Balanced Scorecard templates - pros and cons, when it is necessary to invest in ready-to-use KPIs and when it is necessary to design own KPI

The decision of make or buy is something that we often encounter in business. The same dilemma is also prevalent when one has to decide whether he wants to invest in ready to use KPI templates or plans to design his own templates. The article attempts to explore the advantages and disadvantages of both the approaches and also highlights other salient points that on need to be aware off.

If you decide to design metrics yourself! - You will find a lot of information in google, but noone toolkit that will cover all how-to questions, give you checklists and insights. Save days of research, check BSC Toolkit. If you are under the pressure of time and right now you are not interested in investing your time in learning how to design KPI, then get ready-to-use KPI template. Want to start right with ready-to-use template? Then check commercial library of KPI templates. There template will be delivered as Excel file and file of BSC Designer, so you can start with simple Excel template and then, if necessary move to BSC Designer software.

Balanced Scorecard is a methodology, the success of which depends to a large extent on the appropriateness of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) posted on it. This conveys that the selection of the metrics has to be extremely careful and honest as even a small degree of compromise in any sense can send the whole workforce looking for a target that was never achievable.

Thus one has to take care of several factors, ‘being realistic’ being one of those. Moving ahead, in addition to paying attention to the fact that values assigned should be practical, one is required to zero in on only those parameters that are ‘worth getting counted’. This is to say that not everything that ‘can be counted’ should be taken inside the scorecard.

There has to be some useful criteria for filtering the available pool of indicators. Some of these can be ‘relevance’, ‘timeliness’, ‘specific’ and ‘actionable’. Looking at these in individual fashion, one gets to know that the indicator has to be related to the area being studied; one should be able to follow it in regular manner; it should be solely for the field being discussed and the user should be able to act on it.

Therefore, the parameters must be chosen in such a way that all the pre-set criteria are met to a sufficient degree. Once this job is established accurately, the user can be assured of setting a successful monitoring tool in place.

Stating it in other words, there are only pros attached to this 1990s born management strategy and no substantial con is visible apart from the need to revise the set of metrics at regular intervals.

Doing it on own or getting a partner for it

However, yet another choice that remains to be made relates as to who should be entrusted with this huge responsibility of designing this scorecard. One can either carry out this task on own or outsource it to some organization that specializes in it. There are a large number of companies that are involved in helping the other organizations construct a scorecard for themselves.

In case a group decides to design such a ‘set of metrics’ on own, an immensely detailed study has to be conducted for understanding the factors that play a part in success and failure of the processes. All these have to be dealt with, no matter how small their role in the current field is. Though this act will consume a lot of hard-work but the chances of the final product (BSC) fitting the operations are very high.

Moving on, in case the organization wishes to escape the troubles and hand over the task to an outsider, even that can be done by ‘outsourcing’ the job. Such a decision should be preceded by reflecting in clear manner the ‘desired’ requirements of outsourcer. In other words, though some other organization is doing the task of developing scorecard, a continuous follow-up of the proceedings should be in place. This will ensure that the outcome is maximally close to what was actually ‘needed’.