This is the book -- by the recognized architects of the Balanced Scorecard -- that shows how managers can use
this revolutionary tool to mobilize their people to fulfill the company's mission. More than just a measurement
system, the Balanced Scorecard can channel the energies, abilities, and specific knowledge held by people though
out the organization toward achieving long-term goals. The authors demonstrate how senior executives in industries
such as banking, oil, and retailing are using the Balanced Scorecard to evaluate current performance and target
future performance based on financial and nonfinancial criteria like customer satisfaction, internal processes,
and employee learning and growth. They walk though the steps so that managers in any company can build their own
Balanced Scorecard, and they reveal how to use it to identify new processes for meeting targets. The Balanced Scorecard
is proof positive of the benefits of investing in the long term-in customers, in employees, in new product development,
and in systems-rather than managing the bottom line to pump up short-term earnings. It will change the way we do
business from now on.
The Balanced Scorecard translates a company's vision and strategy into a coherent set of performance measures.
The four perspectives of the scorecard -- financial measures, customer knowledge, internal business processes,
and learning and growth -- offer a balance between short-term and long-term objectives, between outcomes desired
and performance drivers of those outcomes, and between hard objective measures and softer, more subjective measures.
In the first part, Kaplan and Norton provide the theoretical foundations for the Balanced Scorecard; in the second
part, they describe the steps organizations must take to build their own Scorecards; and, finally, they discuss
how the Balanced Scorecard can be used as a driver of change.
"A landmark achievement."
-- Michael Hammer, author of Reengineering the Corporation
"Kaplan and Norton's pioneering Balanced Scorecard is required reading for those who seek to measure and
manage successful business strategy. A landmark in the art of management."
-- Richard E. Cavanaugh, President of The Conference Board and co-author of The Winning Performance.
