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We utilise the Balanced Scorecard as part of our strategic process as we do not see it as a stand-alone product. We do often, however, receive requests to implement or support a Balanced Scorecard within organisations. We thus believed that it was necessary to address the Balanced Scorecard separately.

In their study titled “Management Tools and Trends 2007”, Bain and Company found that 66% of the 8 504 responding companies utilised the Balanced Scorecard. The Balanced Scorecard Institute describes the Balanced Scorecard as follows:

“The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business and industry, government, and non-profit organisations worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organisation, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organisation performance against strategic goals."

It was originated by Drs. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and David Norton as a performance measurement framework that added strategic non-financial performance measures to traditional financial metrics to give managers and executives a more 'balanced' view of organisational performance.

Kaplan and Norton describe the innovation of the balanced scorecard as follows:

The balanced scorecard retains traditional financial measures. But financial measures tell the story of past events, an adequate story for industrial age companies for which investments in long-term capabilities and customer relationships were not critical for success. These financial measures are inadequate, however, for guiding and evaluating the journey that information age companies must make to create future value through investment in customers, suppliers, employees, processes, technology, and innovation.

The simple model below shows how an organisation’s vision and strategy can be achieved through balancing four key strategic perspectives: