BSC and Benchmark Development for an E-Commerce SME
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1 BSC and Benchmark Development for an E-Commerce SME by Prof. Dr. Robert C. Rickards The Leipzig Graduate School of Management Handelshochschule Leipzig Leipzig, Germany Email: robert.rickards@hhl.de and Hochschule Harz Wernigerode, Germany Email: rrickards@hs-harz.de October 2004 Word Count (Text): 9,194 2 Professional Biography Prof. Dr. Robert C. Rickards teaches controlling, accounting, and international management at the Leipzig Graduate School of Management in Leipzig, Germany, and the Hochschule Harz, in Wernigerode, Germany. Keywords Balanced scorecard, Controlling, E-commerce, Performance evaluation, Small- and medium-sized enterprises, Strategic management Abstract Case Study Purpose To report how an SME developed strategic and operational balanced scorecards as well as benchmarks for use in e-commerce. Design/methodology/approach The report begins with the initial management meeting, in which participants set goals for the firm, specified causal linkages among those goals, and identified appropriate strategies for attaining them. It then explains the perspectives chosen to structure the balanced scorecards. Next, it summarizes results from analyzing proposed operational goals, concrete actions, and key performance indicators to ensure inclusion of all potentials for growth. The report gives concrete examples of how management ...
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| Publié par | Vyom |
| Nombre de lectures | 25 |
| Langue | English |
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BSC and Benchmark Development for an E-Commerce SME by Prof. Dr. Robert C. Rickards The Leipzig Graduate School of Management Handelshochschule Leipzig Leipzig, Germany Email: robert.rickards@hhl.de and Hochschule Harz Wernigerode, Germany Email:rkcirsdra-sh@harz.de October 2004 Word Count (Text): 9,194
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Professional Biography Prof. Dr. Robert C. Rickards teaches controlling, accounting, and international management at the Leipzig Graduate School of Management in Leipzig, Germany, and the Hochschule Harz, in Wernigerode, Germany. Keywords Balanced scorecard, Controlling, E-commerce, Performance evaluation, Small- and medium-sized enterprises, Strategic management Abstract Case Study Purpose To report how an SME developed strategic and operational balanced scorecards as well as benchmarks for use in e-commerce. Design/methodology/approach The report begins with the initial management meeting, in which participants set goals for the firm, specified causal linkages among those goals, and identified appropriate strategies for attaining them. It then explains the perspectives chosen to structure the balanced scorecards. Next, it summarizes results from analyzing proposed operational goals, concrete actions, and key performance indicators to ensure inclusion of all potentials for growth. The report gives concrete examples of how management bundled proposed goals and actions into projects, budgeted them, and committed responsible actors. In addition, it describes how the firm used balanced scorecard development to institute a continuous learning process, while providing feedback to various stakeholders both within the firm and across its parent holding company. Findings For many small and medium-sized enterprises, the development, introduction, and use of BSCs and benchmarks certainly seem feasible. Although relatively few have done so thus far, the managers of these firms likely would find it worthwhile to analyze their businesses on the basis of BSC-perspectives. Originality/value This report covers step by step the successful implementation of BSC and benchmarking methodologies in an e-commerce firm, while overcoming many of the handicaps associated with doing so in SMEs.
