Balanced Scordcard

Balanced scorecard
The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a strategic performance management tool - a semi-standard structured report, supported by proven design methods and automation tools, that can be used by managers to keep track of the execution of activities by the staff within their control and to monitor the consequences arising from these actions. It is perhaps the best known of several suchframeworks (it is the most widely adopted performance management framework reported in the annual survey of management tools undertaken by Bain & Company, and has been widely adopted in English-speaking western countries and Scandinavia in the early 1990s). Since 2000, use of the Balanced Scorecard, its derivatives (e.g., Performance Prism), and other similar tools (e.g., Results Based Management)has also become common in the Middle East, Asia and Spanish-speaking countries.

Characteristics

The characteristic of the Balanced Scorecard and its derivatives is the presentation of a mixture of financial and non-financial measures each compared to a 'target' value within a single concise report. The report is not meant to be a replacement for traditional financial or operational reportsbut a succinct summary that captures the information most relevant to those reading it. It is the method by which this 'most relevant' information is determined (i.e. the design processes used to select the content) that most differentiates the various versions of the tool in circulation.
As a model of performance, the BSC is effective in that "it articulates the links between leading inputs(human and physical), processes, and lagging outcomes and focuses on the importance of managing these components to achieve the organization's strategic priorities".
The first versions of Balanced Scorecard asserted that relevance should derive from the corporate strategy, and proposed design methods that focused on choosing measures and targets associated with the main activities required toimplement the strategy. As the initial audience for this were the readers of the Harvard Business Review, the proposal was translated into a form that made sense to a typical reader of that journal - one relevant to a mid-sized US business. Accordingly, initial designs were encouraged to measure three categories of non-financial measure in addition to financial outputs - those of "Customer," "InternalBusiness Processes" and "Learning and Growth." Clearly these categories were not so relevant to non-profits or units within complex organisations (which might have high degrees of internal specialisation), and much of the early literature on Balanced Scorecard focused on suggestions of alternative 'perspectives' that might have more relevance to these groups.
Modern Balanced Scorecard thinking hasevolved considerably since the initial ideas proposed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the modern performance management tools including Balanced Scorecard are significantly improved - being more flexible (to suit a wider range of organisational types) and more effective (as design methods have evolved to make them easier to design, and use).


BALANCED SCORECARD
El Balanced Scorecard(BSC) es una herramienta de gestión estratégica - un informe estructurado semi-estándar, con el apoyo de los métodos de diseño probadas y herramientas de automatización, que pueden ser utilizados por los administradores para realizar un seguimiento de la ejecución de las actividades del personal bajo su control y para controlar las consecuencias derivadas de estas acciones. Es quizás el más conocidode varios de esos marcos (que es el marco de gestión del rendimiento más ampliamente adoptado en la encuesta anual de las herramientas de gestión realizada por Bain & Company, y ha sido ampliamente adoptado en los países de habla Inglés-occidental y los países escandinavos a principios de los de 1990). Desde el año 2000, el uso del Balanced Scorecard, sus derivados (por ejemplo, Prisma de...