Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life:

The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard

Framework

White Paper

By: Charles Bloomfield

Insightformation, Inc.
Published: May 2002
For the latest information, please see http://www.microsoft.com/business/bi/

Abstract

This paper describes the Microsoft® approach to developing and implementing a Balanced
Scorecard for enterprise performance management. It presents basic information on the Balanced
Scorecard performance management methodology, and identifies key business issues that must
be addressed in developing and deploying a balanced scorecard. The paper then presents the
Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework (BSCF)—a comprehensive set of techniques, tools, and
best practices to speed scorecard implementation using toolsets with which organizations are
familiar.

An extensive body of research and literature describing the Balanced Scorecard exists. That body
of knowledge is constantly being expanded by The Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, Balanced
Scorecard Institute, various consulting organizations, software companies, and client
organizations. This paper cannot comprehensively cover such a complex topic or reflect accurately
many of the nuances of scorecard development and implementation. Instead, it presents a basic
conceptual overview of the Balanced Scorecard. Interested readers are encouraged to use the
bibliography presented at the end of this paper as a guide to more detailed information.
Contents

Executive Summary...........................................................................................1

Introduction........................................................................................................2

About the Balanced Scorecard..........................................................................3

Background and History.................................................................................3
Empowering the Knowledge Worker..............................................................4
Elements of the Balanced Scorecard.............................................................4
Critical Success Factors for BSC Development.............................................8
Common Pitfalls.............................................................................................9
Automating the Balanced Scorecard............................................................10

The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework..............................................12

Facets of the Framework..............................................................................12

Conclusion.......................................................................................................22
Selected Bibliography...................................................................................23
Useful Web Sites..........................................................................................23
Executive Summary
Traditional performance measures are insufficient to gauge performance and
guide organizations in today’s rapidly changing, complex economic
landscape. Organizations need to link performance measurement to strategy,
and must measure performance in ways that both promote positive future
results and reflect past performance.
The Balanced Scorecard has developed over the last eleven years as a
powerful way to implement strategy and continuously monitor strategic
performance. Creating a strategy focused organization (the phrase coined by
the founders of the Balanced Scorecard methodology) is a significant,
challenging culture change for many organizations. Success in achieving this
change requires:
 Consistent executive support and involvement.
 Education, communication, and visibility of the strategy and
measurements of its effectiveness throughout the organization.
 Constant feedback loops so that strategy is an every-day
consideration.
 Tools to enable non-technical users to understand the key drivers of
the measures.
 Translation of the strategy to operational terms so that alignment to
strategy and implementation of it occur at all levels of an organization.
Organizations that have successfully implemented the Balanced Scorecard
have achieved remarkable transformations in their financial performance, in
many cases vaulting to the top ranks in their industry groups.
Many aspects of Balanced Scorecard development and deployment depend
on effective use of technology to be successful. Numerous software packages
have been developed to help automate the Balanced Scorecard, but it is very
difficult to deliver the needed capabilities in a single software package.
Therefore, the Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework has been developed
to allow organizations to:
 Develop and deploy a scorecard economically using an existing
infrastructure.
 Manage and display the data and knowledge pertinent to Balanced
Scorecards.
 Facilitate analysis of measures so that prompt corrective action can
take place.
The framework provides a comprehensive, flexible, cost-effective way to
deploy the Balanced Scorecard and deliver superior returns on people,
processes, customers, and technologies.
Introduction
How do we communicate strategy through a complex, multi-faceted,
decentralized global organization? How do we align our organization and
minimize superfluous activities so that we’re all working efficiently to the same
ends? How do we measure the effectiveness of our strategy and its
implementation? How do we promote a culture of agility to respond to the
rapidly changing business climate we face?
As business leaders wrestle with these questions each day, they confront the
reality that, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” In other words,
effective performance management requires accurate performance
measurement.
Leaders also understand that performance measurement itself is not enough.
The value of measurement is that it identifies where action should be taken.
So, effective performance measurement systems must be able to:
 Accurately reflect a business situation.
 Guide employees to take the right actions in situations where action is
required.
 Gauge the effectiveness of those actions.
A performance measurement system, then, is a closed loop system that
embodies situational analysis of information, corrective actions, and result
evaluation.
The Balanced Scorecard is a proven performance measurement system. It is
a comprehensive strategic performance management system and
methodology. It is a framework for defining, refining and communicating
strategy, for translating strategy to operational terms, and for measuring the
effectiveness of strategy implementation.
This paper briefly describes the history, evolution, and key elements of the
Balanced Scorecard. It then identifies the critical success factors for a
Balanced Scorecard implementation. Finally, it presents the Microsoft
Balanced Scorecard Framework (BSCF) as a way to leverage a corporation’s
existing investments and capabilities to develop and deploy a scorecard in a
timely, cost-effective, scalable, manageable, and reliable way.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 1
About the Balanced Scorecard

