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The Balance in Balanced Scorecard
WIPRO TECHNOLOGIES






















Whitepaper POV The Balance in
Scorecard

WIPRO TECHNOLOGIES
Authors Name: Prosenjit Sen
TIS - Service desk


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The Balance in Balanced Scorecard
WIPRO TECHNOLOGIES


TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. The Balance in Balanced
Scorecard
2. What is a Balanced Scorecard?
3. Balanced Scorecard as a
Management System
4. How would the Balanced
Scorecard help a Service Desk?
5. The Balanced Scorecard


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The Balance in Balanced Scorecard
WIPRO TECHNOLOGIES
1. THE BALANCE IN BALANCED SCORECARD
The success of a business lies not only in managing the present operations in the most optimum manner but also in
formulating a roadmap for the future. It is imperative that the organization finds the correct balance between the
present operations and the future endeavors, as both are equally important. The best way to accomplish this balance
would be to manage a business through measurement, a measurement which would not only help the organization to
succeed today but would also pave the road to future success. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is such a tool which
facilitates the organizations sustained success.
This white paper clearly describes what a Balanced Scorecard is, its benefits and how it can be molded to facilitate the
application of BSC to the several Service Desk elements in Wipro Technologies.

1.1 WHAT IS A BALANCED SCORECARD?
The collision between the irresistible force to build long-range competitive capabilities and immovable object of the
historical-cost financial accounting model has created a new synthesis: The Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan.R & Norton.D,
1996, The Balanced Scorecard).
Simply put, the BSC helps an organization measure all the crucial levers which eventually propel it towards consistent
success. Previously only the financial aspects of the organization were measured, however with the onset of the
information age it became evident that the financial measure alone would not provide the requisite inputs for success.
The key reason for such a shortfall was the new set of operating assumptions on which the information age organizations
were built on.

1.2 BALANCED SCORECARD AS A MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Organizations would already have a performance measurement system in one form or the other. However the present
performance measurement systems are used only to provide tactical level feedback and control short-term operations.
The BSC on the other hand adopts a completely different approach to the performance measurement system. The BSC is
designed keeping the organizational Vision & Strategy at the very core. The measurement system is designed in such a
manner that all stakeholders within an organization are aware of how their individual actions facilitating the achievement
of the Vision.




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The Balance in Balanced Scorecard
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Balanced Scorecard Framework: Translating Strategy into Operational Terms

Financial Perspective: The BSC categorically states that the Financial perspective is extremely important to be
measured. However the measures in the scorecard should be modifeied as per the phase in which the organisation
resides. The different phases are Growth Phase, Sustain Phase and Harvest Phase. Thus, it is evident that each of the
stages requires own financial objectives which are dictated by requirements of a business life cycle. So, financial goals for
growth businesses include growth of sales in existing and new markets, from existing and new product. Sustain stage
implies traditional financial objectives such as operating income, ROCE, gross margin while financial objectives at harvest
stage focus on increasing cash flow.

Customer Perspective: One of the most important aspects which need to be looked into while preparing the BSC is the
customer perspective. The designing of the customer perspective enables organizations to align their core customer
measures such as satisfaction, loyalty, retention, acquisition and profitability to targeted customers and market
segments. It also helps the organizations to clearly identify the Value Proposition that would be offered to their
customers. The Value Proposition is core to the customer perspective as this represents the drivers and the lead
indicators. The following illustration would depict the relationship between the core measures of the Customer
Perspective.


