 100 different states by 2018 Acquisition applications each and new assisted living year seniors each year New communities Open 3 opened communities in 5 years between Internal Business Outside polling group 2014-2018 80% employees or consultants to poll should be happy (Bi-monthly employee and motivated to feedback on work area, continue working management, tools and at company. This is Streamline financial technology) Capability Maturity on-going each year CMMI Level 3 in budgeting process Model Integration next 2 years Motivate Finance team Process (CMMI) Balance scorecard 5 Innovation, Learning, New Technology in Number of strategic Each employee and Growth Budget Division skills learned should learn 2 skills over 1 year in MS Excel and be moderate excellent in Cost Budget Department Employee Turnover in Point Turnover rate employee retention Budget department vs. should be overall organizations decreased from 30% to 10% in 2 year by end of 2015 Erickson living management comes together each quarter to talk about the progress the company has made since the last quarter meeting. These discussion from that meeting is flowed down to each Vice President and then to the managers for each department. My budgeting department helps the seniors living in community and other departments in their financial activities. My department helps seniors in the following areas: Help set aside their money for essential needs vs. non-essential needs, help them set the correct meal plans, help them with any activities that requires finances and how they can get those funding from other seniors or the company. Our other function is to help other departments in setting their budgets for upcoming year, analyze at the actual vs. budget amounts, pass invoicing approvals and look at additional funding needs for other departments. Balance scorecard 6 Finance Perspective Our Finance department's top two objectives are Cost savings in dining services and Growth in Gross Profit. Dining services is an amenity that all of Erickson Living communities offer to its residents. Dining services has some full time fast-food style restaurants/dinner dinein and some restaurants for dinner services. The dining services is a big part of budgeting in the organization since the chefs and Vice President of dining services need to be well informed about how many residents would come to eat, how many could potentially bring guests to eat, scheduling full-time and part-time workers, any new silverware or dinner ware needed over time, and any functions or holidays coming up to account for in budgeting. Keeping true to the budget is very hard in dining services because knowing the residents coming to your restaurants is a known variable but the unknown variable is the guests that they could bring, which is the true profit since the guest pays for every part of the meal whereas the residents pays $8 for the whole meal. The measure used to reduce the cost is using the actual vs. budgeted variance. Our department works with the dining services staff and gathers the information for inventory, dinnerware, silverware, napkins, table cloths, and cooking utensils. Our budget team will meet on last Friday of each month to go over the variance. The variance should not be more than + or - 5% because we need to take into account the residents guests. The variance also includes the luncheons done by the marketing team to invite more seniors to sign up for apartments. The variance report shows how well dining department understands the income and expenses and what part of the dining services take up the expenses. The variance report also helps evaluate the managers and how well they work within the budget. Following table represents the actual vs. budget for dining services for Quarter 1: Erickson Living Budget vs. Actual Balance scorecard 7 Line item Silverware Budget Actual Variance $ (Budget - Actual) Variance % Dinnerware Dishes Budget Actual Variance $ (Budget - Actual) Variance % Full time and part time employee labor cost Budget Actual Variance $ (Budget - Actual) Variance % Residents' Guests Budget Actual Variance $ (Budget - Actual) Variance % Functions/Holidays Budget Actual Variance $ (Budget - Actual) Variance % Quarter 1 $200,000 $202,000 ($2,000) -1.00% $450,000 $455,000 ($5,000) -1.11% $654,768 $649,145 $5,623 0.86% $50,000 $43,000 $7,000 14.00% $148,764 $156,453 ($7,689) -5.17% Table 1: Erickson Living Budget vs. Actual (Financial Department, 2013) Analyzing the table above, the main variance that stands out is the over budgeted residents' guests cost. Our department gathered information from the dining services and we budgeted $50,000 but the dining services came well short of this amount. For this specific example, our manager and I had met with the dining services managers and we went over the information provided to us before the start of the quarter and went over the cost provided to us and the assumptions they used to come up with the amount. Once we found that the difference Balance scorecard 8 came from parties canceled by residents after that dining services took over the matter. At the end of each month this exercise is done over the costs. A report is then filed explaining the variance and the steps to be taken (if the variance is less than or greater than 5%) by the 3rd of the following month and sent to management for review. Our department's other objective is to increase the gross profit. Our target is to increase the gross profit 7% over next 5 years from current amount. To increase gross profit, we look to sales team since we measure the sales made by them as performance measure. The sales includes the residents payment made as the upfront fee to buy the apartment and initial fees to set-up the accounts and first month's rent for utilities, yearly rent for healthcare services, emergency services, meal plans, and a registered nurse by their side. Talking with the sales and marketing team, each month, we set up a budget needed to secure all these services, our department talks with HR to hire more people based on the projected sales made. This is a critical piece of information because if the sales are not accurately predicted then there could be over staffing issues which end up costing the company a lot more money in labor, fringe, and benefits. Our department also discusses with finance team the cost reductions that need to be made across the