Background and History

The Balanced Scorecard came into being in the late 1980s and early 1990s
as a method to help companies manage their increasingly complex and multi-
faceted business environments.
Corporations then were faced with a number of challenges. Market share in
many industries was vanishing at an alarming rate due to globalization,
liberalization of trade, technology innovation, and domestic quality issues. The
economy was in transition from product-driven to service-driven. The
composition of the workforce was changing, and companies’ workforce needs
were changing.
In spite of all these changes, most businesses still relied on traditional
measures of performance based on a centuries-old accounting model, which
failed to accurately reflect the true health (and future prospects) of an
organization. The need for better information to respond to rapidly changing
market conditions was obvious.
In response to these stresses, and the shortcomings of traditional financial
performance measures, Professor Robert Kaplan and David Norton began to
shape the concept of the Balanced Scorecard during a research project with
12 companies in the late 1980s. They understood the limitations of relying too
much on purely financial measures. They realized that many of the ways to
improve short-term financial performance—such as reducing headcount, and
cutting expenses for training, R&D, marketing, and customer service—might
be detrimental to the future financial health of the company. Conversely,
companies might appear to be doing poorly from a financial perspective
because they were investing in the core capabilities that could drive superior
future performance. Furthermore, they perceived the limitation of reliance on
lagging indicators that convey past performance results, but do not generally
provide a reliable indication of future performance.
Kaplan and Norton also perceived that employees throughout a company
often did not understand how their role related to strategy and financial
measures, leading employees to feel powerless to impact the things that were
being measured.
So, Kaplan and Norton introduced the Balanced Scorecard as a way for
companies to measure and report performance in a way that balanced:
 Multiple perspectives.
 Both leading and lagging indicators.
 Inward-facing measures, like productivity, and also outward-facing
measures, like customer loyalty.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 2
The results of their initial research work with 12 companies were published in
1992 in the Harvard Business Review. Fueled by the positive response to
their initial article and successful consulting work, Kaplan and Norton
continued to develop the concept of the Balanced Scorecard, and published
the book, The Balanced Scorecard in 1996. By that time, the focus of the
Balanced Scorecard had evolved from an emphasis on measures and
reporting, to a methodology for promoting strategic management of the
organization.
As more and more organizations began to embrace and experiment with the
Balanced Scorecard concept, a growing number of tools and techniques
emerged, building on many of the initial concepts. In 2000, Norton and Kaplan
released their second book, The Strategy Focused Organization, which
describes that evolution to a broader concept of enterprise strategic
management.
The Balanced Scorecard is a dynamic methodology, and the understanding of
its potential deepens as Kaplan and Norton proceed with innovative work,
such as developing scorecards for support functions like Human Resources
and Information Technology (IT).

Empowering the Knowledge Worker

Today, companies face the same pressures as 10 years ago, but in a radically
different economic landscape. A new pressure, then barely on the horizon,
has revolutionized the way many businesses must operate—the Internet. The
Internet’s impact is ubiquitous. Among other impacts, it has lowered entry
barriers to many markets; empowered the customer with information and
choice; brought new distribution channels; and spawned entire industry
sectors around activities such as customer relationship management, supply
chain integration, security, and the marketing of information.
The economy has transitioned to what some call the Age of Information—an
economy in which Gross Domestic Product is increasingly dominated by
services. In this service economy, the knowledge worker has replaced the
production assembly line worker as a key factor of production. Knowledge
workers use and process data or information, and in collaboration with other
workers, create knowledge and take action, thereby increasing value.
This value creation process is predominantly intangible in nature. In 1998,
over 75% of the market value of the S&P 500 was captured in intangible
assets. Intangible assets, like any other asset, are factors of production that
should be used to generate value. These intangible factors of production are
used in ways that may be many times removed from revenue generation or
cost reduction; they are frequently indirect contributors to production of a
product or service. For example, IT investments involve extensive use of
knowledge workers and capital, and are a powerful service facilitator with
significant impacts on costs and internal and external customer relationships,

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 3
but rarely are there direct correlations between IT projects and increased
revenue or reduced cost.
So, organizational financial performance is increasingly contingent on
generating returns on intangible factors of production. Therefore,
organizations must apply the knowledge worker’s expertise in ways that serve
a defined corporate strategy to achieve a return on that worker. It follows that
organizations must both empower the knowledge worker and measure their
performance in relation to strategy.
However, organizations are finding it extremely difficult to implement strategy
and measure effectiveness of that strategy. According to Fortune Magazine,
only 10% of the strategies that are effectively created get effectively
implemented. A related finding by Norton and Kaplan is that without the
Balanced Scorecard, 85% of executive teams spend less than 1 hour per
month discussing strategy. So even when companies invest a lot of time in
refining their values, mission statements, and strategic initiatives, those ideas
rarely trickle down to truly transform an organization, and the average
employee does not have a clear understanding how his or her actions
influence ultimate performance measures such as stock price or earnings per
share.
The Balanced Scorecard is a proven way to align an organization with
strategy, harness knowledge workers’ efforts to strategic ends, and ultimately
deliver improved financial returns on employees, technology investments,
business processes, and customer relationships.

