During this activity, you learn what a balanced scorecard is, the information it provides, and how to best utilize this information. After viewing an example, you will have an opportunity to practice identifying gaps. For your graded assignment, you will identify gaps and make appropriate recommendations.

What is a balanced scorecard?

At its core, the balanced scorecard is a tool an organization can use to measure its performance. Unlike other tools that may focus just on financial measures, for example, the balanced scorecard takes many segments of the organization into account. This creates a more holistic view of the organization's performance without focusing too heavily on any one set of controls. The balanced scorecard generally looks at four aspects of company performance: financial, customer, internal processes, and people/innovation/growth assets. When using a balanced scorecard, a manager will set goals in each of these four areas and measure the organization's process against these goals.

Balanced Scorecard

Assignment

In this assignment, use the scenario and balanced scorecard to fill in the gaps. Then, develop recommendations based on these gaps for each section of the balanced scorecard.

The balanced scorecard shown below is for Spinner Pet Sitters, a small pet sitting service run by Shelly, a student at the local state university to make extra income. While the service is small, Shelly has four other pet sitters who work for her; these sitters can be considered Shelly's contract employees, as she employs their services as needed on a part-time basis. Spinner Pet Sitters pet sitting services include coming to the customer's house between one and three times a day, walking the animals, feeding the pets, playing with them, cleaning up any waste, and bringing in the home's mail and newspaper.

After viewing the scenario and balanced scorecard, input the Gaps in the chart below by clicking on the box. Click next when you have filled in all of the Gaps.

Balanced Scorecard

Aspect of Company Performance / Factors to be Considered / Organizational Goal / Actual Performance / Gaps
Financial / Quarterly Profit Results
Return on Capital Employed / $5,000
$4,000 / $6,000
$1,500 / INPUT GAPS
Customer / Customer Satisfaction Rate
Customer Recommendation Rate (rate of new business generated by recommendations from existing customers) / 95%
80% / 95%
100% / INPUT GAPS
Internal Processes / Duplicate Activities Across Functions (percent of the activities completed that are duplicated in another function)
Process Bottlenecks (percent of the process that becomes bottlenecked in an average run cycle) / 25%
15% / 20%
15% / INPUT GAPS
People
Innovation
Growth Assets / Employee Turnover
Employee Job Satisfaction / 25%
90% / 0%
50% / INPUT GAPS
Financial / INPUT RECOMMENDATIONS
Customer / INPUT RECOMMENDATIONS
Internal Process / INPUT RECOMMENDATIONS
People/Innovation/Growth Assets / INPUT RECOMMENDATIONS