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Introduction This article results from the effort to develop strategic and operational balanced scorecards (BSCs) for a real, medium-sized firm engaged in e-commerce. Although various journals already have published numerous reports about the success of BSCs in large corporations, they have contained relatively few details and little discussion of the problems encountered (PwC Deutsche Revision, 2001; Speckbacher and Bischof, 2000)[1]. Furthermore, they have ignored small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) generally[2] as well as e-commerce firms in particular[3]. The present study addresses all these shortcomings. As promised management before the research began, the study fictionalizes the field of business involved and uses some altered data in order to maintain the subject firms anonymity. The article thus presents important analytic insights without revealing facts management wants to remain confidential. For the purposes of this article, the firms name is Eurostove. It is a wholly-owned, locally-managed, German subsidiary of a small American holding company owned by a single proprietor. Eurostoves business is designing and installing woodstoves, built around patented burning chamber technology. The technology produces heat from a cheap, renewable resource in a highly efficient and environmentally friendly fashion. Specializing initially in home heating stoves sold from a traditional showroom in the Harz Mountains, the firms business quickly expanded to include cooking stoves, stoves for non-residential buildings, and stove-related services. It also established a Website, on which it began offering these woodstoves for delivery and installation throughout Europe. In 2003, its fourth year of business, Eurostove had over 200 employees. Its budget called for selling 46,500 woodstoves that year and it projected sales of 69,000 units in 2004. To deal with the demands of the firms quick growth, managers and employees were working 10-14-hour days. For their part, the managers spent most of their time putting out fires. Accordingly, they had little time to think systematically about balanced management or strategy or even about current operations. That concerned both the firms American owner and the loan officer at the local German bank, which was the firms chief source of external financing. After several pointed questions from the bank officer when processing a loan renewal application, Eurostoves managers realized they had to agree on common goals and appropriate strategies for attaining them. In addition, they had heard about the increasing use of BSCs as management tools in many companies. They wanted to know more about specific relationships the management of a firm like theirs ought to take into consideration in its decision-making. For them, a balanced scorecard was not to be an instrument just for reporting to their bank and other external parties, but also a guide to the future strategic and operational development of their business. Finally, they wondered if it wouldnt be possible to attain cost savings through appropriate use of BSCs. So the task at hand was not only to develop strategies on which to base balanced scorecards, but also to use BSCs to implement those strategies. Eurostoves managers already had thought and done a lot for the firms future. As a consultant to their company, the author proposed a management workshop as an investment in that future. The banks pressure for introduction of some form of strategic controlling, together with the requirements imposed by recent German legislation on risk management (Institut der Wirtschaftsprüfer,1999; Naumann and Zeis, 2000), served as further incentives to accept this proposal.
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Accordingly, a three-day retreat for all Eurostove personnel with managerial responsibilities took place. It aimed at developing (1) strategies to guide the firms long-range development, together with a strategic balanced scorecard for reporting to management, and (2) operational balanced scorecards for project-oriented, short-term, internal reporting and decision-making along the way. This article describes the development and implementation of Eurostoves BSCs. It begins by briefly outlining the balanced scorecard methodology, the utility of BSCs for controlling, and some problems small- and medium-sized enterprises tend to have with both controlling and balanced scorecards. The article explains how a management work group specified the firms goals and identified strategies for attaining them. Next, it discusses the perspectives, operational goals, concrete actions, and key performance indicators (KPIs) included on the firms various BSCs. The article then tells how management bundled these goals, actions, and KPIs into projects and obtained the necessary commitments for their implementation. It also recounts the initiation of a self-sustaining learning process. Following presentation of (1) Eurostoves strategic balanced scorecard and (2) a BSC for comparisons across subsidiaries within the holding company, the article closes with insights into the use of BSCs by SMEs. The BSC Methodology The increasing use of balanced scorecards (BSCs) is changing the way top managers run their companies. When envisioning a firms future development, they no longer focus chiefly on monetary success indicators in the financial area. Instead, they now also devote roughly equal attention to non-monetary variables in three (or more) other areas. Those areas typically involve customer relations, business processes, and employees. In addition, the use of BSCs has encouraged executives to be more explicit about the causal linkages they assume to exist among both hard (financial) and soft (non-financial) variables. Figure 1 depicts these four perspectives, together with potentially interesting variables and the causal linkages assumed among them on a strategy map for a hypothetical balanced scorecard. Take in Figure 1 from Portquer.doc here The expanded focus resulting from introduction of BSCs has major consequences for controlling and management accounting staffs. To help top management realize its visions, these staffs are assisting in developing appropriate strategies, setting new goals, establishing standards or benchmarks, measuring progress, and reporting results pertaining to both monetary and non-monetary variables[4]. Hierarchical Management and Implementation of the Balanced Scorecard From the outset, it is important to be mindful of the different roles various levels in the management hierarchy have to play in developing and using BSCs. Based on its vision, executive management sets overall, strategic goals for a company in each of the balanced scorecards areas (Kaplan and Norton, 1996). Together with the controlling and management accounting staffs, top management subsequently identifies variables crucial to the firms success in each area and establishes standards or benchmarks for them. In this fashion, an enterprises executives construct a common, numerical, strategic indicator system for use throughout the company.