Elements of the Balanced Scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard is an approach to describing and communicating

strategies. It is also a way of selecting performance measures that will drive a
unique organizational strategy. Dr. Norton describes the Balanced Scorecard
as follows:
“A balanced scorecard is a system of linked objectives,
measures, targets and initiatives which collectively describe
the strategy of an organization and how the strategy can be
achieved. It can take something as complicated and
frequently nebulous as strategy and translate it into
something that is specific and can be understood.”
Perspectives
Kaplan and Norton’s Balanced Scorecard describes strategy and performance
management from multiple perspectives. The classic Balanced Scorecard has
four perspectives:

Perspective Key Question

Financial To succeed financially, how should we appear to our

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 4
 stakeholders?
Customer To achieve our vision, how should we appear to our
customers?
Process To satisfy our customers and shareholders, at what business
processes must we excel?
Learning and Growth To achieve our vision, how will we sustain our ability to change
and improve?

Each perspective can be explained by a key question with which it is

associated. The answers to each key question become the objectives
associated with that perspective, and performance is then judged by the
progress to achieving these objectives. There is an explicit causal relationship
between the perspectives: good performance in the Learning and Growth
objectives generally drives improvements in the Internal Business Process
objectives, which should improve the organization in the eyes of the customer,
which ultimately leads to improved financial results.
Though there are four basic perspectives proposed, it is important to
understand that these perspectives reflect a unique organizational strategy.
So the perspectives and key questions should be amended and
supplemented as necessary to capture that strategy. For example, a non-
profit or government organization would not have the same perspectives as a
for-profit corporation.
Objectives and Measures
Objectives are desired outcomes. The progress toward attaining an objective
is gauged by one or more measures. As with perspectives, there are causal
relationships between objectives. In fact, the causal relationship is defined by
dependencies among objectives. So, it is critical to set measurable,
strategically relevant, consistent, time-delineated objectives.
Measures are the indicators of how a business is performing relative to its
strategic objectives. Measures, or metrics, are quantifiable performance
statements. As such, they must be:
 Relevant to the objective and strategy.
 Placed in context of a target to be reached in an identified time frame.
 Capable of being trended.
 Owned by a designated person or group who has the ability to impact
those measures.
An organization is likely to have a variety of types of measures. Some will be
calculated from underlying data. Others will be aggregated index measures
that assign different weights to multiple contributing measures. Some are
frequently measured and others may only be measured on a quarterly or
annual basis.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 5
It is important to balance lagging indicators—which includes most financial
measures—with leading indicators—areas where good performance will lead
to improved results in the future.
It is also important to balance internal measures, such as cost reduction,
injury incident rates, and training programs, with external measures like
market share, supplier performance, and customer satisfaction.
Initiatives
An initiative is a change process or activity designed to achieve one or more
objectives. The initiative is what will move a measure toward its target value.
Initiatives may be large or small in scope. They generally are owned by a
person or group, and are managed like projects.
Strategy Maps, Strategic Themes, and Matrices
Since even a relatively simple scorecard can contain an overwhelming
amount of information, several tools have been developed to help
communicate large, complex quantities of information in simple, easily
understood ways.

Strategy Maps
Mapping a strategy is an important way to evaluate and make visually explicit
an organization’s perspectives, objectives, and measures, and the causal
linkages between them. Organizing objectives in each defined perspective,
and mapping the strategic relationships among them, serves as a way to
evaluate objectives to make sure they are consistent and comprehensive in
delivering the strategy.
The strategy map is a visual way to communicate to different parts of the
organization how they fit into the overall strategy. It facilitates cascading a
balanced scorecard through an organization, because it can be created at
different levels of an organization, and each level’s map can be viewed for
alignment with the overall strategy map.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 6
 Figure 1: Example Strategy Map

Strategic Themes
The strategy map in Figure 1 shows a strategic theme. The strategic theme is
a grouping of similar objectives and their measures across perspectives. It
helps make a complex strategy more understandable by organizing and
categorizing objectives and measures. It also reduces the amount of
information and number of causal linkages that need to be drawn on a
strategy map. A complex organization might have several strategic themes,
with objectives and measures designed to gauge the effectiveness of the
organization in pursuing those themes.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 7
Strategy Matrix
The strategy matrix is another useful visualization and summarization tool. It
displays objectives, measures, targets, and initiatives in one table. The
strategy matrix can point to areas where scorecard elements might be out of
balance. For example, there may be a cluster of initiatives around one
objective, while other objectives have no supporting initiatives. This can be
useful when prioritizing spending for projects. Typically, the strategy matrix will
reflect a strategic theme, so one matrix is prepared for each theme.

