Introduction 1 About This Book 2 Conventions Used in This Book 2 What You''re Not to Read 3 Foolish Assumptions 3 How This Book Is Organized 3 Part I: The ABC''s of Balanced Scorecard 3 Part II: The Customer -- The Critical Leg 4 Part III: Financial Measurement -- The Foundation Leg 4 Part IV: Internal Business Processes -- The Value Creation Leg 4 Part V: Knowledge, Education, and Growth -- the Learning Leg 4 Part VI: The Part of Tens 5 Icons Used in This Book 5 Where to Go from Here 5 Part I: The ABC''s of Balanced Scorecard 7 Chapter 1: Goals, Scores, and the Balanced Scorecard 9 Getting Familiar with Balanced Scorecard 10 Just what is Balanced Scorecard, anyway? 10 Leaning on the four legs of the scorecard 10 Achieving Organizational Balance 11 Analyzing Your Customers: Critical Leg 12 Knowing who you sell to 12 Focusing on future customers 13 Considering your internal customers 14 Following the Money: Foundation Leg 14 Measuring your financial health 15 Common mistakes made in finance 17 Tracking Your Internal Business Processes: Value-Creation Leg 18 Assessing the current state of your business 18 Installing effective measures for tracking processes 19 Anticipating your business''s future state 20 The top five process-tracking problems 20 Managing Company-wide Knowledge, Education, and Growth: Learning Leg 21 Understanding the importance of taking care of your own 22 Measuring knowledge, education, and growth 23 Staying on the right course in the fourth leg of the scorecard 25 Using Dashboards to Apply Balanced Scorecards to Your Business 25 Market, environmental, and technology considerations for your dashboards 27 Reviewing strategy, operational, and tactical scorecards and dashboards 28 Chapter 2: Building and Balancing Scorecard Strategies 31 Understanding How the Four Legs Interact and Link to Strategies 32 Putting strategies in the driver''s seat 32 Focusing resources on your strategies 33 Borrowing from Other Companies'' Success 34 Translating strategies into operational terms 35 Aligning your organization to the strategies 36 Making strategies everyone''s daily job 36 Turning strategic deployment into a continual process 36 Mobilizing change through your executive leadership team 37 Developing Your Strategy Map: A Balancing Act 38 Doing your mapping homework 38 Drafting the strategy map 39 Ensuring a Balanced Scorecard (And What to Do When Yours Isn''t) 40 Adapting to Changes in Your Markets or Business 43 Spotlighting external influences and their effect on your business 43 Recognizing early warning signals 47 Balancing in today''s environment -- a moving platform 48 Chapter 3: Planning For the Balanced Scorecard 49 Getting Your Planning in Order 49 Planning Your Work and Working Your Plan 51 Planning for the resources you will need 51 Garnering support from management and others 52 Building the Foundation and the Structure of a Scorecard 53 Stacking the building blocks for implementing a scorecard 54 Adding flexibility so you can adjust a scorecard for effectiveness 55 Contingency planning methods 57 Adding the Final Touches 58 Taking care of the details 58 Ensuring that your scorecard is fireproof 59 Performing a final inspection 59 Chapter 4: Putting Your Balanced Scorecard into Action 61 Deciding When to Launch Your Balanced Scorecard 61 The Scorecard passed the pilot, and everyone knows it! 61 The Scorecard is seen as genuinely adding value 62 Sustaining the Balanced Scorecard 62 Promoting the scorecard concept 63 Making scorecard the talk of the town 64 Cooking up the best time to launch 66 Mastering the Art of Communicating Your Balanced Scorecards 66 The view from the top: Senior executives 67 Surviving scorecards as a middle manager 68 Spreading the word from the front line 69 Avoiding communication pitfalls 70 Part II: The Customer -- The Critical Leg 73 Chapter 5: Understanding Your Role with Customers 75 Five Things You Must Know about Customers 76 Not all customers are created equal 76 Customers can go away 77 You must master the art of customer service 78 Customers watch you closely 79 Do right by your customer 79 Using Customer Info to Keep Your Customers Happy 80 Gathering info about your customers'' satisfaction levels 80 Being proactive to find out what your customers desire 82 Walking