organizations if management believes the sales team will not bring in the number of residents they are expecting. The cost reduction in COGS helps increase the gross profit to management's target. Our sales figure includes the new projected residents who would enter the new communities to live. The balance scorecard \"sets priorities by identifying, rationalizing, and aligning initiatives. The executives can then focus their attention, and front line workers can then understand the value of their work and how it relates to the organization's strategic objectives\" and the four financial and non-financial perspective help executives in decision making because Balance scorecard 9 it allows for accountability on VPs and managers of different divisions (Kocaklh & Austill, 2007). Customer Perspective Under customer perspective, our organization has 2 main objectives, customer service to senior council and new markets in different states by 2018 and new assisted living seniors each year. We support senior council in helping them gather funds and budgeting appropriately for various functions they have going on throughout the year. This is an important aspect to the organization since it is hard for seniors to gather funds from everyone as the only income they have is in form of some savings they might have from their life, social security checks from federal government, and maybe some investments they might have made. Because of these constraints, many seniors do not give money and if they do, it is very little so organization has to provide monetary support to them. The customer service we provide is when we help seniors allocate money for different projects throughout the community ranging from trips to local museums, fairs, out of state site seeing, gardening inside community, growing vegetations, and many more. The senior council is made of 10 residents picked out by the residents from the community. We also process their monthly billing charges they incur from bed side nurse support, physical therapist, and monthly billing for utilities used. We sometimes receive complaints regarding their monthly billing and some complaints based on the allocation of funding for different projects. We have a town hall meeting every 3 months to answer all the questions residents might have. Our main focus is to make residents feel at home and not to give them chance to have complaints since this has become their home after they moved in. The complaints range from not correct billing to not correct allocation to some projects. We receive on average about 20 complaints every 3 months (which is 80 complaints per year) but some of Balance scorecard 10 them (The ones related to budgeted money to projects) are repeated since it takes time to resolve them as it is necessary to gather information from all residents who may not have attended the meeting. Our target is to reduce the complaints by 8% by the end of 2016 (Field, 2013). At the end of each meeting we give out customer satisfaction survey to each resident attending the meeting and we would gather the papers. We would analyze the survey and meet with the senior council within 1 week after the meeting and discuss the main issues that needed to be addresses first such as, better service from nurses, gather better intelligence on which projects needed to be funded, and which residents kept having problems on their monthly bills. Once we reached resolution on the issues, we would take it off of the action items list. The managers and senior councilors would also discuss the upcoming projects that residents would like to add and if we have enough funding to start a new project. Since the funding it set at the beginning of every year at $15,000, to increase the limit finance VP and budget division manager would need to meet with executives to see if the organizations could allow for additional funding. The other objective for customer perspective is to open new communities in different states by 2018 and sign on new assisted living seniors each year. Our measurement for each objective is new customer acquisition application and new communities opened. Also, our target for each is need 100 applications per year and we need to open 3 communities between 2017 and 2023. In each objective, sales & marketing team and business development team are an important part since sales & marketing team are the first people who would bring in the business and business development team helps gather intelligence on where to open new communities, where would people move into a community, is there enough land to build new community near shopping centers so residents do not have to travel much, and if the local or state government will help them for any tax incentives. To sign up new seniors to our community, sales & Balance scorecard 11 marketing team will reach out to local seniors thru third-party agency who gather this information. Once they reach out to the seniors, sales & marketing team need our help in knowing how much budget they have available to spend on new seniors to inform them our organization and once they want to visit our campus, what types of luncheon to organize, our department needs to know in advance how many seniors are planned to be brought on board to budget money appropriately. Our team and sales & marketing team work together during the seniors visit to explain them what options they have, how to sell their home, what to do with their belongings, and various things they will need to take care of once they decide to move in. Sales & marketing team receive compensation for every 10 applicants sign on since it is hard to trust an outsider with their everyday life but this is our organization's mission to inform and help American seniors of the help they have available and changing the way they think of retirement. Budget department works alongside business development team and financing department to budget and finance new land acquisition, building the community, budgeting for hiring labor, resources, computers, budget for nurses and doctors on-site and budget for emergency systems. All these factors are taken into consideration looking at the location of the community, the types of people available for hire and many more factors. Of the 3 new communities, we plan on opening 1 in Maryland 2 out of state, possibly 1 in Ohio and 1 in Alabama (Finance Department, 2013). We understand the