  Strategic Theme: Smart, Profitable Expansion

  Objective Measure Target Initiative

% Revenue from stores > 30% year 1 Marketing to new target
Financial

Increase % of revenue opened in last 3 years > 50% year 3 markets

from new stores Avg. # of days to < 180 days year 1 Operations review
breakeven < 130 days year 3 Site selection
Increase sales Revenue per FTE > $ X year 1
Self-service checkout pilot
efficiency > $ Y year 3
> X in first 6 mos.,
Avg. # daily customers > Y in first year, Local marketing/PR campaigns
Customer

> Z by year 3
> X in first 6
Acquire new locations mos.,
# of repeat customers Customer loyalty program
> Y in first year,
> Z by year 3
Avg. $ customer > $ X year 1 Coupon program
purchase > $ Y year 3 In-store promotions & classes
Days lag between
Fact-based site < 90 days year 1 GIS mapping
market selection and
Process

selection < 70 days year 3 National brokerage contract

site acquisition
Project duration, site < 365 days year 1 Standardize design/build
Streamline acquisition to opening < 300 days year 3 processes
development process % stores open on > 93% year 1 Web-based project
schedule > 95% year 2 management
>90% year 1
& Growth

Use business % eligible employees

Learning

>99% year 2 In-house system training

intelligence systems trained
< 200 year 1
Integrated knowledge Corporate digital nervous
# paper forms used < 100 year 2
management system
< 5 year 3
Figure 2: Example Strategy Matrix (for the Strategy Map shown in Figure 1)

Critical Success Factors for BSC Development

Extensive research and evaluation of hundreds of Balanced Scorecard

implementations has been done by the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative (the
consulting organization established by the founders of the Balanced
Scorecard methodology) and various other practitioners. A consistent theme
emerges from this body of knowledge: the Balanced Scorecard is a cultural
change initiative. Successful organizations use the Balanced Scorecard to

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 8
create a culture of continual focus on strategy formulation, measurement, and
revision. They create what Kaplan and Norton call a strategy focused
organization.
The key elements in creating this strategy focused organization are as follows:
1. Mobilize change through executive leadership. Building a strategy
focused organization usually involves significant culture change.
Organizational change is an evolutionary process. Consistent executive
leadership, involvement, active sponsorship, and support are critical to
maintaining momentum through the challenges that organizations
inevitably encounter.
The executive team must be in agreement on strategies and must drive
the scorecard process for it to be successful. Often executives are too
busy to be intimately involved in the process, so a cross-functional
team is formed. This can be successful if:
 The executive team has first participated in facilitated sessions
at which the fundamental mission, vision, and strategic themes
are established.
 The team has the ear of the leadership and can readily escalate
issues to executives for resolution.
 Executives continue to communicate their support for, and
involvement in, the Balanced Scorecard initiative.
2. Make strategy a continual process. A strategic focus is not
maintained if strategy formulation becomes a one-time activity.
Feedback loops are needed to constantly focus attention on and
reevaluate the strategy and the measures. To support strategy
evaluation, tools for reporting and analysis should be deployed to
enable analysis of the factors influencing the measures. The budget
process also is often linked to strategy, and in some cases the
Balanced Scorecard replaces traditional budget formulation as a way to
allocate funds.
3. Make strategy everyone’s job. This is done through strategic
education and awareness and by cascading the scorecard down
through the organization, so that business units, departments—or even
individuals—create their own scorecards. The linkages to strategy are
explicitly defined at all levels. This helps departments and individuals
understand and find new ways to support the strategy of the
organization. It also helps ensure that employees at all levels are being
measured and compensated in ways that support that strategy.
4. Align the organization to the strategy. This involves evaluating
current organizational structures, lines of reporting, and policies and
procedures to ensure that they are consistent with the strategy. It can
include re-alignment of business units or re-defining the roles of

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 9
 different support units to make sure that each part of the organization is
lined up to best support the strategy.
5. Translate the strategy into operational terms. Tools like the strategy
maps, cascaded scorecards, and strategy grids are used to integrate
strategy with the operational tasks that employees perform daily. This
ensures that tasks are done in ways that support the strategies.

