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Automating the Balanced Scorecard - Selection Criteria to Idenfify Appropriate Software Applications
Research suggests that about half of large US firms have already adopted the BSC and many more are considering implementation. An organization-wide implementation of a BSC requires IT support and numerous software vendors have taken he opportunity to build software solutions to support a BSC implementation. The problem
executives face today is that there are over two-dozen application-providers to choose from, each of them claiming that their solution offers unique and important features. Selecting
the wrong solution can undermine the entire BSC development effort and the credibility of the performance management system. This article addresses the issue of BSC software by (1) explaining why organizations might need software to support their implementation and (2) by developing a framework to assist organizations in this important decision making process.
Successful managers need to know the levers they must pull to ensure superior performance of their organization in the future. Today, more often than not, these levers are their organization’s intangible value drivers. Measuring and managing these elusive drivers of performance is critical for all organizations. This article outlines how managers can develop meaningful indicators that will yield real management insights.
Performance Management in Call Centers: Lessons, Pitfalls and Achievements in Fujitsu Services
This paper provides an overview of Fujitsu's sense and response approach towards performance management. It is demonstrated using a case example of call center performance as part of Fujitsu Services. Call centers (or contact centers) are often used as case examples of how not to measure and manage performance. An operational bias towards efficiency measures often fails to provide the customer focus needed and even has dysfunctional consequenses. This case study demonstrates how Fujitsu moved away from the efficiency trap, and completely redesigned their performance management system to focus on their customer needs and the intangibles drivers of value creation. It will highlight the lessons learned, the pitfalls as well as the achievements.
The Balanced Scorecard and Intangible assets: Similar Ideas, Unaligned Concepts
This article discusses how well the concept of intangible assest is aligned with the balanced scorecard. Kaplan and Norton argue that the intangibles belong in the 'learning and growth' perspective of the balanced scorecard and classify them into human capital, information capital, and organizational capital. This article outlines how this attempt to categorise intangibles produced an inconcistent, incomplete, and potentially very confusing classification of intantible assets.
Automating Intellectual Capital - Integrating Measures for Intangibles into Corporate Performance Management Applications
All organisations are measuring aspects of their performance and today they increasingly automate their metrics management using software applications. These range from simple spreadsheets to sophisticated performance management software solutions. Many of these application import data from existing electronic sources. However, as this research shows, this could be a barrier to including the important information about intangible performance drivers, as this information is often not readily available in existing data repositories. In the first part of this paper we develop ten key requirements for software applications in order to cope with intangibles; in the second part, these are then contrasted with empirical evidence collected from the 5000 largest firms in the USA.
How a Knowledge-based Approach might Illuminate the Notion of Human Capital and its Measurement
Human capital measurement and accounting has been under discussion for years without any satisfactory methodology emerging. The economic significance of today’s knowledge-intensive organizations makes better HC measurement more pressing. We draw on insights
from the knowledge-based theory of the firm and conclude we can only make sense of its human capital by looking in detail at its practices.
Human capital is the value added at the level of the work practice—as traced by activity-base accounting. Overall the firm’s human capital totals into its goodwill. The human capital can be estimated and then managed by allocating the goodwill to the activities taking place, a complex distribution process but one precisely complementary to that of activity-base accounting.
Reporting on Intellectual Capital: Why, What and How?
Intellectual capital is an important value driver in today's organizations. Traditional financial statements do not provide the relevant informations for managers or investors to understand how their resources - many of which are intangible - create value in the future. Intellectual capital statements are designed to bridge this gap by providing information about how intellectual resources create future value. Intellectual capital statements can be uded as tools to communicate the knowledge-based strategy externally but it can also be used as an internal management tool.
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