The BSC Toolkit is an essential companion piece to the BSC Designer software. It provides complete information on how to develop your balanced scorecard, implement it using BSC Designer, and continue to get the most value from the scorecard as you use it to improve day-to-day performance.
Like many powerful software solutions, accessing the full benefit of BSC Designer depends heavily on accurate definition of your business strategy and effective implementation of the software to express performance indicators. The BSC Toolkit provides all of the components necessary to ensure that you select the best indicators for your scorecard and make full use of every feature of BSC Designer to implement it.
Rather than the simple printed or online user’s manual that other software solutions provide, the BSC Toolkit includes over 370 detailed, full-color slides, charts and whitepapers to guide you through every step of the process.
The BSC Toolkit was built with the understanding that the majority of people understand complicated concepts more effectively when those concepts are represented graphically rather than with verbiage. Every concept of your balanced scorecard development is represented with charts, graphs and graphics. This facilitates the preparation process. It also allows executives to more easily discuss balanced scorecard concepts as a group, using the slides as a starting point.
The Overview Presentation provides you with an effective method for introducing BSC Designer and explaining your recommendation of it to your board members, CEO or senior executives. The presentation uses clear graphical representations to summarize the purpose and benefits of the software, the implementation process and the use of the scorecard features after it has been implemented.
- The Balanced Scorecard Toolkit is aimed at business professionals who are responsible for the development and implementation of a Balanced Scorecard;
- The Balanced Scorecard Toolkit for Human Resources is aimed at human resources professionals who are responsible for the optimum utilization of human capital within an organisation. Furthermore, these professionals will predominantly be responsible for driving the Education and Growth Perspective in the Corporate Balanced Scorecard;
- The Business Analysis Toolkit is aimed at giving business professionals a quick, practical introduction to several of the most popular—and most powerful—business analysis methods ever conceived.
The slides cover concepts such as what a balanced scorecard is, why it is the solution of choice for more than 50% of Fortune companies wanting to achieve performance goals, and how it is effectively implemented in real businesses. Slides demonstrate how indicators are calculated and how your CEO, executives and managers can use the information to effectively lead the company.
Case studies and before-and-after scenarios support the usefulness of the system and help you explain how it benefits real-world organizations. The case studies also demonstrate how other companies have solved performance issues using a balanced scorecard and how the scorecards can evolve as business needs change.
Once your firm has selected the BSC Designer as the best solution for your balanced scorecard needs, the BSC Toolkit guides you through the preparation process. Color graphics help you or your decision makers evaluate the company structure and clarify company goals. Well-defined objectives and strategies will help ensure that you gain the most benefit from your balanced scorecard.
Strategy mapping, an essential part of the preparation process, is also addressed in the BSC Toolkit. The strategy map lends a structure to your overall strategy and sub-strategies for attaining your performance goals. This clarifies the methods you intend to use for implementing performance indicators and reaching your objectives.
The Toolkit includes 54 slides that take a detailed approach to mapping your strategy, evaluating its effectiveness, and re-evaluating the strategy map periodically to determine whether changes are needed. Step-by-step instructions walk you through strategy mapping concepts, practices and designs. Samples from other organizations help you define your map, and a checklist helps you organize the process.
After you have mapped your strategy, the BSC Toolkit then helps you clearly define your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)to quantify your progress toward the objectives established. KPIs allow you to keep track of frequently updated values that best represent your performance and whether it is at the level necessary to meet your goals on the accepted timeline.
KPIs can be defined for many important performance factors: Employee hiring or retention, product development costs, marketing expenses, projected sales, new client volume, and many more. Any performance data that can be recording and evaluated can be defined as an indicator.
However, as a business executive, you understand that only certain items truly indicate your company’s progress toward growth goals. You may be able to track the cost of office supplies, but is that cost the right indicator to determine your company’s performance?
The BSC Toolkit has detailed color slides that walk business executives through the process of identifying which performance data has a significant effect in your progress toward company goals. It also helps you apply weight your selected indicators to accurately represent each factor’s impact in relation to your overall objectives. With this information, you can then build your balanced scorecard using only those KPIs which accurately represent your performance progress.
The BSC Toolkit includes information to assist in developing accurate, realistic calculations using established business metrics. The value of your balanced scorecard depends not only on the data you choose, but also on the effectiveness of your performance calculations for realistic projection. The included whitepaper provides step-by-step instructions which explain how to apply the metrics in your balanced scorecard.
Benchmarking practices and advice are also included in the BSC Toolkit. This whitepaper helps you select benchmarks and apply them using the BSC Designer software. Like other BSC Toolkit components, the Benchmarking document includes detailed instructions, best practices, examples and case studies, and checklists to help you effectively use benchmarking to improve your business performance.
After you have completed initial preparation and implementation, the BSC Toolkit also provides methods for testing your balanced scorecard to be certain it accurately represents you progress. If your test results provide projections that do not correspond with your business objectives, the Toolkit includes methods for altering your balanced scorecard or correcting selected indicators to provide the information you need.
In addition to the case studies included in the Overview Presentation, the BSC Toolkit also includes multiple case studies and samples of implementation challenges and solutions. This is designed assist you in evaluating performance indicators that are complex or difficult to define. You can review the case studies to learn how other companies implemented similar indicators effectively.
If you have selected BSC Designer as your solution for your balanced scorecard needs, consider strongly using the BSC Toolkit to help you through the planning and implementation process. The Toolkit will provide you with clear, easy-to-understand information to help you ensure that you gain the full value of your balanced scorecard investment.