Common Pitfalls

When Kaplan and Norton’s second book, The Strategy Focused Organization
was published, the Harvard Business Review hailed the Balanced Scorecard
as one of the most significant contributions to management practice in the last
75 years. However, despite its well-publicized successes, the majority of
organizations that adopt a scorecard fail to reap the rewards they expect. In
researching these disappointments, some common themes stand out:
1. Measures that do not focus on strategy. A common problem is that
an organization will adopt some new non-financial measures, but fail to
align the measures adequately with strategy. According to Dr. Norton,
“The biggest mistake that organizations make is
thinking that the scorecard is just about measures.
Quite often they will develop a list of financial and
non-financial measures and believe they have a
scorecard. This, I believe, is dangerous.”
For example, in one case a bank’s IT department had identified
measures and benchmarks for being a world class IT department.
According to those measures, they had done very well. However, the
measures used by the IT department were not tied in with the overall
business strategy and therefore discouraged the IT department from
meeting the strategic business needs.
2. Failure to communicate and educate. A scorecard is only effective if
it is clearly understood throughout an organization. Frequently,
scorecards will be developed at the executive level, but not
communicated or cascaded down through an organization. Without
effective communication throughout the organization, a balanced
scorecard will not spur lasting change and performance improvement.
3. Measures tied to compensation too soon. It is generally a good idea
to tie compensation to the Balanced Scorecard. However, several
factors suggest it can be a mistake to do that too early in the lifecycle of
the scorecard.
 Rarely is an initial scorecard left unrevised. So, if an
organization ties compensation to measures that are not in fact
driving desired behavior, a powerful motivator has been
instituted that will drive an unwise action.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 10
  Data may be incomplete or inaccurate, so measures may not be
correct. If employees’ paychecks are adversely impacted,
serious morale problems and invalidation of the scorecard
inevitably result.
 It may take time to determine realistic targets, and penalizing
people for failing to achieve an unreachable target will surely
have a negative impact on morale and eventually profits.
4. No accountability. Accountability and high visibility are needed to help
drive change. This means that each measure, objective, data source,
and initiative must have an owner. Without this level of detailed
implementation, a perfectly constructed scorecard will not achieve
success, because nobody will be held accountable for performance.
5. Employees not empowered. While accountability may provide strong
motivation for improving performance, employees must also have the
authority, responsibility and tools necessary to impact relevant
measures. Otherwise they will resist involvement and ownership.
Resources must be made available, and initiatives funded, to achieve
success. Employees are likely to need new information tools to help
them understand the drivers of measures for which they are
responsible so they can take action. These tools can include systems
for analysis and early warning indicators, exception reports and
collaboration.
6. Too many initiatives. Large, decentralized organizations usually find
that crossover and duplication among initiatives can be identified.
Cross-matching scorecard objectives with current and planned
initiatives can be an important way to focus and align a company. This
method will identify cases where objectives are supported
inappropriately. Rather than relying on budgeting for strategic funding,
this process eliminates waste, speeds scorecard implementation, and
helps an organization prioritize their initiatives to better support their
strategy.

Automating the Balanced Scorecard

A successful BSC program relies extensively on data, education, and

communication to promote, monitor, and reinforce behavior modifications—all
processes that can be facilitated easily by information technology.
Automation is Essential
Automation is essential in order to manage the vast amount of information
related to a company’s mission and vision, strategic goals, objectives,
perspectives, measures, causal relationships, and initiatives. The alternative
is a manual process, which significantly increases the effort and cost of
scorecard development and sets back progress in the early stages of the BSC
development, when momentum is critical.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 11
Automation can foster quicker culture change, both during development and in
the ongoing use of the BSC. If the software used is intuitive and can be
deployed through an organization readily, it can bring visibility to the BSC
process, ease a cultural transition, and enable participation by a wider
audience.
Approaches to Automation
A number of software development companies have sought to develop an
automated solution and capitalize on the success of the Balanced Scorecard.
Various approaches to BSC automation exist, depending on the orientation of
the software company:
Proprietary business intelligence (BI) products. One class of scorecard
automation software has formed around proprietary BI software products. BI
software is designed to support an organization’s reporting and analysis
needs. Naturally, a BI software vendor will see the BSC as an extension of BI,
and so will develop it as an add-on to their product line. While these packages
can meet some of the analytical needs that support a balanced scorecard,
they tend to have several limitations:
 They can lead an organization to focus on measures derived from
available data rather than strategic objectives.
 They do not generally provide needed capabilities with regard to
strategy communication and managing non-numeric information like
reasons for selecting a specific measure.
 They often have per-seat license costs that may be appropriate for a
smaller number of advanced analytical users but can be cost-
prohibitive for the widespread deployment that is needed to drive
effective strategy execution.

ERP-centric applications. Another class of BSC software is designed by

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software companies to interface with
their transactional systems and to try to combat the common perception that
their reporting capabilities are unduly limited. These ERP-centric applications
tend to emphasize use of the ERP system’s data and may not be as well
suited for integrating external data. Due to a heavy database orientation, they
generally do not provide ways to manage the unstructured content that is key
to educating and communicating with a large employee population. They also
usually have per-user costs that can discourage broad use.
BSC-specific applications. The BSC-specific applications generally offer a
good presentation layer, but may be limited in their ability to integrate multiple
data sources and to enable automation of data collection and transformation.
Without integrated analytic capabilities, users may not be able to drill down to
more actionable information under the high-level metrics. These applications

