Scorecard Best Practices

System Flexibility

Implementing a scorecard system should be viewed as an iterative process—no one gets all of the scorecards, measures, and targets right the first time. Most organizations realize that they either have too many measures or not the right ones.

As the use of scorecards matures, some organizations recognize that they have too many measures. Often, some of their measures are proven to be redundant indicating that those organizations have been performing unnecessary work in gathering data. As they receive feedback from users and track results over time, many organizations realize that they are not collecting the right measures. Eventually, organizations in either of these positions find it necessary to remove, change, or add performance measures. Flexibility in making changes to measures tracked is a critical feature in scorecard automation.

Flexibility is also required when changes occur to the underlying source systems providing results to the scorecard system. An organization may roll out new enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management (CRM) systems or make upgrades to transactional, operational, or performance management systems. The automated scorecard must provide enough flexibility to accommodate these changes to source systems.

When automating its scorecard system, an organization needs to spend time up front to think through its entire vision. The new system should not just replicate what the organization is doing manually, unless ...