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Thereafter, decision-makers in the firms various operating units adopt measures to attain the strategic goals top management has set for them. Again working with the controlling and management accounting staffs, these midlevel managers adapt the overall strategy to the individual circumstances of their respective units. They also flesh out the strategic indicator system with additional, unit-specific, operational goals, variables, and standards or benchmarks. Once implemented, periodic reviews then assess scorecard results with regard to both top managements strategic vision and unit operations (Olve, Roy, and Wetter, 2000). The Balanced Scorecards Utility for Controlling A BSC enhances the quality of a firms controlling system in numerous ways. First, through choice of appropriate variables, the balanced scorecard can incorporate many familiar management principles in a single instrument. Among others, these principles may include elements of: customer-oriented organization; employee empowerment; just-in-time production and logistics; lean management; a learning organization; reengineering; risk management; stakeholder management; time for innovation; time management; total quality management; and value-based activity management. Second, with a BSC, the controlling systems focus expands beyond the analysis of historical financial data. By encompassing a broader view of the companys goals, the controlling system at once becomes more balanced and more future-oriented. That is because customer relations and the quality of business processes as well as employee commitment and capacity for innovation will influence the enterprises success in coming years. By giving early warning, the controlling system helps managers to detect potential business threats in time to initiate effective countermeasures. Third, by providing for disaggregation via the organizations hierarchy, a BSC ensures that top managements strategic goals pervade the entire enterprise (Brabänder and Hilcher, 2001). At the same time, though, subordinate managers can tailor the BSC to their respective units by adding operational goals, variables, and indicators as needed. That establishes a flexible, formal interface between the firms strategic and operational controlling. Moreover, with a balanced scorecard, managers easily can direct their attention to those variables affecting the companys success at any given organizational level. Fourth, the empirical information reported on BSCs makes progress toward goal attainment readily apparent. Assuming management and the controlling staff (1) disaggregate and (2) quantitatively measure the strategic and operational goals, numerical indicators, and standards, this information also facilitates performance comparisons among an enterprises various units and across firms. Problems with SMEs Controlling Systems and BSC Methodology Overall, the strategic component of controlling systems is less well developed in SMEs than in large enterprises (Legenhausen, 1998; Henschel, 2003; Franke, Gotta, and Böckmann, 2000). The reasons for this underdevelopment lie on the one hand in SMEs more limited management structures and financial resources (Szyszka, 2003). Due to these limitations, strategic planning in SMEs often takes a backseat relative to operational aspects of their business (Böhm, 1999). Their managers may deal regularly with risks, especially in the areas of marketing, business processes, finances, and law (Henschel, 2003). However, they
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typically have just a two-year planning horizon hardly enough time for strategic opportunities and risks to become apparent. On the other hand, the relative weakness of the strategic component in the controlling systems of SMEs also results from their fields of business. SMEs usually serve market niches (Legenhausen, 1998) or have limited customer groups and product assortments (Wüpping, 2003; Tscheulin and Römer, 2003). If their controlling systems focus on these market segments, then they will tend to overlook opportunities and risks lying elsewhere. Furthermore, insofar as an SMEs controlling system concentrates on analyzing hard short-, term financial data, it neglects the soft, long-term non-financial variables that are leading indicators of such risks and opportunities. Finally, the involvement of an SMEs top management personnel in its daily operations may allow it to react more flexibly to changing conditions than a large firm. Yet, this short-term flexibility seldom compensates for the SMEs deficits with regard to appropriate strategic controlling (Neumann-Szyszka, 2003). These deficits are particularly evident in situations marked by discontinuity like a change in ownership or top management, consolidation in the aftermath of a period with strong growth, or a sudden operational crisis. As explained above, the BSC methodology addresses all these problems with the controlling systems of SMEs. Accordingly, development and implementation of balanced scorecards would appear to have much to offer small and medium-sized enterprises, especially those firms engaged in e-commerce. Nevertheless, a recent survey showed that fewer than 4% of German SMEs use this instrument (Treuz and Creutzburg, 2002)[5]. Specifying Goals and Identifying Strategies Initial sessions at a three-day retreat for Eurostoves 14 executives involved brainstorming directed at balanced scorecard development. What must one do in particular to specify the firms goals and identify its strategies? With the authors assistance as moderator, the participants accepted five principles. First, all discussions had to be goal-oriented. Second, everyone present had to participate in these discussions and any proposal-making. Third, participants would seek simple structures and, fourth, numerical key performance indicators in order to render their decision-making more transparent. Fifth, all efforts had to concentrate on the most important matters. The first product was a specification of the firms goals: We shall become and remain Europes Nr. 1 firm for manufacture and distribution of efficient, environmentally friendly woodstoves. Our mission is for customers to know that by contacting Eurostove.net they will get the woodstove they want, made to order, promptly delivered, and properly installed. Next, came the identification of strategies for reaching these goals. Retreat participants asked themselves, what potentials they needed to tap and what activities were best-suited for doing so. They also took advantage of Eurostove.nets existing relative strengths. Ultimately, their efforts produced three strategies that they wanted to pursue simultaneously. Because the firm had established an attractive Website early, it already enjoyed frequent site visits, which generated an important portion of Eurostoves orders. Hence, the management group decided to push the firms presentation on the Web and to measure the success of this first strategy by the number of Internet orders received.