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 12
are often stand-alone applications that don’t easily integrate with existing
systems or infrastructure.
These three classes of scorecard automation approach all have significant
weaknesses in their ability to support the important processes of education,
communication, collaboration, and knowledge sharing that ultimately
determine the success or failure of a Balanced Scorecard initiative.
The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework has been developed to
overcome these shortcomings.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 13
The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework
The goal of the Microsoft Balanced Scorecard
Framework (BSCF) is to empower an organization to
Microsoft
use the Balanced Scorecard to achieve returns on Balanced
people, processes, customers, and information Scorecard
technology. The BSCF is designed to facilitate scorecard Framework
development and deployment at all phases and levels of
an organization—to achieve the benefits of early automation without the
attendant risks.
The framework is not a packaged application. Instead, it integrates a variety of
Microsoft packaged applications and industry standards to automate a
Balanced Scorecard. It consists of a set of tools and methods to help both
business users and developers get to success faster and more reliably so
software is no longer a hurdle to overcome in scorecard development, but an
asset to speed development.
Recognizing the wide-ranging challenges, impact, and needs of an
organization implementing the BSC, the BSCF is founded on several
underlying concepts:
1. The business and technology requirements for successful scorecard
automation are too complex to be bundled into a single package. To be
successful, the Balanced Scorecard must be woven into the fabric of
an organization. Scorecard automation tools also must be spread
throughout the organization. Further, systems to facilitate Balanced
Scorecard implementation will necessarily rely on links to existing
systems.
2. It is necessary to leverage existing capabilities and technologies.
Introducing new software typically entails significant training costs over
and above the cost of the software itself. The BSCF exploits existing
Microsoft software—already part of most organizations’ software
arsenal—to speed adoption and reduce culture shock.
3. An open framework is essential. Organizations should be able to
leverage existing systems and can add capabilities when and where
needed. There are some specific capabilities for the Balanced
Scorecard, or generic performance management, that are not provided
as out-of-the-box functionality in Microsoft products. Therefore, these
capabilities have been developed using the standard Microsoft
development tools with which most IT departments already have
experience.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 14
Facets of the Framework

The three underlying principles dictate a holistic, multi-faceted approach to a

Balanced Scorecard initiative—an approach that facilitates education,
communication, collaboration, analysis, and integration with daily work
activities. The BSCF leverages the expertise of Balanced Scorecard
practitioners and moves beyond the restrictive capabilities of much early
scorecard automation software to address the issues organizations commonly
confront. Six facets describe the BSCF:

 Personalized Portal
 Best Practices
 Strategy and Metric Management
 Business Intelligence
 Actionable and Operational Tools
 Knowledge Management
Facet 1: Personalized Portal

Personalize
d Portal

Experts cite communication and education as two of the most critical success
factors in a Balanced Scorecard initiative. Research has shown that most
organizations need improved vehicles for education and communication in
order to succeed in change processes. In addition, as organizational
development specialists know, changing culture is easier if accomplished in
ways that are integrated with, and facilitate, daily work tasks.
Therefore, the Balanced Scorecard Framework provides a personalized portal
for employees. The portal is, in essence, a doorway into the employee’s work
life. Built using standard Web technologies, the portal may be easily
personalized to accommodate organizational and individual preferences. It
can provide links to tools used daily, such as e-mail, calendars, and Web-
enabled interfaces to transactional systems. The portal also presents
Balanced Scorecard information in manageable pieces to facilitate learning.
This learning process is sequenced so that employees learn according to a
plan established by the scorecard implementation team.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 15
 Figure 3: Personalized Portal Integrating Balanced Scorecard

The portal is introduced early in a scorecard implementation, when it initially

serves as a way to communicate and educate. As scorecard development
proceeds, the portal provides a dual perspective of overall corporate
performance and individual performance.
If an organization already has a portal, the Balanced Scorecard can be
implemented within that portal, to leverage the organization’s existing
investments.
The portal becomes habit-forming as the interface between the employee, the
performance management system, and daily work tasks. It provides a link to
all other facets of the BSCF.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 16
Facet 2: Best Practices
The Balanced Scorecard promotes a fundamentally different
way of developing objectives and measures. Developing
balanced, leading, and strategy-focused measures is a
Best
complex task. Organizations—even those that already have Practices
a culture of performance—find they often need guidance to
transition their culture toward a strategy focused
organization. It makes sense to take advantage of the best practices in
Balanced Scorecard development—to learn from others’ experience.
Therefore, the framework includes educational components to facilitate a
scorecard development and implementation process.

