What is it?

Most organisations use management information that focuses almost exclusively on financial business results to assess their progress, but to understand impact and direction a broader view is needed. The balanced score card was developed by Kaplan and Norton (1992) who discovered, after looking at a wide range of organisations, that four related questions give senior managers a fast but comprehensive view of the business:

1. How do customers see us (customer perspective)?
2. What must we excel at (internal perspective)?
3. Can we continue to improve and create value (innovation and learning perspective)?
4. How do we look to our shareholders (financial perspective)?

The purpose of the balanced score card and the data it reports is to answer those questions.

We have enabled a number of organisations to develop balanced score cards. Because most of our customers are in the voluntary or statutory sector the language may differ but the range of performance data covered is similar. As an example here are the categories for a balanced score card that we proposed to a Social Services Department:

1. Quality
2. Access
3. Need
4. Cost
5. Effectiveness