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The Balance in Balanced Scorecard
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Customer Value Proposition is an extremely important part of a service or product that an organisation is offering its
clients. In this day and time where the cuctomer has a plethora of choice, one must stand out so as to ensure that your
product or service is the one picked by the customer. The generic model for customer value proposition has the three
following parts


Internal Business Processes: All organisations in one way or the other measure the efficiency of their processes and as a
result also go ahead and try and innovate so as to ensure they are in sync with their business enviornment. This approach
is good but piecemeal, it will help the organisation survive but would not ensure market leadership. The sharpest
difference between the usual measurement system and BSC is the focus on Internal Business process. The balanced
score card works toward enabling the organisation to outperform competitors on all business processes and not unique
processes. BSC ensures that innovation and improvement in the several processes is proactive rather than reactive. In the
BSC the objectives and measures for the internal business process perspective are derived from explicit startegies to
meet shareholder customer expectations. This sequential top-down process will ususally reveal entirely new processes at
which an organisation must excel. The three key business processes that comprise internal business processes are


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The Balance in Balanced Scorecard
WIPRO TECHNOLOGIES
Innovation
Operations
Postsale Service

The Internal Value Chain Model is depicted in the following illustration


Learning & Growth: The final piece of the BSC is the Learning & Growth perspective. The objectives identified in the
three previous stages identify where the organization must excel to achieve breakthrough performance. The objectives in
the learning and growth perspective provide the infrastructure to enable ambitious objectives in the other three
perspectives to be achieved. Objectives in the learning and growth perspective are the drivers of achieving excellent
outcomes in the first three perspectives.

How would the Balanced Scorecard help a Service Desk?
The BSC would prove to be useful in several ways to any Service Desk. The adoption of BSC would not only complement
the processes that are already in place within a Service Desk but the ensuing discussions would also bring out the key
performance measures and the desired outcomes (Lead & Lag Indicators).
Presently there are performance measurement systems which are being used across the Service Desk spectrum; however
these may or may not be aligned to the vision of the business.
One of the Top 3 players in the Service Desk Support
The implementation of the BSC in a Service Desk scenario would have the following key benefits:
1. The BSC would align all elements of the Service Desk towards the common vision. The elements may be
presently working internally for improvement but without a final holistic Vision. The BSC would create a shared
understanding across all of Service Desk.
2. The BSC would create a model of the strategy that allows all employees to see how they contribute to
organizational success. Without such linkage individuals and departments will only optimize the local
performance which may or may not facilitate the achievement of the Service Desk vision.


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The Balance in Balanced Scorecard
WIPRO TECHNOLOGIES
3. The implementation would highlight the key measures that would be instrumental in facilitating the
achievement of the vision. The unearthing of these measures would also ensure that consistent focus remains
on them and consequent checks would be done to see whether these measures need to be updated, changed or
dropped.
4. The BSC would also standardize the performance measurement system across all the elements of the Service
Desk. Even though the scorecards may not be mirror images for all elements but nevertheless there would be
significant similarities.
5. As the BSC takes the top-down approach the visibility of the Top Management during the design process ensures
that this initiative gathers enough momentum to be taken seriously and with requisite motivation.

Case Study: Implementation of the Balanced Scorecard in a Service Desk Environment
The following is an example where in a BSC was implemented in a service desk environment. This would facilitate the
easy understanding of how such a framework could be implemented. Also it would help understand the key features that
need to be focused on.The present measurement system for the concerned Service Desk already had strong measures for
the financial and customer perspective. However the current measurement system did not have any means of measuring
Learning & Growth and Internal Business Processes. The present measurement system is depicted in the following
illustration

The BSC was built on a detailed matrix of cause and effect relationships, which is called the Strategy Map. The strategy
map was jointly developed by the Top Management and the Service Desk delivery team. These cause and effect
relationships are the Blue Print of the BSC. These relationships essentially depict how each measure would impact the
achievement of the overall business strategy or vision. The following illustration depicts the Strategy Map.
Organizational
Vision &
Strategy
Financial
Learning &
Growth
Internal
Business
Processes
Customer


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Post the Strategy map was in place for the service desk the measure were put in place for the following the Internal
Business Processes and the Learning & Growth perspective. The following tables illustrate the objectives and the
measures decided.

