Specialist Consultancy

The Inspired Working team can offer very specific consultancy to solve particular issues.

We use a Balanced Business Scorecard approach which looks at your business from a number of critical perspectives.

Background:

Doctors Robert Kaplan and David Norton developed the balanced scorecard in the 1990s in the USA. Having begun as a performance measurement tool, the Balanced Scorecard was quickly being used as a multi-dimensional framework for managing strategy by linking objectives, initiatives, targets and measures across key corporate perspectives. Kaplan and Norton noticed that financial measures being used to gauge performance in many organisations were not necessarily related to achieving strategic objectives. The scorecard sought to remedy this by providing a more balanced suite of performance measures across a number of key perspectives. Typically these look at customers, finances, internal processes and organisational learning, for example:

• A financial perspective – what is required to be profitable?
• A marketing perspective – which potential customers need to be targeted, to generate that profit?
• An operations perspective – which processes and procedures need to be improved and measured to meet the customer needs?
• A learning and innovation perspective – what do people need to learn and what innovation is required to achieve the above?
  • This last perspective can also be used to review and focus on the four cornerstones of good People Management:
    • Resourcing – having the right number of people in the right place doing the right things.
    • Development - making sure your people have the right Knowledge, Skills and Behaviours to do their current jobs and to anticipate what needs doing next.
    • Reward – ensuring people are appropriately motivated and rewarded to perform at a higher level.
    • Relations – ensuring people are treated fairly to avoid costly claims.

However these can be adapted depending on what factors are considered important for the success of the particular organisation.

Objectives:

The Balanced Scorecard aims to:

1. enable organisations to manage strategy by linking corporate objectives, initiatives, measures and targets at all levels in the organisation;
2. achieve a balanced set of performance measures and targets that allow managers to track progress in key areas.

Scope:

The Balanced Scorecard is a holistic model that can be used at various levels across the organisation, service, team or group. It is used to manage strategy by linking objectives to initiatives, targets and measures across a range of corporate perspectives. These perspectives are determined by the organisation using the model.

Key strengths of the model

• gives holistic overview of organisational health;
• focuses individual objectives to the wider picture helping to create ownership, understanding and focus at all employee levels;
• links targets and measures to operational objectives and in doing so helps rationalise performance information, identify gaps and ensure balance;
• facilitates communication and understanding of business goals and strategies at all levels;
• encourages a focus on key priorities, assists in allocating resources and helps organisations / groups to become more results orientated.