Advantages of BSC

Of course, there are no universal answers to these questions.  Every company is individual and thus requires individual approaches to evaluation of performance and productivity.  However, use of effective and well reputed performance management system is a must.  If you should communicate strategy with operational management and Balanced Scorecard is exactly what you need.

On the one hand, you can use balanced scorecard as a performance management tool.  Balanced scorecard evaluates key performance indicators in four categories: financial, customer, internal processes, learning and growth.  Each category has a number of indicators which characterize key success factors in a certain business area or direction.  As a result, you will have performance management evaluation index expressed in figures or percents.  But what is more important you will have figures measuring all key success factors.  Thus, it will be possible to locate week points in the work of the company.

4 perspectives of Balanced Scorecard

But if your task is to communicate operational in strategic management, or in other words, puts strategy into action, and at the same time evaluate current performance of the company, balanced scorecard it just an ideal solution.  Strategy maps will show cause and effect ties between different categories and indicators of balanced scorecard.  Thus, implementation of financial goals is impossible without improvements and implementation of strategic goals in customer or learning and growth categories.  This makes balanced scorecard a unique performance management tool.  At the same time, balanced scorecard is a great tool for strategic planning.

It is important to remember that balanced scorecard is not just and magic management system which all of a sudden solves any business problems.  Balanced scorecard will not substitute strategy either.  But it will surely help top managers and strategic planners to clearly see what should be done to drive company to its strategic goals.

Measurement of business product in a tea will give answers to many questions, including two once concern in implementation of the company strategy.

Critical success factors for competitive advantage

Some business owners use balanced scorecard to implement strategic goals while others use it as a measurement tool.  Very often, strategic goals concern improved financial results, like increase of market share, company value, net income and cash flow.  At the same time, balanced scorecard is very effective performance management tool that can evaluate business productivity.

It happens that business owners and top managers never know that their business can earn more than it currently does.  The company gets profits, employees get competitive salary, shareholders have sufficient return on their investments.  But all of a sudden, having used balanced scorecard for a while it turns out that the business can do more, and that company potential is not used by 100%.

What is an effective KPI?

Balanced scorecard is a great tool to locate strengths and weaknesses.  In such a way, both company top management and ordinary employees can understand what needs to be improved to implement strategic goals.

Balanced scorecard will create strategy maps which a very easy to read.  Just imagine that every employee in the company can understand peculiarity is of the company strategy.  Moreover, ordinary personnel can be aware of own contribution to implementation of strategic goals.  This is very important for an effective work of balanced scorecard.

In measurement of business productivity it is important to find the right indicators, also called key performance indicators.  If you measure secondary things you will operate secondary information which is nothing to do with critical success factors for your business.  That’s why, the right choice of KPIs is a precondition for success.  At least, top management will operate the right data and thus it will be able to make the right decisions.

It is important to remember that balanced scorecard is not a magic tool.  It will not substitute strategy, and it will not make decisions.  It is just a tool in humans hands.

What is the best way to see whether not the business is efficient?  Of course, it should be constantly monitored and evaluated.  Business evaluation mostly concerned measurement of financial indicators.  But these times are gone.  With the emergence of balanced scorecard it became understood that in order to improve financial indicators one should improve operational management.  On top of that, the company should necessarily have a comprehensive strategy.  Without a clear strategy it is impossible to achieve success.  This is like driving a car with the eyes closed.  You never know where you get in the next minute.

Major BSC implementation stages

Balanced scorecard helps in measurement of business productivity through evaluation of KPIs (key performance indicators) thus, linking company strategic vision with its operational management.  Balanced scorecard implementation is not as easy as it might seem at a first glance.  Lots of mistakes are made by managers when implementing and maintaining of this system.  These mistakes are quite typical and so they can be easily avoided.

One of the most common mistakes is thinking that balanced scorecard is a magic tool that can easily make an ordinary company into the most successful international business.  Well, this is not so.  Balanced scorecard is just a tool in the hands of people.  This leads to the second mistake which is lack of human resources.