Table 1.1: Measures to Gauge Internal Business Processes
Internal Business Processes
Objectives for Improvement Measures
Indicator
s
Incentiv
es
B
u
s
i
n
e
s
s

P
r
o
c
e
s
s
e
s

m
u
s
t

e
x
c
e
l

a
t

Business Processes (Quality)
# of Managers Attending Training for Six Sigma &
Lean
Lead
Intellectual and Business efficiency # of Projects being completed Lag
Business Processes at Grass Root
Level
# of "Kaizens" being registered Lag
Identify Opportunity Areas in Call
Handling
Audit Scores Lead
Reduce Transport Costs # Unscheduled Pick-Ups/ Drops & Cold calls Lead


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Table 1.2: Learning & Growth Measures

Post inclusion of these two perspectives the complete Balanced Scorecard which was implemented in the Service Desk
was as follows.


Meet SLA consistently Schedule Adherence Lead
Reduce Abandon rates
Unplanned Leaves / Schedule Adherence Team
every week Lead
Learning & Growth

Objectives to Measure Measures
Indicat
ors
Incenti
ves
A
c
h
i
e
v
i
n
g

E
m
p
l
o
y
e
e

S
a
t
i
s
f
a
c
t
i
o
n

&

G
r
o
w
t
h

Employee Interest # of People attending Training Lead
Dependability of Process on
Select few
# of Cross Trained Employees Lead
Employee Satisfaction
(Reasons)
# of Referrals / Employee / EOS Lag
Employee Satisfaction
(Reasons)
Tenure in the Organization Lead
Effectiveness Of Trainings
# of training hours attended/ Employee & Improved
Performance after Training
Lag
Employee Alignment with
Ethics
# of Ethics Violations Lead


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The Balance in Balanced Scorecard
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1.3 THE BALANCED SCORECARD

The weight ages attached to each factor could vary according to the requirements of the project.

Barriers to the Implementation of the Balanced Scorecard
Reinventing the Wheel: There are already present performance measurement systems in one form or the other in the
several elements of Service Desk. As a result of which the implementation of BSC may be looked upon as reinventing the
wheel. However as explained earlier in the paper that the BSC is not just another scorecard but a tool which facilitates
the penetration of the organizational strategy to all strata and ensures the achievement of the organizational vision.
Non Alignment of Vision and Strategy: The probability of a mismatch in the vision and strategy is quite likely, given that
there are multiple elements in Service Desk. It would be imperative that all the concerned elements are calibrated and
aligned to the overall vision.


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Involvement of Human Resources: The detailed implementation of the BSC across Service Desk would mean formulating
scorecards for the various elements. However the scorecards would only be effective when there is reward or reprimand
associated with the achievement or the non achievement of the measures entailed in the scorecard. Hence the scorecard
needs to be amalgamated with the human resource processes without which the success of the BSC would be under
doubt.
Data Credibility: In certain measures within the BSC, data would be needed. It would be of utmost importance that the
credibility of the data is unquestionable.

ABOUT WIPRO TECHNOLOGIES
Wipro is the first PCMM Level 5 and SEI CMMi Level 5 certified IT Services Company globally. Wipro provides
comprehensive IT solutions and services (including systems integration, IS outsourcing, package implementation,
software application development and maintenance) and Research & Development services (hardware and software
design, development and implementation) to corporations globally.
Wipro's unique value proposition is further delivered through our pioneering Offshore Outsourcing Model and stringent
Quality Processes of SEI and Six Sigma.
ABOUT WIPRO COUNCIL FOR INDUSTRY RESEARCH
The Wipro Council for Industry Research comprising of domain and technology experts from the organization aims to
address the needs of customers by specifically looking at innovative strategies that will help them gain competitive
advantage in the market. The Council in collaboration with leading academic institutions and industry bodies studies
market trends to equip organizations with insights that facilitate their IT and business strategies
For more information please visit www.wipro.com/industryresearch