How does the Balanced Scorecard approach differ from traditional approaches to performance measurement ? What , if anything , distinguishes the Balanced Scorecard approach from a "measure everything, and you might get what you want" Philosophy?
Traditional financial performance metrics provide information about a firm's past results, but are not well-suited for predicting future performance or for implementing and controlling the firm's strategic plan. By analysing perspectives other than the financial one, managers can better translated the organisation's strategy in to actionable objectives and better measure how well the strategic plan is executing.
The Balanced Scorecard is a management system that maps an organisation's
strategic …show more content…

Objective
New Products
Responsive supply
To be preferred supplier
Customer partnerships
Internal Process Perspective

Specific Measure
% of sales from new products Ontime delivery
Share of key
Number of cooperative efforts Internal business process objectives address the question of which processes are most critical for satisfying customers and shareholders. These are the processes in which the firm must concentrate its efforts to excel.

Objective

Specific Measure

Manufacturing excellence

Cycle time, yield

Increase design productivity

Engineering efficiency

Reduce product launch delays

Actual launch date vs.plan

Learning and growth perspective
Learning and growth metrics address the question of how the firm must learn, improve, and innovate in order to meet its objectives. Much of this perspective is employee-cantered. Objective

Specific Measure

Manufacturing learning
Products focus
Time to market

Time to new process maturity
% of products representing 80% of sales
Time compared to that of competitors

Achieving strategic alignment throughout the Organisation
Whereas strategy is articulated in terms meaningful to top management, to be implemented it must be translated into objectives and measures that are actionable at lower levels in the organisation. The BSC can be cascaded to make the translation of strategy possible.
While top level objectives may be expressed in terms of growth and