Balanced Scorecards

Balanced Scorecards are a very important way for businesses to understand how they are doing at different processes and procedures. As we learned in class, companies need to create scorecards that can measure their performance.

Southwest Airlines was one of the primary examples that we discussed in class. They had a very useful balanced scorecard where they had separate functions that they rated and wanted to see performance on.

A balanced scorecard is built to align a businesses activities with the vision of the company. It allows the company to determine how they are doing and gives them an idea on how to fix problem areas. Here is an example of a balanced dashboard:

Source: http://www.balancedscorecard.org/Portals/0/images/balancedscorecard.jpg

The above figure shows four different perspectives including financial, customer, learning and growth, and internal business processes. Each has a specific focus and is rated on different criteria. The company needs to determine how to rate the specific process.

To learn more about balanced scorecards, visit the following link:

http://www.balancedscorecard.org/BSCResources/AbouttheBalancedScorecard/tabid/55/Default.aspx