increasing competition in assisted living industry which is mix of healthcare and housing and acquiring land well in advance is important as it requires permits from government and the most important part is the seniors should be signed on and the apartments have to be sold well in advance to make this community project work. Also, knowing the residents marital status is important since it allows us t budget the right types of rooms as the couples would need bigger rooms and single residents need smaller rooms so Balance scorecard 12 surveying the local seniors well in advance allows us to build correct apartments and allocate architectural budget into planning. Internal Business Process Perspective Internal business process perspective looks at the organizations' main business processes and how to improve them and set timeline on when they should be achieved. Our department's goals are to motivate the budget department team. Employees need to be happy when they work to give their best performance towards the company and if the employee does not have necessary tools, work area or the team lead does not provide critical feedback to improve their work then it will drag the department and in turn the company downward. We measure the motivation of budget team by bringing in third-party polling group or consultants from out-side since employees are less likely to be very open to the HR or manager. We provide a bi-monthly survey to employees to let them fill out the questionnaire and submit it back to the third-party polling group, who will keep the questionnaire confidential and speak directly with HR on what things the HR can plan depending on the budget like off-site get together, more training, or upgrading the technology. HR will meet with the manager and discuss the findings from the third-party group and understand when and if they all should be addressed. HR should implement to changes needed within 2 months. Improving the team's confidence in the company helps retain the employees and invest their knowledge in the company to improve the company's image. Another goal for our department is to streamline financial budgeting process as it relates to following procedures underlined, provide correct training to employees, plan projects correctly to improve budgeting, and mitigate risks. Our company is a CMMI level 2 company and we have a quality management department which performs audits to make sure all of our departments adhere to the requirements. Our budgeting department needed improvement in Balance scorecard 13 process following and our management believes that following correct processes cuts costs, reduces extra work, and helps everyone involved get information faster and easier. Our target is to improve to CMMI level 3 in next 2 years, which is an achievable target since we only need to improve our processes and add in layers where the processes are not being followed. CMMI level 3 requires improvement in risk management, organizations training, integrating project management, organization process focus, organizations process definition, and decision analysis and resolution (CMMI institute, 2013). Budget department manager and quality management office will meet with budget department employees and show the changes that need to take place and where the continuous improvement need to happen. Quality management office will conduct internal audits every 3 months in each department to confirm that each department is following processes and rate them out 10, where 1 being the not adhering to processes and 10 being adhering to all processes as per CMMI requirement. We have set dead line of 2 years, at the end of 2015, to allow our budgeting department to adhere to all CMMI level requirements and each time quality management office does their inspection, the department should not get below 8 at the end of first year and they should get 10 out of 10 at the end of 2nd year. By the end of 2018, our goal is to have the whole finance department as CMMI level 3 certified and by 2020 the whole company. Innovation, learning and Growth Perspective Each company should be growing in terms of its internal practices, upgrading its technology and continuous improvements over the whole organization. Our top goals for improvements are in upgrading to new technology and retention of budget division employees. We need to have continuous upgrades over time to allow friendly technology for users which Balance scorecard 14 allows us to get the correct information from the technology. Our measure for the upgrade in technology will be the number of strategic skills learned by each employee. We are investing in a new budgeting software, and Cost Point, which allows better budgeting and projections to reduce manual entry. The more the manual entry, the more the data could have errors so reducing the manual efforts should help us achieve better forecast for budgets. We also use many functions of excel to provide reports for management and having employees who know the short-cut to excel formulas makes life a lot easier and the employees can provide the data faster. We are hoping to have each employee learn 2 skills in 1 year in excel and be moderate-excellent in Cost Point, once it is installed. Learning the new skills will help the company and also help the employee in their career. Division manager will work in hand-in-hand with team leads and will send a batch of employees every 3 months for learning new tools in Excel and Cost Point and this batch will undergo off-site training for 1 week (Field, 2013). By the end of the year 2014 each employee in budgeting division should be fully trained. Our next goal is to retain budgeting department employees. We have noticed that many employees are leaving the company since last 1 year. Our manager is using the Employee Turnover in budget department vs. overall organization and our target turnover rate should be decreased from 30% to 10% in 2 year by end of 2015 (Field, 2013). Our initiative to meet this target is by HR meeting with the budget department employees and find out their needs for the position and what can the company do to make their position more in line with their career and what the employee can do to help the company. HR will meet with the Finance VP and budget division manager bi-monthly to go over the list of employees who resigned or got fired. If the employee resigned then the