Sometimes company starts implementing balanced scorecard without having people who are responsible for this.  It often happens that managers and ordinary employees are not interested to collect data and analyze it.  The personnel needs to be able to understand the company strategy and the way balanced scorecard works.  Without such understanding it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to gain positive results.

The most serious mistake is implementing balanced scorecard without a clear strategy.  In such a way BSC will fail and remain just a useless pile of documents and a headache for the personnel.

It is also important to find the right KPIs to be evaluated.  It is equally important to have the right number of them that each managerial level.

When all conditions are observed and no mistakes are made balanced scorecard turns into a great tool to measure business performance and productivity which approaches the company to reaching of strategic goals.

Avoid these mistakes

A few people would say that the factory industry is all but dead or dying in the United States of America and that the few that remain are the big corporations that are able to compete with the prices of imports. The fact is, factories are still very much present in the United States. Those that are currently present may not be like the old car assembly lines propagated by the great Henry Ford (most of those types of factories have moved out of the United States and into Asian or European Countries). No matter what the population of factories in the US today, they still use productivity metrics and benchmarks to determine their progress. It is also important to note that Factory productivity benchmarks are no longer just for the factory floor, but also for other services and jobs that produce output in relation to time spent performing them.

Factory Benchmarks are one of the easiest benchmarks to determine. It is easy because factories work on the output principle and productivity can easily be determined by the amount that a worker churns out in a given amount of time. Factory benchmarks may either be individual benchmarks involving one employee at a time or it may be a benchmark for the company as a whole. Output is not the only kind of productivity benchmark that factories live by; it wholly depends on company goals and objectives.

The Millionth or the Billionth unit produced in a given time span may be considered by a factory as their productivity benchmark or its gauge for success. But, again, this factor solely depends on what a company views as success. Some factories view the period where they remained accident free as their productivity benchmark. While others may consider the percentage of products imported or exported as a sign of success. Still some factories may take the individual output of their workers into consideration when determining success benchmarks. The types may be unending and differ greatly depending on what a company is and what it considers productive.

Factory Productivity Benchmarks are not only limited to the factory floor. It can also be used to determine success in office work. The number of invoices prepared by an individual may be seen as benchmark of productivity. In a lawyer’s case, it may take the form of how many cases he/she handled in the past year. For an ER doctor, it could stand for the number of sutures she had done in a span of 12 hours. Productivity Benchmarks for factories may be used in any other area as long as it is tweaked and adapted to whatever goals are set for that market.

As have been presented, it is now clear that benchmarks used to determine productivity in the Factory floor differ depending on what the company stands for or believes in. It may take the shape of employee output or accident free days. It has also been stated that Productivity Benchmarks found to be effective in Factories can also be relevant in other fields.

Measuring and increasing secretary productivity should be a two-way street between the boss and the secretary. No two parties should be different from each other if the said objective is meant to be achieved. Picture out a professional boss-secretary relationship. One is making an outline of the agenda for a meeting while the other is taking care of the logistics. The past decade has brought about a lot of changes to the conventional boss-secretary relationship.

At present, authority and major responsibilities are assigned to secretaries, whose tasks were then limited to the boss about a decade ago. Moreover, there has been a noted rise in the influence and prestige of secretaries who are chosen to fill executive positions, with fewer women willing to take on the role as career secretaries. Simply put, when measuring and increasing secretary productivity, it has to be noted that relationships between the boss and the secretary can change over time to meet certain demands in the business.

Moreover, measuring and boosting secretary productivity also have something to do with a secretary’s qualifications. Secretaries who really fit the bill are hard to find nowadays and may even be harder to become satisfied with their position for a given period of time. Like any other employee, secretaries also want to know whether they can grow and advance in their career. Current secretaries are motivated by, and take inspiration from success stories of former secretaries who are now holding top management positions. There are some companies, however, who do not recognize their need for advancement from their clerical posts and only provide low incentive for them, which could lead to lower productivity in secretaries.

