Do you know where you are going? Do you have to power to monitor where you are?

When your business maps its future it needs to devise the optimal strategy and structure for the resources employed Successful business have their strategic development issues mapped by a team of experts experienced in their industry. The Advisory Firm is an authority on knowing how to take you where you want to go and has the team to deliver your strategic.

- Is your business reaching its growth targets consistently?
- Are you getting the most out of your employees?
- How well does your company embrace new ideas and implement change?
- Is your product/ service fully satisfying your customers' needs?
- Are your results erratic from year to year?
- What are the options available to you to improve your cash flow?
- How effective are your business processes?
- Do your customers find you easy to deal with?

Strategy takes many forms, it can be a prescription for the future, a methodology to resolve an issue or an approach to change.

In addition The Advisory Firm has the potential to subsidise its fee so your business can experience the benefits of strategic intervention when you really need it. When its time for your business to review its strategic approach The Advisory Firm can work with you to because as the old saying goes "Next to knowing, there is nothing like knowing you know."

Take a look at The Advisory Firm's annual guide to business planning - a 37 page document, combining our latest experience in developing workable plans. Business Plan Guide 2006.

The Advisory Firm: Key Concept: The Balanced Score Card

The Balanced Scorecard is a performance management tool developed by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton, (1992) that enables a company to translate its vision and strategy into a tangible set of performance measures. It is more than a measuring device, however. Inspired by their research published in an HBR article they wrote in 1992, “The Balanced Scorecard – Measures that Drive Performance”, Kaplan and Norton developed the idea into a bestselling book, “The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action” in 1996. Executives in industries as varied as the oil industry, banking and insurance, or retail, can view a company from several perspectives at the same time, and implement the Balanced Scorecard to track current performance, as well as to project future performance by the application of four fundamental measuring perspectives - financial performance, customer perspective, internal business processes, and learning and growth perspective.

Description
The diagram below illustrates the integrated nature of the four fundamental measuring perspectives:

The Financial Perspective: First among perspective equals, this perspective is gauged by measures of shareholder value. However, financial metrics are invariably retrospective, rather than prospective, and therefore the need for the other perspectives.

The Customer Perspective: A business only generates financial value for its shareholders by first creating value for its customers, and then capturing a portion of the customer value that is created. Customer–based measurements can therefore provide more of a prospective view on the value generated by a business.

The Internal Business Process Perspective: A business generates value for customers through the operation of its business processes. This perspective should include not only the ongoing measurement of business process performance, but also an ongoing determination of which processes are particularly core to generating value on a sustained basis.

The Learning and Growth Perspective: A business needs to be able to continually improve its capabilities for effectively operating, sustaining, and adapting business processes. Foremost among the capabilities to continually strengthen are the employees of the business, and hence, learning is a critical area for attention. This perspective provides the longest-term insights into the ability of a business to generate value for customers and shareholders.

Each of the perspectives above is managed through the setting of associated Objectives, applying Measures to gauge progress toward associated Targets, setting the measurement Targets, and developing Initiatives to enable the Objectives. It is critical that the Objectives, Measures, Targets and Initiatives are developed and managed to be mutually aligned and reinforcing.

The Advisory Firm Concept Commentary
The Balanced Scorecard provides an excellent framework for the measurement of key aspects of business performance. The shareholder to customer to process to capabilities sequence (recognizing there are also feedback loops among these perspectives), is exactly the right prescription for building a high performing business. This approach is more holistic than the business performance measurement approaches that preceded the Balanced Scorecard model (for example, Total Quality Management). as many more resources including articles, case studies and white papers to help your business to adapt and grow It should be understood that the Balanced Scorecard is a business performance measurement and management approach. It is not a framework for actually developing a strategy – rather, it can enable the implementation and operation of a strategy.

Take a look at The Advisory Firm's annual guide to business planning - a 37 page document, combining our latest experience in developing workable plans. Business Plan Guide 2006

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