manager should find the reason why they resigned and the manager should talk with HR to fix the reasons why the employee left within 2 months so other Balance scorecard 15 employees do not leave and also speak to other employees to see if the change is necessary. If the employee was fired because of not good fit for position then HR and Managers should look over the requirements for the position and make changes to realign them to the position. Manager should talk to other department managers and see what they are doing to keep the employees happy and to keep their employee turnover low. Our organization's turnover rate is at 12% per year while the budgeting department turnover rate for employees is at 30%. HR and Managers should understand that the changes need to happen fast before any more employees are gone. Conclusion Balances scorecard should be aligned to the organization's goals and mission and it requires all departments and people to work together to achieve the goal. The objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time constrained (S.M.A.R.T.). The goals should then be translated into measurements so management can score it against something otherwise no one would know how well the objectives has been achieved. To get everyone into organization goals needs balance from financial and non-financial aspects, which is what balance scorecard does. It helps monitor and measure the progress the organization or department is making. An important part of balance scorecard is to follow up and evaluate the performance measures because in a busy work schedule, it is up to the managers to adhere to the set performance and to achieve positive results in time given. Erickson Living is a growing company and having balance scorecard with S.M.A.R.T. objectives will help them reduces problems, get better performance from everyone, open new communities with reduced cost, and provide better support for the residents. Balance scorecard 16 Reference Allmon, J. (July 24, 2013). National Poll Finds Seniors in Assisted Living Feel Overwhelmingly Balance scorecard 17 Satisfied and Safe in Their Community. Retrieved from http://www.businesswire.comews/home/20130724006009/en on 10/17/2013 CMMI Institute. (2013). Retrieved from http://cmmiinstitute.com/on 10/18/2013. Epstein, M. J., & Manzoni, J. (1997). The balanced scorecard and tableau de bord: Translating strategy into action. Management Accounting, 79(2), 28-36. Erickson Living. (2013). About Erickson Living. Retrieved from http://www.ericksonliving.com/about-us/about-elm.asp on 10/16/2013. Erickson finance department. Erickson Living. (2013). Retrieved from Employee handbook. Field, J. (2013, October 16). Personal interview. Kocaklh, M. C., & Austill, A. (2007). Balanced Scorecard Application in the Health Care Industry: A Case Study. Journal Of Health Care Finance, 34(1), 72-99. Retirement communities. (2013). Retrieved from http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/8/prweb10993773.htm on 10/17/2013. Balanced Scorecard March 12, 2014 Table of Contents Executive Summary .......................................................................................... Financial Perspectives.........................................................................................4 Customer Perspectives........................................................................................5 Internal Business Process Perspectives.....................................................................6 Learning Perspectives......................................................................................... Conclusion......................................................................................................8 Executive Summary Xerox is the world's leader for business process and document management. The company technologies, expertise and services enable firms to operate more efficiently and effectively. Document technology and services has been a key function at Xerox for more than half a century (Xerox, 2014). Growing up - knew the company as a printer company but after started working for the company, - realized that they did more than just make printers and copy machines. Overtime Xerox has become the largest worldwide diversified business process outsourcing company with focused offerings in education, transportation, communication, healthcare, government, financial services, manufacturing, consumer goods and retail (Xerox, 2014). Xerox is a strong company that values sustainability. Sustainability is no longer viewed as a cost of doing business, but as a way of doing business. The company's responsibility to the environment focuses on four areas where they can have the most impact. Sustainability areas are reducing energy use, preserving biodiversity, preserving clean air and waters, and preventing and managing waster (Xerox, 2014). Xerox in their IT Business Services. This scorecard will help in preparing Xerox IT Business Services Department in financial, customer, internal, and learning perspective. The goal is to improve services in this department so the company can be more profitable. Introduction Xerox Global IT Business Services Is focuses on reducing cost, optimizing availability and achieving measurable results for clients (Xerox, 2014). Most companies do not want to take ownership of their IT services so they prefer to outsource the service to another company. This is where Xerox comes in for other companies to make sure they are not worried about their IT Services. Below is our department objective for balance scorecard Balance Scorecard Perspective Objective Metric Target Value Financial Revenue Growth Operating Profit Growth Short-term Solvency Long-term Solvency Annual Rate of Growth % EBIT/Sales Current Ratio Long-term Debt/Equity Customer Increase Number of Customers Maintaining Transaction Size Improve Customer Satisfaction Annual rate of Customers Increase Average Transaction Size Median Score: Customer Survey Internal Product Improvement Ratio of New to Old Products Maintain Market Share % R&D Expense to Revenue Ratio of New to Old Products Market Share % Learning Employee Training Employee Turnover Employee Compensation Annual Hrs of Employee Training > 35,000 Employee Turnover $41,000 Financial Perspective > 10% > 8% > 4.0 7% > $2,000 > 95% > 6% > 5% > 24% Doing this Scorecard for the firm can be challenging because - do not have