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The firm also already had a loose network of local partners throughout central Europe, who installed the delivered woodstoves. As its second strategy, Eurostoves management group resolved to formalize the firms relationships with its best partners and to increase the quality of those partners work by qualifying them. Eurostove would allow its qualified partners to use its logo and to refer to themselves as logo partners. The success measure here would be the number of customer complaints. As a potentially interesting firm in the New Economy, the management group chose as its third strategy accessing alternative financing through an initial public offering (IPO) of Eurostove shares on a major stock exchange. Making an IPO, though, would involve meeting the necessary requirements for an exchange listing. The success measures selected for this purpose therefore were the essential milestones in converting the firms accounting system from the GermanHandelsgesetzbuch(HGB) to either U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (USGAAP) or International Accounting Standards (IAS) and completing the mandatory documentation. BSC Perspectives and the GAK-Principle Further discussion in the executive group identified six perspectives, each with one or more appropriate strategic success indicators, as generally important for Eurostove[6]. These perspectives and key performance indicators were: customer (order rate and average order size); business process quality (number of processing errors); employee (degree of competency attained); finance and controlling (degree of internal financing); partner organizations (degree of integration with Eurostove); and external communication (personal partner contacts). For each of these strategically important perspectives, the management group also developed operational goals and concrete supporting actions to facilitate goal attainment as well as both leading and lagging indicators measuring progress in the desired direction. Altogether the management group identified over 250 such operational goals, each linked with both a specific concrete action and an appropriate key performance indicator[7]. This activity occupied the entire second day of the management retreat. To determine what had to be done in order for Eurostove to reach its strategic and operational goals, it proved useful to analyze proposed concrete actions by answering the following four questions. 1. Which strategy does this action support? 2. To which perspective does this action pertain? 3. What operational goal will this action help attain? 4. Which KPI should measure this actions result(s)? The executives answered these questions by applying the so-called GAK-Principle (goals, actions,k is particularly useful in finding KPIs for softey performance indicators). It factors. For example, motivation is a difficult factor to measure, as long as one talks about it abstractly. But no firms management is interested in motivation generally, motivation for everyone and about everything. With a little reflection on the strategic or operational goals and actions for which management needs it, though, one easily can recast the abstract concept of motivation in a more concrete form. It then becomes the motivation of employees to use a suggestion box, their willingness to participate in independent work groups, their active
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involvement in training or further education programs, and so forth. Once the goals and the actions are concrete, the choice of appropriate key performance indicators no longer is so difficult. Here, for example, the KPIs might be the number of suggestions submitted, the number of participants in independent work groups, and the proportion of employees undertaking training or further education, respectively. Regardless of perspective, there are two kinds of strategic and operational KPIs. So-called core key performance indicators measure results achieved. As lagging indicators, they have little utility for controlling or steering the course of a firms future development. Core KPIs for, say, the customer perspective usually are indicators like market share, customer profitability, new customers acquired, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction. In contrast, KPIs measuring the product and service characteristics customers consider to be especially important are leading indicators because they drive results. For example, it is a products functionality, quality, price, and delivery date, customer relations accessibility, competence, reaction speed, and service, a firms image and reputation that lead to customer loyalty and satisfaction in a target market and thus to growth. One doesnt need a business administration degree to understand that accordingly there ought to be a high correlation between leading (result-driving) KPIs and lagging (result or core) KPIs. Clearly, the management group needed to identify these result-drivers and verify their causal relation to Eurostoves core key performance indicators as well as its strategic and operational goals. Leading KPIs only deserve their name when, at an early stage, they presage future developments and results. Otherwise, all one really has to guide a firms growth are good or bad gut feelings! Of course, the executives nonetheless had to find both leading and lagging indicators because verification of causal relationships requires balance in their numbers. Moreover, they needed to find both kinds of KPIs for each of the six BSC-perspectives. Eurostoves BSC-Perspectives BSC-perspectives serve the primary purpose of ensuring that one doesnt overlook any important, relevant potential for a firms growth. Kaplan and Norton (and many consulting firms), talk mostly about four perspectives (finance, customers, internal