The best practices of using Balanced Scorecard Designer to measure and improve business performance for Finance

Description: This case study on Technika Forbes looks into the myriad advantages that a balanced scorecard approach provides to improving financial business processes.

Technika Forbes – Improving financial business performance with the Balanced Scorecard approach.

Technika Forbes is a Spain-based multinational corporation that offers financial services to several companies in Europe. The clientele base of the company is extended to six countries across the Western Europe, and it enjoys a notable reputation in the financial services domain throughout the region. Each subsidiary of the company has a Regional Manager (RM) as head, with all RMs reporting to the General Manager (GM) of the company who is based in the company’s headquarters in Spain. In the second half of 2008, precisely at the onset of global economic recession, the company decided to revamp its business performance by introducing a couple of key changes in its overall organizational and operational structure. This very notion of tracking and bolstering up the business performance triggered the need of an apt business performance tool. The RMs Board met to decide upon the most suitable business performance tool to address their requirement and eventually made a consensual decision to opt for Balanced Scorecard Designer for the purpose.

The entire case study of Technika Forbes can be comprehended under the following four sections::

• The Client need.
• Procedures followed.
• Challenges met.
• Outcomes obtained.

• The need to conduct a pan-Western European transformation drive through restructuring organizational and operational infrastructure.
• To devise a functional management system that can offer the decision makers most suitable, correct and timely information to help them in making useful decisions to optimize the business performance.

The company planned the transformation drive extremely well by bringing all its six branches under two units, each containing three subsidiaries. The move, in addition to trimming the operational costs down, also aided better interaction among its employees. This interactive framework helped the company to set up better communication between various intra-organization management teams.

The whole process of designing Balanced Scorecard software for improving business performance took a couple of months to complete. This is because of the six training sessions conducted within a gap of one week between the two sessions. In case of Technika Forbes, the company already has had prior exposure to the Balanced Scorecard, as it had already used in its Retail Arm. This previous experience helped implementation of Balanced Scorecard to a certain extent. But the new workforce and the employees out of the Retail Division needed to be trained aptly in using the system.

The process kicked off by forming a project team for carrying out the designing task efficiently. The team included experts of Balanced Scorecard Designer, as well as proficient representatives from the client’s organization. After getting don with the preliminary team building procedure, the process was driven in manner;

• Training Sessions
  Full-fledged training sessions were conducted to help the management teams understand the concept better. These sessions include defining necessary standard vocabulary of the system in a lucid way to aid smooth flow of information within the organizational framework. The Balanced Scorecard in this case was essentially designed to disseminate and watch over delivery of strategic goals, and the training sessions resolutely focused on providing guidance to achieve this purpose.
• Developing a Management Information Centre
  The next step included establishing a Management Information Centre to help management teams rake in relevant and precise information for the decision makers. For this, a team within the organization was formed to monitor the flow of information within the organization. The team was also responsible to review the information collected from various sources and present suggestions to the decision makers on the basis of its reviews.
• Post-Development Training
  After designing the required Balanced Scorecard, the workforce was trained to use it properly to make the most out of the system. In a bid to get this done appropriately, an in-house Balanced Scorecard maintenance team was identified and assigned with task of maintain the system well and bring upon necessary changes whenever required.

Challenges Met

• Re-establish the utility of Balanced Scorecard as an effectual tool
  Since Technika Forbes had already been familiar with Balanced Scorecard, some managers from the company had their pre-conceived notions about the worth of the concept. This was essentially due to inefficiency of the Balanced Scorecard software used earlier, coupled with limited knowledge on the comprehensive impact various forms of the applications the tool have on the design procedures necessary for their proper development. The challenge was effectively met and the significance of Balanced Scorecard as a handy business performance gauging tool.
• To bring in various discrete management teams together to set up an effective communication channel
  The most challenging task was to integrate various culturally distinct teams together, and help them identify overall corporate objectives as their shared agenda. The challenge was addressed in an effective manner to help the company communicate its objectives and initiates in an easier way.

Outcomes Obtained

• The company now has an amicable interaction framework to communicate its goals and objectives better. Furthermore, the Management Information Centre developed during the designing procedure is proving to be instrumental in keeping its information collection activity purposeful and helping in intellectual capital development.
• The Balanced Scorecard has been turning out to be an effective tool in aiding the company to convey the strategic direction as well as setting high-level benefits.
• The system further enabled employees to understand their individual contributions in overall productivity of the organization, which in turn, paved way for more proactive involvement of employees in materializing corporate goals. In fact the financial advisory services of firm showed rapid improvement once the BSC approach was implemented.

Using the BSC approach proved to be rather beneficial to Technika Forbes and some key insights that can be obtained from this study include:

• A BSC approach is possibly amongst the very few management techniques that can successfully device a performance and evaluation framework in a financial services firm.
• Financial services firms can look to use the BSC approach to streamline processes and improve employee coordination in delivering financial services to clients in a responsive manner.