information of how the finance department views such numbers when they meet. Meetings are every two weeks to ensure they are meeting goal. The financial annual growth rate variance should not be more or less than 10%. This variance is based on how the firms we manage grow as well with adding new employees and number of computers in their environment that need to be managed. Objective Growth Specific measure The revenue growth for the IT Business department has been slow and even recently the company had to put some high earning employees on a one week furlough in order to balance growth, return on equity, and cost. The revenue growth rate gas been reducing by so the department needs to working on getting more IT contracts to build revenue by 10%. Team will meet every two weeks to make sure Profitability measures are being met and on track. New clients are needed to ensure profitability and also old clients need to be managed so they do not close their contracts. Communication with the finance, IT and sales team need to be clear to ensure that operation profit is increased by 8% over the next 5 years. Customer Perspective In the IT world, customers have to be happy at all times. There is no room for mistakes. The IT department has to ensure that clients that have outsourced their IT services to Xerox are at peace and know that their services will not fail. For example, Xerox has to be a fast responder for any client that has network problems because their customers need services. Recently, this department has not been viewed with a lot of positive results from customers which affects targeted customers. Objective New Products -Transaction Size Specific Measure The goal is to increase the number of customers based on new services offered matching customer needs by 7% over the next three years. It is a requirement for productions control and internal operations to ensure that there are quarterly meetings. Market research will be conducted frequently in order to ensure 10 requisitions on an annual basis. Transaction size for each customers should not be more than $2000 per unit of any services which is taking into account internal resources and Customer partnerships employee training. The goal is to be a stronger partner with customers so as the company grows, the customer knows that their services are Improve Satisfaction growing. This area can make or break the firm. Customer satisfaction survey need to be at a median score of 90% or greater. This is based on the department's response time to customers during IT issues. Complaints need to be reduct by 7% in the next 3 years. This initiative can be achieved with quarterly meets to firms to talk about their satisfaction about how services have been delivered. Internal Process Perspective In this area for my department, our goal is to focus on processes that are most critical for satisfying customers and ensuring that shareholders are happy. Products and services improvement is what customers are always looking for and based on revenue the % of R&D expense to revenue should be greater than 6% in the next three years. The different teams like budget team need to be motivated. Rate of new and old products need to be greater than 5% and market share needs to be greater than 24% over the next five years. Learning and Growth Perspective Our department struggles with a high employee turnover rate. The issue is when an employee feels they have acquired the skills they need for a higher position, the move to a different company. The employee training needs to be greater than 35,000 hours annually for the department. There needs to be strong focus in training new employees to ensure they are service clients efficiently to improve the internal perspective. The turnover rates should be decreased from 40% to 20% in the next two years. This is the aspect of ensuring HR has the correct solutions to monitor turnover rate and conducting proper interviews to get feedback from employees in reference to what will prevent them from leaving the firm. In the IT department, average compensation needs to be greater than $41,000 for positions that require a minimum of one year experience. The company needs to conduct regular surveys to find out what their competitors pay employees in the same function and then add about a percentage of that amount to ensure an employee does not take skills acquired and go work for a competitor. Conclusion The goal of this balance scorecard is to ensure that the company achieves sustainable and measureable results overtime. This balance scorecard is challenging and one had to understand the pitfalls in order to avoid a scorecard that is not effective. This scorecard will help the Xerox IT department balance revenue, customers, employees, and internal business processes. Reference Xerox (2014). About Xerox. Retrieved from http://www.xerox.com/about-xerox/enus.html DMBA620 Balance Scorecard Week 6 Individual Assignment Ronnell Legget Build a Balanced Scorecard for the unit of the organization for which you work, or have worked. Unless you are in senior management, focus on the unit with which you are most familiar rather than the organization as a whole. Identify the strategic objectives of the entire organization and the secondary objectives for the unit. Develop three specific objectives within each of the four perspectives for the unit. Each objective should have at least one quantified target metric associated with it. Table of Contents Executive Summary .......................................................................................... Introduction ................................................................................................ Financial Perspectives......................................................................................... Customer Perspectives........................................................................................ Internal Business Process Perspectives..................................................................... Learning and Growth Perspectives........................................................................ Conclusion...................................................................................................... Executive Summary Introduction Financial Perspectives Customer Perspectives Internal Business Process Perspectives Learning and Growth Perspectives Conclusion Reference Page