In order to manage, you need, after all,
to have an exact plan for some
any decent time ..
Bulgakov Master and Margarita
Formalize a strategy
I have already noted that often the company's development strategy is born, exists and dies in the heads of the owners and general directors of the company. If I managed to see a document called "marketing strategy" or "development strategy", then, by and large, it is a set of more or less coherent programmatic narrative postulates. In this case, it is very much that there is such a thing and it is to some extent communicated to the employees. There is a strategy, perhaps it works, but who in the company is imbued with its ideas and how it has been written is correlated with constantly situationally changing plans.
Formalization of the strategy will allow:
adjust visions of development vectors between the owner and his hired general director;
harmonize and approve a smooth investment program;
this kind of program is the basis for describing business processes in a company;
there is an opportunity for the final definition and consolidation of authority and responsibility at all levels of company management;
A program failure can be analyzed and steps can be taken to eliminate negative causes;
the company becomes attractive to investors and partners, due to an understanding of the goals, objectives and ways to achieve them;
Today, the Balanced Scorecard is, in the opinion of many experts, the most effective management system that allows linking the company's strategy with its daily functions.
Created in the early 90s of the twentieth century by Robert Kaplan and David Norton, the System of Balanced Indicators (SSP) is today a cutting edge of management, increasingly bringing together the concepts of "science to manage" and "the art of control."
What are the indicators?
MTP translates the mission and overall strategy of the company into a system of clearly defined goals and objectives, as well as indicators determining the degree of achievement of these installations within four main projections: finance, marketing (market activity), internal business processes, training and growth.
And why? It's simple, it is these 4 wheels in the form of structural units and "roll" any company to achieve goals. Using these projections, managers can answer the following key questions:
What company is presented to its shareholders and potential investors? (projection of finance);
What company is presented to its customers? (marketing projection);
What business processes should a company improve, on which ones should it be abandoned, which ones should it focus on? (projection of internal business processes);
How is the company developing, can it increase efficiency and what are the compensators for its weak points? (projection of learning and growth)
Why "balanced"
Do you know the fable about the swan, cancer and pike? And another fable about how marketing and finance and sales with accounting fell out, did you hear?
Of course, the company is a living and whole organism, and its health and health depends on how its components work together.
The evaluation criteria for all four projections of the scorecard are related. At the core of the chain of interaction is a causal relationship. So, if an increase in, for example, net profit from sales of products (financial projection) is declared as a fundamental goal (one of a group of goals), then the potential for increasing customer loyalty and increasing the number of customers are possible reasons for achieving this goal. already a marketing projection).
In turn, improving product quality, increasing the speed of processing orders, improving the quality of service (indicators reflected in the projection of internal business processes) are the primary cause of increased loyalty and growth in the number of customers.
There is another aspect ... not taking into account one of the indicators in a balanced structure inevitably leads to losses and disruptions in the work of the body of the company. For example, the growth in the number of new clients leads to an increase in accounts receivable, and the lack of working capital (due to the increased accounts receivable) will undoubtedly, through the lack of goods, affect the growth in the number of clients. Familiar? Still would!
New strategic management system
Summarizing what has been said, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the BSC gives the top management of the company a certain new management tool that translates the company's vision and strategy into a set of interrelated balanced performance indicators of the organization.
Using the MTP, managers are able to translate the vision of development into a strategy, a strategy into a set of tactical tasks for each division of the company, capable of planning a business and taking into account, planning and distributing resources
In addition, the heads of departments receive answers to basic questions: what is the contribution of my department to the cost of the final product of the company; what processes aretsya key in my division; what is the required level of staff skills and applied technologies now and tomorrow. As a result of using the PSC, the company's activities become more transparent and manageable.