miles (and miles) in your customers'' shoes 84 Setting customer-based strategic measures 84 Linking Customer Measures to Your Strategies, Policies, and Plans 85 Developing customer strategies 85 Creating customer plans and tactics 86 Taking action when your customers don''t get what they want 86 Following Up With Your Customers for Adjustments 87 Chapter 6: Creating a Customer Scorecard 89 Zeroing In on the Right Customer Measures 90 Weeding out the wrong measures 91 Discovering customer measures that matter 91 Understanding customer loyalty 92 Taking customer measurements 94 Getting Dependable Data 96 Hocus, pocus -- the focus group 97 Asking all the wrong questions 98 Keeping data charts simple 99 Avoiding Interpretation Pitfalls 100 Drawing wrong conclusions 100 Communicating timely with your customers 102 Reading between the lines 102 Building the Customer Scorecard 103 Strategic-level scorecards 103 Operational-level scorecards 105 Tactical-level scorecards 106 Analyzing a Scorecard and Determining a Course of Action 107 Knowing which way to go 107 Making sure you stay on course 109 Chapter 7: Building the Customer Leg Dashboard 111 Customer Dashboard Fundamentals 112 Dashboard basics 112 Determining ownership and responsibility 113 Taking appropriate action: Who, when and how 114 Building the Customer Dashboard 115 Keeping-it-simple-style dashboards (KISS) 115 High-end dashboards with all the fluff 116 Just-in-time versus just-too-late dashboards 118 Tracking and Analyzing the Customer Dashboard 120 Figuring out who needs to know 121 Updating the customer dashboard 122 Drilling down to root causes 123 Part III: Financial Measurement -- The Foundation Leg 125 Chapter 8: Understanding Your Role in Financial Measurement 127 Five Things You Must Know About Financial Measurement 128 Your financial measures must be accurate and highly dependable 128 Your financial measures must truly reflect the value of your business 129 Your financial measures must cascade easily from top to bottom 131 Your financial measures must be easy to use and explain 132 Your financial measures must adhere to current regulatory and tax laws 134 Finding The Financial Data Gold Mines 135 Scratching the surface of a goldmine 135 Knowing your business equals leveraging your financial data 135 Using key measures to gain a significant competitive edge 136 Turning difficulties to your advantage 137 Measuring and Interpreting with Accuracy 139 Making sure the right people do your measuring 140 Using consistent and dependable measures 141 Avoiding measurement pitfalls 141 Turning Numbers into Information 142 Examining reporting pitfalls 142 Showing financial info simply 143 Linking Financial Measurements To Strategies, Plans And Tactics 144 Financial measurement is dependant on strategic focus 145 What you do depends on what you want 145 Using Failure Mode Effects Analysis (FMEA) to assess risk 146 Chapter 9: Building the Financial Leg Scorecard 149 Key Aspects of Financial Measures 150 Focusing on the right things 150 The WIIFM (What''s in it for me?) station everyone tunes into 151 Timeliness is your competitive edge 152 Financial Measures That Matter 152 Key questions help you see what to measure 153 Selecting key performance indicators (KPIs) 155 Tips for finding key measures 155 How measures differ 156 Ensure competitive success by revisiting measurement 158 Creating The Financial Scorecard 159 Select either a strategic, operational, or tactical level 159 Customizing your financial measures, and how to score them 160 Examining examples 162 A word or two (or three) about information management 166 Interpreting Financial Measures for Balanced Scorecards 168 Understanding scorecard financial measures, and what they tell you 168 Pointing toward additional information and insight 170 Structures for decision making from scorecard financial measure 171 Understanding the Essence of Accuracy 173 Oh no, the numbers are wrong! 174 The right numbers, the wrong analysis 174 Tracking the numbers by automatic pilot 175 Chapter 10: Building the Financial Leg Dashboard 177 The Basics of Financial Dashboards 177 Determining ownership and responsibility of the financials 178 An emphasis on real-time measurement and response 179 Taking appropriate action: Who, when,.