Balanced scorecard

The Balanced Scorecard is a performance management tool for measuring whether the smaller-scale operational activities of a company are aligned with its larger-scale objectives in terms of vision and strategy. Organizations should instead also measure those areas where direct management intervention is possible.

By focusing not only on financial outcomes but also on the operational, marketing and developmental inputs to these, the Balanced Scorecard helps provide a more comprehensive view of a business, which in turn helps organizations act in their best long-term interests. 

This tool is also being used to address business response to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. In so doing, the early versions of the Balanced Scorecard helped organizations achieve a degree of balance in selection of performance measures.

Organizations were encouraged to measure, in addition to financial outputs, those factors which influenced the financial outputs. For example, process performance, market share / penetration, long term learning and skills development, and so on.