The secretary should ideally be recognized as an important part of the management. For instance, when the boss writes a letter, it is the secretary that checks for grammar, punctuation and spelling and types it up well and neatly in order to present a highly professional appeal.  It is also the secretary that makes sure that the letter is delivered to the right recipient and when it ought to be sent. Both the boss and secretary take the responsibility for various parts of a given project – this requires joint effort. It should be a partnership, in which the secretary follows through the action that the boss initiates.

A true professional relationship requires both parties to be confident of the skills and contributions of one and both should learn to appreciate and respect each other. Secretaries view the boss, or act in a manner that implies such. To measure and increase secretary productivity, and thus enjoy potential perks of a boss-secretary relationship, it is important for the boss to know that their relationship is two-fold and that they cannot be able to achieve their common goal if they do not work together.

Higher remuneration may be the most immediate incentive in increasing secretary productivity, although this may not always necessarily be the be-all and end-all of such. Some form of relief from routine may also be a good incentive, as in the case of clerical work. For instance, you can assign decision-oriented and less than routinary work to secretaries who show themselves capable of managing them. Many secretaries, like most employees like to be acknowledged of their contributions in the corporate structure.

Productivity differs from one market to another and from one industry to another. Various industries may have the same measures in productivity, but no two industries have exactly the same set of measures in its entirety. Markets differ in categories and each of them comes with corresponding measures in increasing productivity. It is important to keep in mind that no matter what system or market is being examined, output is but the only aspect that is being measured. Output can come in different forms. It may be the quantity or the quantity of the items produced.

There are different measures in increasing research productivity of a business. For instance, if the nature of your business is in manufacturing, the measure of your productivity can involve the quantity of products that you are manufacturing. The total number of products manufactured can be known as your productivity level. Let’s say your business is in furniture manufacturing, specializing in the production of high end chairs with hotels and restaurants as your main target markets. Your company is able to sell up to, say 500,000 chairs in a span of five years. When gauging the productivity of your business, the result would be that you sell an average of a hundred thousand chairs per year.

Moreover, if your business is service-oriented, that which includes restaurants, hotels, bars and others, you can measure your productivity by the number of customer turnovers. This includes new customers coming in and out of your establishment. And because data involved in gauging a service industry’s productivity is quantitative, measuring it is fairly easy. You can also measure productivity through customer satisfaction, which can be quantified through customer questionnaires and surveys. Customer survey forms should be able to convert data from qualitative to quantitative. This can be done with the use of tabular checklist.

Moreover, if your business is in sales, your productivity measure can be done by measuring the sales performance of an employee or the entire company. Instead of accounting even the smallest item sold, you may want to calculate the total sales amount in monetary unit. This way, it will be easier for you to know how your company has performed in terms of sales. Let’s take a salesman selling appliances, for instance. He is not particularly focused by the number of appliances he sells but by its price. As a way to boost his sales performance or perhaps take his position in the company to a notch up, his sales strategy may be to press you to get a pricier model.

It is inevitable in business for markets trends to mix and mesh with one another. And these measures can be used to boost research activities to further boost your company’s productivity as well. Whatever the nature of your business, you can actually mix productivity measures if you find that your business might need more than one of the said parameters. However, you should make sure that these data mesh well together so you would not have a difficult time comparing them.

A lot of people may think it is easy being a personal assistant or secretary. However, this position is not as easy as it may seem. True, assistants merely comply with the instructions given by their superiors. But you can never discount the fact that there just may be tasks assigned or delegated by superiors can be quite difficult to some extent. Plus, there is also the fact that if you have superiors with busy work schedules, your very own work schedule as a personal assistant can very much be busy as well. Thus, you have to be ready to meet the demands of the job, and this can require you to be a multitasker at times.