Figure 4: Best Practices

These components include:

 Microsoft PowerPoint presentations for educating employees, which
can be viewed using Web technologies.
 Links to useful information, such as relevant Web sites, to help teach
the balanced Scorecard team, and to educate the organization’s
general population.
 Process guidelines, answers to Frequently Asked Questions, and
mistakes to avoid.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 17
  A series of templates for capturing complete data on measures,
objectives, perspectives, initiatives, and so on, so that a scorecard
implementation team can consistently gather and share the information
that must eventually be managed in a Balanced Scorecard database.
Best practices documents are created in standard Microsoft Office products—
such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint®—which
generally means no software acquisition or employee training is required.
These documents are readily convertible to Web formats for display.
Facet 3: Strategy and Metric Management

Strategy
& Metric
Managemen
t

An organization implementing a Balanced Scorecard will generate many

different scorecards at the corporate, divisional, departmental, and perhaps
even individual level. Managing the details about strategies, objectives,
measures, and targets is complex. Each measure may have different owners,
data definitions, reasons why it was chosen, and so on. In addition, scorecard
development is a living, iterative process; measures and objectives are
constantly in flux as an organization evolves.
Once measures are identified, the data must be acquired. Where possible,
data should automatically be pulled from underlying systems or from a data
warehouse. This minimizes human error in data handling, and eases the
burden of maintaining the scorecard measures at various levels of an
organization. However, in some cases, data will not exist in those sources and
will need to be entered manually.
Organizations need an efficient, systematic way to collect, sort, summarize,
and disseminate all the data that feeds into the scorecards. The BSCF
provides this needed functionality with an application that consists of a
Microsoft SQL Server™ database and an intuitive Web-based interface for
business and technical users. This component application, Scorecard
Builder™, conforms to the specifications established by Kaplan and Norton’s
consulting organization, the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, so data can
be readily exchanged with other Balanced Scorecard automation packages.
The impact of a scorecard depends to a great degree on the effective display
of performance information. Information must be presented in an easily
understandable way, using appropriate data presentation techniques. The
BSCF includes several Web-enabled presentation tools to communicate
Balanced Scorecard information.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 18
First among these presentation tools is the scorecard summary, called
Scoreboard™, which shows at a glance the critical information relative to each
perspective, objective, and measure. The Scoreboard can be filtered by
theme or set to display all corporate measures. Information presented
includes current and previous values, targets and trends of measures,
comments, and links to analysis so that a viewer may answer questions
readily. Color and graphics are used to convey whether a measure is on
target or needs attention.
Second, the strategy map is included to show a graphical explanation of the
perspectives, objectives, measures, and the causal relationships. The strategy
maps can be viewed in conjunction with the scorecard itself, and are
interactive, allowing users to switch between themes and click on any element
(including the cause and effect links) to view additional information.
Third, a sub-dashboard for each perspective contains information relevant to
that perspective. Here, the strategy matrix for each perspective is presented.
The sub-dashboards also contain detailed information and additional
measures that are not included on the summary scorecard.
Regardless of whether a viewer is looking at information on a strategy map,
scorecard summary, or strategy matrix, hyperlinks permit access to the
detailed information on any scorecard element.

Figure 5: Scoreboard

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 19
Facet 4: Business Intelligence
Scorecards—balanced or otherwise—are about improving
performance. However, though scorecards point to critical
problem areas that need analysis, they do not perform that Business
analysis or indicate what action must be taken. In many Intelligence
cases, the scorecard will include measures that are highly
aggregated, and derived from multiple data points. For
example, if on-time delivery is below the targeted levels, corrective action is
predicated on analysis to determine which products, facilities, suppliers or
circumstances are primarily responsible for the delays. In other cases, an
average measure across multiple facilities may include both excellent
performers and poor performers, so drilldown is needed to make
improvements.
Of course, not all measures are conducive to this type of “drill-to-detail”
analysis. However, for those that are, a range of business intelligence tools
exists to provide this analytic capability. The Balanced Scorecard links to
sources of detailed information, with different types of analyses for different
users. Some situations require specific, targeted analyses. Others require a
more general framework for “ad hoc” analysis. The Scoreboard includes
graphical indicators (magnifying glass for ad hoc and target for targeted) to
cue the users to which types of analyses are available for a given measure.

Figure 6: Ad Hoc Analysis

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 20
Analytic capabilities are critical to improving performance by providing
information that people can use to make decisions, that is, “actionable
insights.” The end goal of analysis is performance improvement through
action, so there is a natural link between analysis and tools that prompt and
facilitate action.
Facet 5: Actionable and Operational Tools

Actionable
&
Operational
Tools

Actionable and operational tools are the tools used to facilitate action,
because success depends on equipping people with the means to improve
their performance. For instance, in the case of on-time delivery, part of the
solution may be to deploy an early warning system that can help to address
potential delivery problems before the shipment is late.
The BSCF exploits a powerful synergy between measurement tools, which
motivate people, and operational tools, which empower people to make
improvements. Examples can include exception reports, automated alerts,
and linking to transactional systems in order to reduce the time between
problem recognition and resolution.
Actionable and operational tools may also include functionality from Enterprise
Resource Management, Customer Relationship Management, or other
operational systems that can be included in the portal to facilitate transitions
between analytic and operations tasks.
Actionable tools can also be designed to tell people what to do, which is
important in a decentralized company with people at numerous levels, all
taking action based on scorecard information. In the targeted analysis below,
note:
 Information is provided in context so people understand their
relationship to the whole organization.
 Both graphic and numeric styles of communication are integrated to
accommodate different learning styles.
 Context-sensitive help guides users to exactly what they must do for
success, resulting in a set of actionable instructions arising from
analysis.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 21
 Figure 7: Targeted Analysis Blended with Actionable and Operational Tools

