OVERVIEW

A new method of scorekeeping has evolved out of the need for businesses to manage in the information age. Traditional cost management and the generally accepted accounting principles model of accounting and financial reporting have had their impact diminished as relevant tools to guide managers. Employee empowerment drives the need for nonfinancial metrics to help monitor the effectiveness of business strategy and its execution. Balancing the multiple perspectives of business focuses on utilizing alternative views of the organization by looking through a multipurpose lens. This effectively executes a vision that represents the core capability of the scorecard and the reason for its emergence as a meaningful management tool.

Today s pace of innovation and productivity has literally exploded, creating new demands and requirements for organizations. The customer is a new force in the marketplace driving the way business must compete to survive. Traditional accounting tools are not effective in measuring the impact of the customers and their requirements. Companies are forced to develop relationships to retain existing customers and engage new customers in new markets at the same time. This drives the necessity to introduce innovative products and services at an accelerated rate of speed. The new customer requires customized, high-quality products produced at the lowest cost and delivered on time.

These new competitive pressures require companies to access the maximum benefit from their employees in order to achieve the required improvement in processes, quality, and customer response time. Never before have companies and their employees had to deploy and...