Survey and Research Data

Scorecards and Strategic Benefits

A 2006 survey, sponsored by the Institute of Management Accountants in the United States, concerned the use of balanced scorecards on a global basis[13]. The reported benefits of scorecards, all of which related to the strategic focus of organisations, included:

• Increased organisational alignment
• Increased revenues
• Decreased costs
• Increased communication
• The ability to measure performance
• The ability to link performance to compensation
• Understanding measure and strategy cause and effect
• The ability to align employee behaviour with strategy, and
• The ability to make strategic decisions faster with better data.

The most frequently reported benefit was the ability to measure performance (46%), followed closely by increased organisational alignment (42%). Respondents that strongly agreed they had realised significant benefits from scorecard systems most often cited increased organisational alignment (95%), increased communication (86%), and increased ability to measure performance (81%) as the benefits they achieved.

In a 2006 study, sponsored by CMA Canada [14], that was directed at global-based professional and consulting organisations, 382 respondents reported that:

• 51% had implemented BSC systems
• 8% found that their BSC system did not provide significant benefits
• 10.5% had discontinued using a BSC system.

The predominant reasons for discontinuing BSC systems were:

• No buy-in from management
• The system didn’t have a high enough profile
• The system was too time consuming, and
• No buy-in from employees.

Organisations that enjoyed significant benefits from BSC implementations were three times more likely to indicate that “making strategy part of everyone’s job” was a major reason for implementing the system. They were also much more likely to indicate the need to communicate strategy to everyone, simply and clearly, along with the importance of aligning the organisation around strategy.

CPM – Dashboards Popular

In a 2005 Judith Hurwitz & Associates IT Survey of 113 organisations with revenues greater than US$100M [15], respondents reported that:

• Current reporting and communicating metrics were manual, time consuming and costly
• Less than 50% of corporate reporting needs were met using current methods
• Multiple sources of information were needed to make effective decisions
• The use of dashboards was widespread and reportedly delivered significant business value
• Some 50% reported savings of $500K-$1M as a result of implementing dashboards to measure key performance indicators
• Some 50% of IT executives were seeking assistance to implement dashboards with budgets to implement performance management/analytic dashboards of $100K to $500K per dashboard.

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