So, how do you measure and increase assistant productivity? The concept of measuring the productivity of your personal assistant actually entails a number of aspects. First and foremost, you have to determine if your assistant has certain qualities and that very important positive attitude towards his or her work. Look at your assistant and try to assess his or her qualities. Is your assistant flexible enough that he or she can deal with the inevitable changes that would sometimes arise in any ordinary work day? And when there are so many changes to be plotted out in a day, is your assistant still able to work all of these out efficiently? If you can answer these questions with a strong “yes”, then your assistant is indeed flexible and productive in this aspect.

Another thing to look out for is the quality of initiative. Now, assistants do rely on the instructions that are given to them by their superiors. These instructions actually plot out their work schedules as well. Still, it would really help to have an assistant who has enough initiative to act on his or her own. Imagine being the superior and you would have to dish out every single task to your assistant. Working very closely with each other, your assistant should be able to develop a certain pattern in the tasks and responsibilities that come with the job. There should be particular tasks wherein your assistant would no longer need you to give out that particular instruction anymore. After months or years of plotting monthly meetings with board members or suppliers should give your assistant insights on how he or she can do the job more conveniently for both of you. This spells out much initiative.

Time management is also an effective tool to use in determining just how productive your assistant is. Your assistant does not just attend to the demands of her own job because he or she also attends to that of the superiors. Thus, it would be very important to have excellent time management skills at hand. If your assistant can work very efficiently when under pressure, then this is a strong indication of productivity.

Increasing assistant productivity is an easier concept to grasp. All you have to do is offer your assistant enough incentives and motivation, and things will surely run more smoothly for the both of you. This way, your assistant would be motivated enough to want to be more productive in every aspect of the job.

We all know that in the corporate world, training sessions are inevitable. This is true especially when there are new things to learn and upgrades to be made aware of. It is then of much import to make sure that these training sessions are indeed productive. So, how to you measure and increase training productivity? There is a simple process behind this, actually.

When it comes to measuring the productivity of training, there is only one thing to watch out for: the performance of the trainees after they have undergone their sessions. If you notice significant improvement in their performance, then you can say for yourself that your training sessions were indeed productive. However, if there is not much improvement, then the opposite of such can then be assumed. With that aside, let us move on to the methods of increasing the productivity of these training sessions. This way, you can bank on making these sessions as productive as they should be.

The first thing you have to remember is the trainer himself. This person actually makes a huge difference when it comes to the productivity of training. Not everyone can be a good trainer, you know. You have to have a certain level of charisma, mixed with wit and expertise on the subject matters involved, so that you can incite utmost attention and retention of information from your sessions. If you assign a trainer that has such qualifications, then you can be assured of productive training sessions.

The second thing is the organization of your training sessions. This actually pertains to the order of the topics tackled by your sessions. You have to make sure your sessions tackle topics that are related to one another. There must be a logical sequence to all of your sessions, so that the whole training process would not be just one giant pot of topics here and there. There must be connection from one topic to another. Trainees can actually retain more information if the sessions are presented this way, and productivity will surely be increased. Also, the topics should be presented in small chunks over a reasonable length of time. Do not bombard your trainees with too much information in a single session because this would only result to information overload. Chances are, your trainees would have difficulty processing all the information you have given them.

Lastly, it is important for the trainer to employ a positive tone or atmosphere for these training sessions. This way, you are sure to keep the atmosphere conducive for information retention. Your trainees would feel more encouraged to do their best in achieving all the objectives that have been set for the whole training process. More importantly, the trainees themselves can grasp more easily the logic behind these training sessions, and they will no longer need that push to perform well as expected.

By keeping these in mind, you can then measure and increase training productivity in your company. Just make sure your trainees are motivated enough and the primary purpose of holding these training sessions will surely be realized.

