Inventory Case

Performance evaluation of a company or organization for long has relied on financial performance. For better visibility and readability, Drs Kaplan and Norton developed around the year 1990-1993 a new approach known as balanced scorecard which is actually an evolution of the ''tableau de bord'' appeared in France in the late 20th century. The contributions that make balanced scorecard a better tool to assess an organization's performance compared to financial data will be presented (Kent & Geraghty, 2004).

After reading different definitions of what the scorecard, I found this simple and complete definition made by balanced scorecard institute (2011)'' 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 financial data allow having a picture of overall organization and do not defined nor specified the elements of performance monitoring.

The scorecard is made of vision and strategy of an organisation that stated where the organization wants to be in 2 or 5years. Generally the vision and strategy is surrounded by four standard perspectives.

- The financial perspective here should appear elements of response to this generic question how do we look to our shareholders?, this standard perspective have a lot to do with profitability, growth, to which level costs are to be cut, value that is to be return to shareholders... its tend to look backward,

- The customer perspective, the question is how do our customers see us?, this perspective is about quality, performance and services which matter much for customers, comparison can easily be made with competitors, here may appear the future launching of a new product, or amelioration of customer perception about our products, increase of market share (balanced scorecard institute,2011),

- The internal business processes perspective, the question to be answer here is what must we excel at? It help manager to know if his product or service meet the customer requirement, how to optimize your production if necessary, productivity, cost, and again quality are monitor in this area,

- The innovation and learning perspective, the main question here is can we continue to improve and or create value? this point which seem abstract is made-up with three main components; employees capital(trainings, capabilities, engagement...), information capital (It system, data...),organization capital (culture, leadership approach...).

With the time and depending on area of action (goods or services; non profit or governmental organization) cultural, competitive environment these perspective can be separate to put emphasis in a particular