Quality in Practice: Using the Balanced Scorecard at the USPS
Jessica Casado
BSOP 588 - Managing Quality
February 11, 2014
Professor Richard Sheng
Since the beginning of time, companies are striving and working very hard, under a lot of stress, in order to survive and overcome the challenges they face day in and day out. For Managers, it can become even more challenging to execute tasks or make the most effective decisions for their teams as the competition increases. It requires the development of excellent business strategies and effective operations to deliver exceptional products and services. An original framework created by Drs. Robert Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and David Norton has helped managers and executives achieve a more 'balanced' view of organizational performance with the Balanced Scorecard. “The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business and industry, government, and nonprofit organizations worldwide to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organization performance against strategic goals.”
The balanced scorecard has many advantages that companies can use. These advantages include an emphases on future organizational performance (capabilities, resources, and business processes), customer satisfaction, and organizational growth and profitable results. Applying the balance scorecard, management is able to follow specific objectives and are able to evaluate the relationships and their cause and effect. Those objectives are obtained from the strategy implementation from the balanced scorecard. It is important to note that all four persp...
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...ding timely, reliable delivery. The USPS’s “balanced scorecard” performance management tool referred to as the CustomerPerfect! model. The model established performance and accountability measures relating to the customer, the employee and the business. Consequently, it facilitates the USPS in moving closer to its goals and objectives.
References:
Amaratunga, D., Baldry, D., & Sarshar, M. (2001). “Process improvement through Performance Measurement: the Balanced Scorecard Methodology.” Work
Study 50, no. 4/5, pp. 179–188
Norton, D. & Kaplan, R (1999). “The Balanced Scorecard: Measures that Drive
Performance.” Harvard Business Review, February, pp. 71–79 https://balancedscorecard.org/Resources/AbouttheBalancedScorecard/tabid/55/Default.aspx http://www.scribd.com/doc/47940666/Balanced-Scorecard-USPS
https://www.usps.com/search.htm?q=Strategic%20planning
Childcare organisations adopted the Balanced Scorecard as a tool to improve childcare quality. The Balanced Scorecard ensures the non-profit organizations to decrease gap between vague mission and strategy statements during daily operational activities.
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Tapinos, E., Dyson, R.G. & Meadows, M. (2005). The impact of performance measurement in strategic planning. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 54(5/6), 370-384.
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The Balanced Scorecard is a management tool used for strategic planning in business and industries to align activities with a vision and strategy. The tool is used in the organizational setting to improve communications (USAID,
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A Balanced Scorecard can be defined as a “performance management tool which began as a concept for measuring whether the smaller-scale operational activities of a company are aligned with its larger-scale objectives in terms of vision and strategy” (Wikipedia 2009, ¶ 1). Scents & Things will need to develop a balanced scorecard that will assist in meeting and help define the company’s values, mission, vision, and SWOT analysis. The balance scorecard is made up of four perspectives; financial, customer, learning and growing, and internal process. This paper will define each of the four perspectives objectives, performance measures, targets, and initiatives. The paper will also show how the perspectives relate to Scents & Things vision, mission, values, and SWOTT analysis.
The Balanced Scorecard has emerged in recent years as a performance measurement system in various organizations. This paper will discuss the origin and concept of the balanced scorecard and how it was first implemented. We will then review the criticisms on the balanced scorecard methodology as well as analyse the strengths and weaknesses of this performance measurement tool.
In a nutshell, performance measures quantitatively provide appropriate information on products and services and the production processes involved in them. Glavan (2011) elaborates that the balanced scorecard is perchance the most extensively used BMP framework among firms (p 3). This criterion was pioneered in 1992 by Robert Kaplan and David Norton and, according to Crossion and Needless (2011) originally concentrated on providing information on principal indicators of a business’s health as opposed to its traditional accounting measures (p 304). However, with time, the balanced scorecard improved its focus to instead measure the strategy of the business.
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