Scorecard Best Practices

Data Accessibility

Numerous organizations have indicated that the key reason for being able to successfully roll out an automated scorecard system (or, in some cases, the reason for their inability to do so) is data accessibility. One organization indicated that its ability to successfully implement an electronic scorecard system was due to “automated data extraction from the mainframe and other databases.” Other organizations indicated that their failure to implement an electronic system was due to the lack of “compatibility with a wide variety of database, financial, and ERP applications” and the lack of “integration of multiple systems.”

Take the time to understand your data sources, and ensure that your automated system will be able to retrieve the data you need and in the frequency with which you need it. In order to move to a more frequent refreshing of data (perhaps moving from measuring data quarterly to monthly, or from monthly to weekly), the data needs to be available in that frequency from your source systems. There is no point in trying to report on data that cannot be accessed in the desired frequency. Manual data entry will work for a while, but eventually the benefits will likely be outweighed by the amount of effort required to collect the data.

Data accessibility is important to automating your scorecards, but keep in mind that few scorecard systems ever manage to refresh 100 percent of the data automatically. The very nature of strategic data often means that ...