business processes, employee learning and development). Yet every firm has unique characteristics and special potentials. Hence, it seemed perfectly reasonable for Eurostoves executives to identify six perspectives from which to view its strategies, operational goals, concrete actions, and corresponding KPIs. In the case of Eurostoves management group, the identification of concrete actions and KPIs took place in small working groups. That way everyone had the opportunity to contribute suggestions and to speak his or her mind. Almost immediately a controversy arose concerning the relative importance of the various perspectives. As one participant queried, After all, isnt the financial perspective, the most important one? Here it was helpful to refer back to the stated strategic goals of all entrepreneurial activity at Eurostove. To become and remain Europes Nr. 1 provider of woodstoves, earning an acceptable return on investment (ROI) would be just one result of the firms work. As such, it would be a necessary, but in itself an insufficient operational precondition for reaching
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Eurostoves strategic goals. The executives then realized that all six proposed perspectives were important in that regard and why, lacking evidence to the contrary, one should weight them (at least roughly) equally. The Customer Perspective The primary use of a firms financial resources, business processes, and employees work time should be to offer customers solutions to their problems. This assertion is rather banal, but the initial overemphasis retreat participants placed on the financial perspective underscored a problem Eurostove shared with many other firms: sensitivity to the customer perspective was not especially high. For precisely that reason, the executives began to ask themselves what the firm could do to increase the total number of orders, the share of Internet orders in total orders, and the average order size. What were the critical success factors relating to the customer? The managers identified eight such factors. Placed along a continuum from most leading to most lagging factor, they were: service and product characteristics; image and reputation; customer service; customer satisfaction; customer loyalty; new customer acquisition; customer profitability; and market share. Applying the GAK-analysis to product and service characteristics, the group decided on quick and proper installation of the made-to-order woodstove at the customers location as an operational goal. The corresponding concrete action was to reduce the number of assembly elements involved in an installation. Its key performance indicator was simply the number of assembly elements. The group also agreed that the operational goal, concrete action, and KPI pertained to implementation of the firms second (local partner) strategy. The discussion of this operational goal initially focussed on the firms need for many decentralized regional or local partners, who, without much training, could install a customers woodstove quickly and correctly. However, the discussion soon digressed to the question of whether the operational goal and the concrete action didnt have more to do with the business process perspective rather than the customer perspective. After all, some participants argued, both the goal and the action relate to the defect rate. The managers thus needed clarification of the purpose of grouping goals and actions beneath the rubric of a particular perspective. The grouping merely serves to ensure that decision-makers take all the firms important aspects and relevant potentials into consideration, that they neither forget nor overlook anything of significance. With regard to the case in point, the goal and contemplated action obviously are in the customers interest. Nevertheless, they also clearly involve Eurostoves business processes. Alternatively, one could group them under the employee perspective, because competent employees develop simple and cost effective solutions to customers problems. The reference to cost-effectiveness, though, conceivably could lead to a grouping beneath the finance and controlling perspective. However that may be, it is much more important to identify all relevant strategic and operational goals, concrete actions, and KPIs than it is to put them into the correct box of a particular BSC-perspective. Reassured that they were on the right track, the retreat participants next applied the GAK-Principle to offering customers free measurement by a regional/local partner. The corresponding concrete action required a change in the way Eurostove compensated its regional/local partners. They now were to receive an additional flat fee for taking the
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requisite measurements in connection with a customers order as well as a commission on increases in the orders amount. The key performance indicator was the proportion of orders filled, for which regional/local partners had made the measurements. Again, the operational goal, concrete action, and KPI pertained to implementation of the firms second (local partner) strategy. The accompanying discussion showed managers understood how disappointing and frustrating it could be, when installation of a woodstove proved difficult because the customer had made incorrect measurements. To minimize such disappointment and frustration, Eurostove would offer customers a free, professional consultation by a regional/local partner. The partner would make the measurements during the consultation and receive a flat 50 fee from Eurostove for providing the service. Because a consultation also often ends with modifications in the customers order, which increase the order amount, the managers furthermore agreed to institute commissions for partners based on