The Balanced Scorecard & the Financial Perspective

The purpose of the Session Long Project is to give you the opportunity to explore the applicability of the Module to your own life, work, and place in space and time, and to experiment with the Module to see how the otherwise academically rigorous presentation of a topic may, with more or less work and/or trauma, become "up close and personal". This is done in a number of different ways -- sometimes cumulative papers, sometimes practical hands-on experimentation with a tool of some sort, sometimes reflections on a place of work or life. The common thread is personal application, aimed at demonstrating a cumulative knowledge and understanding of the course's material.

For this course, the Session Long Project will take the form of putting together background from each of the four perspectives for a balanced scorecard approach to an organization or organizational unit with which you are familiar. In the final module, you will have a go at strategy mapping. You're not building a complete balanced scorecard -- that would be far beyond our current scope - but you'll have a chance to see what goes into it and how it gets put together into a coordinated whole. As in the cases, you'll be drawing on your previous course work to help.

The Module 1 assignment has two parts. First, you need to identify an organization to which you have access to at least some information concerning financial data; staffing and human resource systems; marketing and customer relations; information systems; and operations. While most material on the Balanced Scorecard is written from the private, for-profit point of view, it's perfectly possible to use this approach with public or non-profit organizations as well.

For the second part of this assignment, consider the organization's mission and strategy from the perspective of its financial operations (from your work on the case, your previous course work, and your background reading, you should be reasonably clear what such operations are). In this section of the assignment you'll begin to identify objectives and measures relevant to that perspective. If you're unclear on just what objectives and measures are, here is a presentation that describes what they are and how to write them.

SLP Assignment Expectations

When you have thought about it and made your selection, please specify (2pages):

The name of your organization

What this organization does - its mission, vision and overall strategy

The access you have to information about this organization -- remember, you'll need information about its financial performance, marketing, internal operations, strategy, and management systems.

Once you're reasonably clear on what's involved, think about your organization and its finances, and then:

Identify at least three objectives for improving the organization's financial position, and show how they relate to the mission, vision and strategy of the organization.

For each objective, develop at least one meaningful performance measure (metric).

For each objective, identify at least one expected level of performance (target).

For each objective, identify at least one new action or program that needs to be developed to ensure successful implementation of the organization's strategy (initiative).

Balanced Scorecard Analysis Assignment Grading Course: Name Balanced Scorecard Analysis Yours Name Professor's Name University Balanced Scorecard Analysis INTRODUCTION \"Cattaraugus County Rehabilitation Center did an effective job of implementing a balanced scorecard approach in a fashion that reflects their organizational mission and vision.\" I agree to the fact that Cattaraugus County Rehabilitation Center did a very effective job by implementing a balanced scorecard approach, which can be looked forward to for future use also by different profit making or even non-profit making organizations. This approach not only emphasizes on the financial side of the organizations' management but other non-tangible aspects also, like customer-shareholder relationship, customer satisfaction, etc, and this approach helps in the overall growth of the organization and finally makes it achieve its set goals, missions and visions very easily. The Rehabilitation Center was created by a group of parents having children with disabilities. In such a case this rehabilitation center invited other parents with the same problem to share their frustrations which couldn't be well understood by anybody better than the one's already facing the same problem. This approach leads them into incorporation of this center in 1958, which provided help to the children with disabilities, as the member started advocating the disabled children to provide them better future. This institute today serves hundreds of children at thirty-five different sites through Cattaraugus County and surrounding countries in New York State. The Rehabilitation center aims at improving the quality of life of the people with disabilities by providing them comprehensive services which could make them capable of achieving independence which otherwise would have been a distant dream for them to achieve. To cater to the mission set by the institute they had opted to a number of approaches such as Balanced Scorecard Analysis Strategic planning approach, which was not capable of exploring the entire management process of the institute, as it did not cover the non-tangible aspects of the institutes which were important to be considered once the overall growth and development of the institute was being studied. This lead the company to explore another approach called the Balanced Scorecard Approach, this not only utilized the potential of the entire institute but also covered those areas of the institute which were only carrying an abstract entity and were not present for real. As for development measures one needs to consider the following four perspectives: Financial Perspective- It reflected the growth of the institute along with indicating the risks which could be faced by the shareholders in the coming future. So it served as a better means to determine future risks and gave time to make strategies in order to prevent them from happening. Customer Perspective- This strategy is important from the point of view of the customer, as the institute is meant to serve them the best of services and do achieve this goal they need to first understand, as to what the customer really desires out of them. It emphasizes on the values and needs of the customers. Internal Business Processes- Along with the external environment, the internal environment is also to be assessed, in order to make smooth functioning of the institute which would in turn benefit it in achieving the required objective. Also, this approach makes the customer-shareholder relationship stronger as through internal environment doing well in their job of analyzing what's best for the customer, along with serving the interests of the institute would make the relationship flourish many folds. Learning and Growth- Without practicing this function an organization can never grow. As these two factors are necessary for the organizations to deal with different aspects Balanced Scorecard Analysis like, changes in the organization, to promote growth and for any new innovation made by the organization, Balanced Scorecard Basics (25, August, 2015). ANALYSIS The four perspectives which the institute is considering are actual pillars for the organization and are needed to be considered, Financial Perspective- Since the organization aimed on helping the disabled people, financial aspect should not considered much, since their prime focus is not profit maximization but helping the ones who need it. And since funds could be raised from outside the institute they should be kept into check and managed accordingly. Customer Perspective- It should be considered considering the price charged, service offered to the disabled and name of the institute in mind. Also the financial status of the customer whom the organization is dealing with should be kept in mind while treating them and it should be seen that they are offered what they need. Internal Perspective- This is a connection between the overall strategies and improvements taking place inside the organization, which is a cooperative measure ensuring both, customer satisfaction and ease of implementation of objectives by the shareholders and also caters their motif of profit making, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System (Jul-August 2007). Learning and Growth Perspective- More and more exposure to cases like these would enable them to deal with situations like this more efficiently as the knowledge also would increase regarding the techniques which could be best used to make the disabled person more independent, and increase his confidence of handling situations in life. Balanced Scorecard Analysis CONCLUSION In my view, the Balanced Scorecard Approach is a better method to be practiced in order to deal with the changing aspects of today's life. It not only considers the finance related queries but also takes care of the many other internal environment aspects one need to consider while managing an organization. Such as man power management, innovation skills and their development, promoting the different sectors to come out with different innovative ideas which make the brand even more distinct than the other existing brands etc. This overall analysis of an organization deals with the problem of further going through what is left for analysis, Robert S. Kaplan, Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard. REFERENCES Balanced Scorecard Analysis Balanced Scorecard Basics (25, August, 2015). Retrieved Fromhttp://balancedscorecard.org/Resources/About-the-Balanced-Scorecard Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton (Jul-August 2007). Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System. Retrieved From- https://hbr.org/2007/07/using-thebalanced-scorecard-as-a-strategic-management-system Robert S. Kaplan, Conceptual Foundations of the Balanced Scorecard. Retrieved Fromhttp://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/10-074.pdf