Facet 6: Knowledge Management

Knowledge management capabilities facilitate many aspects
of the Balanced Scorecard process, from initial design work
through all phases of the scorecard lifecycle. The term
Knowledge
knowledge management embraces several capabilities that Manageme
are provided in the BSCF as standard features of Microsoft nt
SharePoint™ Portal Server.
First, knowledge management implies keeping track of the multitude of
documents generated in an organization. SharePoint Portal Server provides a
repository, like an electronic library, so documents can be accessed readily by
all authorized people. Useful document management features include:
 Security, so only authorized people can view a document.
 Search capability, so people can find documents based on criteria like
author, date published, topic, or key words.
 Version control, to make sure change history is captured and that all
people access the latest version of a document.
 Indexing, or the ability to make an electronic catalog of existing
documents for inclusion in the library.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 22
  Subscription, so people can be automatically notified if documents
change.
Of course, this functionality is not just used for Balanced Scorecard
information, but also for a range of corporate documents, including process
control documents, product development information, price lists, human
resources policies and procedures, and so on. In some cases, these robust,
document-handling features are required to support initiatives like ISO
9000:2000 certification.
Second, knowledge management includes collaboration. Because knowledge
workers do not operate in isolation, collaboration is vital. Collaboration means
being able to share, route, and discuss documents within and among levels of
an organization. Collaboration applies equally to scorecard development at
the executive level, to cascading the scorecard through levels of a company,
and to ongoing scorecard evaluation. Tools of collaboration include on-line
net-meetings, threaded electronic discussions, and automated workflows to
route documents for approval. These collaboration tools help provide a return
on knowledge workers by speeding productivity, and help weave the balanced
scorecard into busy workdays.
Of course, as with document management, collaboration tools are extremely
useful to all aspects of knowledge work.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 23
 Figure 8: Search Capabilities of SharePoint Portal Support the Balanced Scorecard

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 24
Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 25
Conclusion
A Balanced Scorecard initiative represents a watershed event in an
organization’s evolution. It is a challenging, inter-disciplinary process of
cultural change. To be successful, an organization needs a defined, multi-
faceted approach that embraces education, communication, scorecard
development, and ongoing implementation. The Microsoft Balanced
Scorecard Framework meets these criteria.

Personalized
Portal

Knowledge Best
Managemen Practices
t Microsoft
Balanced
Scorecard
Framework
Actionable Strategy
& & Metric
Operational Managemen
Tools t

Business
Intelligence

Figure 9: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework

The Microsoft approach to Balanced Scorecard automation brings together:

 Portal technology to facilitate education, change, and communication.
 Information on best practices from Balanced Scorecard experts.
 Strategy and metric management in conformance with the
specifications put forth by the Balanced Scorecard Collaborative, the
consulting organization founded by the creators of the Balanced
Scorecard.
 Analytic capabilities to bridge the gap between problem identification,
as shown by out-of-tolerance measures, and analysis, to determine
underlying opportunities for performance enhancement.
 Actionable and operational tools to enhance and work in conjunction
with business intelligence tools.
 Knowledge management to permit sharing and control of documents,
on-line collaboration, work flow, and document searching.

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 26
Organizations seeking to implement a Balanced Scorecard are striving to
become a strategy focused organization. Strategy focused organizations
exploit the Balanced Scorecard and technology to become more agile. These
organizations attain incremental returns on their customers, processes,
employees, and technologies. The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework
delivers these returns in a cost-effective, reliable, scalable manner.

Selected Bibliography

The Balanced Scorecard - Measures That Drive Performance, Kaplan, Robert

S., and Norton, David P.; Article, Harvard Business Review, January 1992.

Putting The Balanced Scorecard To Work, Kaplan, Robert S., and Norton,
David P.;
Article, Harvard Business Review, September 1993.

Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System, Kaplan,

Robert S., and Norton, David P.; Article, Harvard Business Review, January-
February 1996.

The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action, Kaplan, Robert S.,
and Norton, David P.; Harvard Business School Press, 1996.

The Strategy Focused Organization, Kaplan, Robert S., and Norton, David P.;
Harvard Business School Press, 2001.

Having Trouble With Your Strategy? Then Map It, Kaplan, Robert S., and
Norton, David
P.; Article, Harvard Business Review, September-October 2000.

Useful Web Sites

Web Site Description

http://www.bscol.com Balanced Scorecard Collaborative home
page
http:// Balanced Scorecard Institute home page
www.balancedscorecard.org
http://www.microsoft.com/ Microsoft Business Intelligence site
business/bi

Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 27
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Bringing the Balanced Scorecard to Life: The Microsoft Balanced Scorecard Framework 28