It is not easy being a webmaster. A lot of people think it would be so cool to become a professional webmaster, especially when it comes to the fact that you have absolute say on how a particular website would look like. But the job is not that easy at all. There are so many things entailed in being a webmaster. You have to be very familiar with web design standards, web design principles, HTML codes, CSS codes, and certain programming languages. Plus, web design and web development are just some of the basic responsibilities and tasks entailed with being a webmaster. You also have to be very familiar with search engine optimization and building site traffic. After all, what is the essence of building and developing a website if you do not really aim for the website itself to attract site traffic?

Of course, all of these and more can be achieved by any person. With hard work and determination, you can easily learn the basics in developing a website. Yes, there may be templates all over the web that you can use when you start developing and designing your website. But, as a webmaster, you will definitely feel that itch to develop and design a website from scratch, not from the usual templates you can easily find. Thus, hard work and determination are needed.

So, how do you measure and increase webmaster productivity? Measuring this is not really that hard to do. As mentioned above, webmasters should aim for the websites they develop to do well when it comes to search engine optimization. This means the websites designed should have high search rankings. Here lies the importance of developing links that can help build site traffic. Now, as a webmaster, you are not really burdened with the task of developing articles and such, to fuel traffic by means of the incorporation of relevant keywords and key phrases. This is no longer your job because this responsibility belongs to web content writers already. Still, you have to remember that these articles are uploaded on the websites that you develop. Thus, you have to make sure the interface of your website is user-friendly, that uploading these articles would be easier to do. Accessing your website should also be made easier so as to direct more traffic. If you can do this, then you are indeed productive as a webmaster.

Increasing webmaster productivity is another story. You cannot discount the fact that the advent of computer technology comes at a very fast pace. As a webmaster, you should then be constantly updated with the developments and upgrades of tools used for web design and web development. You should also be open to possibilities and change. Yes, you may have a distinct style with the designs you create for your websites. Still, you have to incorporate new concepts and new designs, so that your websites would not appear monotonous. You will surely have a lot of clients to attend to, and you would not want to give them the same designs for the website you develop, right? With constant updates on tools, software, and other applications, you will surely increase productivity as a webmaster.

For big companies, productivity may be measured in various highly complicated ways that employ the help of mathematical formulas. This is in order for them to have picture of how their company is doing. If you as an individual employee are looking to measure your own productivity level and you don’t want all the hoopla that your company is making, then this article is the right one for you. Here, you will be aided to determine your own productivity level through simple methods.

Before we start measuring your productivity levels, let us first look at what productivity really is. Productivity is the rate of output for every input (in this case – time). The units of output may differ from situation to situation, but time is always a constant. No matter what the output is (poetry, cars, billboards, etc.) Time will continue to remain the constant factor when it comes to productivity. The more output is produced for a constant period of time, the more productive something is.

So, let us now turn our focus into determining how productive you are as an individual in the workplace or in your personal life. Below are steps that you can follow to easily determine your productivity level.

Step one – Determine your units. It is helpful to know what you are working with. If for example you are wondering how productive you are in knitting scarves. Your units may be yards of finished scarf over an hour. Another set of units for the same example may be the number of scarves knitted in an uninterrupted 4 hour period. No matter what units you have, you can use the following examples as your guide to create your own units or what is often called metrics.

Step Two – Observation and Note Taking. During this step, all you have to do is to observe what your output is and to jot it down. The data that you gather at this step will be the determining factors to measure your productivity level.

Step 3 – The computation. This step need not strike fear in the non-mathematically inclined because this process only employs division and you can access the help of a calculator for this step. To start, take the number of output that you have gathered. Let us assume that you wanted to determine how many scarves you are able to finish in an uninterrupted 4 hour period. Let us say that the output is 40 knitted scarves in a period of 4 hours. What you need to do now is to divide the output which is 40 by the time it took you to finish it, which in this case is an uninterrupted 4 hours, and then we can determine that your productivity level is 10 scarves/ hour.

The units mentioned above may be replaced by any type of unit that you choose. Only the units should change while the process of measuring productivity remains the same. The results for productivity measurement may be used to maintain or to improve your productivity level and in turn your performance as a whole.