the amount of the increase. The third application of the GAK-Principle was to increase the degree of recognition of Eurostove.nets portal address. The proposed concrete action was the placement of small advertisements in regional newspapers, while the number of ads placed was the key performance indicator. This time, though, the operational goal, concrete action, and KPI related to implementation of the firms first (i.e., its Web presentation) strategy. An target group study previously had revealed that rural homeowners constituted an especially interesting market for Eurostove. The executive group concluded that placing small, and therefore more affordable, advertisements in regional newspapers of Europes rural areas probably was the best way to help potential customers learn the firms Internet address. The operational goal, concrete action, and key performance indicator emerging from a fourth GAK-analysis pertained once again to the second (regional/local partner) strategy. The operational goal was to acquire new customers via traditional sales channels. The concrete action proposed in this regard was to construct a network of small woodstove studios. The KPI was the percentage of total sales orders generated by the studio network. The discussion among Eurostoves managers here had to do with encouraging regional/local partners to operate these small studios. To hold down costs, the studios would display just several basic models. But each studio also would have several personal computers (PCs), for accessing Eurostove.nets Website. There, a customer would find the full range of models and options. In addition, the regional/local partner would assist customers lacking PC-skills in getting started. The above examples describe how the executive group chose four of the operational goals, concrete actions, and key performance indicators for the customer perspective. The full list appears in Table I, each together with its respectively associated strategy. Take in Table I from Portquer.doc here Reviewing the list, retreat participants again asked themselves how they previously could have thought so little about the expectations of Eurostoves customers. But the past is not subject to change. For the firm, it was more important to implement the suggested concrete actions in order to improve its future performance. That was the reason for introducing balanced scorecards to make sure the firm did the right things. Moreover, doing the right things right eventually should show up in the key performance indicators. Finally, the
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structured collection of strategies, operational goals, concrete actions, and KPIs should allow Eurostove to build up more potentials, which it could tap at a later date. The Employee Perspective Space limitations prohibit discussion at equal length of the five other perspectives on Eurostove as well as structured presentation of all the operational goals, concrete actions, and key performance indicators associated with them. Therefore, the next sections of this article just sketch the remaining results from the second day of the management retreat. Due to its emphasis on learning and development, the employee perspective is the most future-oriented. In addition, it has strategic potentials relating to motivation and the use of information systems. Especially those employees having direct contact with customers and internal processes should feel empowered to make suggestions for improving products, services, and procedures. That requires their being motivated and trained to do so. They must know the firms vision, strategies, and operational goals as they apply to their area of responsibility. Otherwise they are working in a void. Furthermore, employees should enjoy working conditions, which allow them to exercise their abilities as effectively as possible for the firm. Among other things, such working conditions nowadays include up-to-date, networked information processing systems that also at least begin to meet the firms future requirements. Several retreat participants were of the opinion, Eurostove already was doing enough in this regard. They said every day employees could see new changes that management was making on their behalf. Other executives, though, pointed out that the employee perspective was not only about what the firm did for its employees, but also what the employees did for it. That was why it was so important to empower them, to encourage them to increase their knowledge and skill levels, to expand the capabilities of independent work teams, and to deepen the employees commitment to the firm still further. The group thus chose increased employee competence and motivation as their operational goals for this perspective. Their success factors, again from most leading to most lagging indicator were: employee motivation, employee training level, informal infrastructure, employee satisfaction, employee loyalty, employee productivity. The Internal Business Process Perspective This perspectives primary focus is not on making immediate improvements in existing business processes. Were that the case, there would be a tendency to concentrate on detailed analysis too much. Instead, one needs to look at the big picture, examining a firms business processes overall from the identification of customers needs to their actual satisfaction. For example, Eurostoves executives set themselves an operational goal of reducing their firms product defect rate to close to zero. That required identification of all the relevant processes, defining the standards for their mistake-free functioning, and instituting measurement methods to determine deviations from the norm[8]. Altogether, Eurostoves executives examined four aspects of the business process big picture.
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