BSC Designer Offers Training for Every Budget and Need

The Balanced Scorecard is the most popular and effective method of performance analysis among Fortune companies. However, effective training is essential for understanding and using the information provided in your scorecard to improve your business performance.


To make sure you get the most value from your implementation of the BSC Designer balanced scorecard software, BSC Designer offers a wide assortment of training options. Choose from free mini-lessons, a complete audio course, or personalized training to maximize your return on investment from your balanced scorecard.

The free mini-lessons are provided in downloadable .mp3 format on the BSC Designer website. These eight lessons offer a general overview of the balanced scorecard concept, indicator definition, and implementation. The total length for all eight mini-lessons is approximately 20 minutes.

The mini-lessons are designed with the high-level user in mind. These lessons do not give detailed information on scorecard development, but instead summarize the concepts to cover a large amount of information quickly.

The first two lessons explain what a balanced scorecard is and how it is used by businesses to monitor and improve performance. Lesson three explains how scorecards are typically implemented and lesson four outlines some types of software solutions that have been designed for balanced scorecard development.

Lessons five through eight explain some procedures for balanced scorecard creation. Lesson five explains indicator selection and offers tips for choosing effective indicators. Lesson six describes methods for cascading scorecards through the organization to assign performance goals to specific business units.  Lesson seven explains strategy mapping and lesson eight provides some popular balanced scorecard templates.

For businesses who would like to implement a balanced scorecard but are currently on a very small budget, the mini-lessons are a good option for gaining a general understanding of scorecard development and use. It makes a good companion for the BSC Designer Light or Online version.

The target market and audience will include:

  • Seasoned Balanced Scorecard professionals responsible for establishing, implementing and maintaining a Balanced Scorecard project;
  • Novice Balanced Scorecard professionals responsible for establishing, implementing and maintaining a Balanced Scorecard project.

The target audience will include the above two groups of professionals and will also include all employees of a particular organisation that has implemented, or plans to implement, a Balanced Scorecard project.

The complete audio course provides more thorough training on balanced scorecard concepts, development and implementation. The course consists of six professionally recorded lessons explaining the use of a balanced scorecard system in detail. Each lesson can also be purchased individually.

“Practical Introduction to Balanced Scorecard” is similar in purpose to the first two mini-lessons. It explains scorecard concepts and defines the benefits businesses gain from developing and implementing a balanced scorecard.

“How to Build a Balanced Scorecard” provides a more detailed explanation of how the scorecard is constructed, including types of modules, relationships between the indicators, and calculation strategies.

“How to Design Winning KPIs” helps users identify useful indicators and create calculations that effectively reflect performance. This section also discusses indicator weights, structuring indicators and accepted business metrics for various functions.

“Strategy Maps and Balanced Scorecard” explain how strategy mapping is combined with balanced scorecard functions to manage performance issues correctly. A detailed, accurate strategy map can help increase the likelihood that your business will achieve the performance goals selected.

“Cascading Balanced Scorecard” details the development of scorecards for business divisions and outlines strategies for assigning scorecards to line-level managers. These managers can then implement procedural programs that help achieve the performance goals assigned in his or her cascaded scorecard.

“Testing the Balanced Scorecard” provides methologies for verifying the accuracy and usefulness of the implemented scorecard. Periodic testing of performance indicators is essential for maintaining an accurate scorecard, especially when business strategies change.

The complete audio course combines well with the BSC Toolkit to create a comprehensive training program for development of a balanced scorecard with BSC Designer software. Using these two training components, many new users can perform much of the analysis and implementation independent of an onsite trainer.

Personal training and coaching is also available at an hourly rate. You can schedule an online meeting with a trained BSC Designer scorecard expert to discuss your issues or ask questions. Meetings are scheduled in advance to ensure that the scorecard trainer can dedicate the necessary time to effectively answer your questions. Additionally, the scorecard trainer is skilled in responding quickly and accurately to limit your personal training expense.

While personal coaching is more costly than the other training options, it does allow you one-on-one interaction to clarify concepts you are having difficulty understanding or to receive guidance on complex indicators. Few businesses choose to use personal coaching as their primary source of training and instead, use it as a supplement to other sources. Personal training is always available, so even after you have been using your scorecard, you can schedule an appointment when you need assistance in making changes to your scorecard or upgrading to a more powerful BSC Designer model.

Many businesses find a combination of the three training options is the most effective solution for successful implementation of a balanced scorecard. The free mini-lessons provide an excellent introduction to scorecard principles, helping new users to develop an understanding of the key features and benefits of scorecard functionality.

The complete audio course then builds on this introduction, fleshing out important concepts and providing useful details to improve understanding. When combined with the BSC Toolkit, scorecard developers often find that they can also virtually self-train on the BSC Designer system. Additionally, the Scorecard Library of business metric packages helps with the KPI selection process, so new users can implement a balanced scorecard with confidence that the system is structured to accurately report on key performance factors.

Once new scorecard users have finished the free mini-lessons and the complete audio course, they can then schedule personal coaching to discuss any details that are unique to their business. This keeps personal training costs low and ensures that the business can spend training dollars effectively. For BSC Designer PRO users, additional personal training is particularly helpful in getting the most benefit from its many powerful features.

BSC Designer provides carefully developed, thorough training for implementing and using your balanced scorecard. By taking advantage of these powerful training tools when you are implementing your BSC Designer software, you can create a scorecard that will help your business meet performance goals and achieve success.