When talking about Business Intelligence, it is natural to think of Data Warehouses, OLAP dynamic analysis with dimensional cubes, Visual Dashboards or alert systems; but we rarely think of the Balanced Scorecard as a fundamental element of business intelligence. However, for the person writing this, it is. It is a fundamental element and, furthermore, one that general management should have as a basic element when leading a change in the way in which an organization disseminates, organizes and analyzes information, as a bulwark to lead the company towards a “culture of metrics.”
And what is the Balanced Scorecard? Actually, it is not even doctor data necessarily a software like the rest of BI. The BSC is a methodology for managing a business strategy devised by two professors Robert Kaplan and David Norton who made it known through an article in the Harvard Business Review back in 1992. It is something that a company could implement using paper (with a great effort) and yet I believe that it should be part of the toolbox that makes up Business Intelligence.
Why? Because the BSC places emphasis on using all information from across the company, going beyond traditional management control focused on financial information. The Balanced Scorecard proposes that the company systematically define and control the company's strategy, organizing it into strategic initiatives, objectives and key performance indicators (Key Performance Indicators or KPIs).
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It is the concept of the company understood as a whole in which not only financial information is important, but also defining what objectives I have for the relationship with my market/customers, the functioning of my internal operations (production, logistics, operations, R&D) or the know-how and human resources I need to achieve all of the above. From here, the four perspectives are derived in which the BSC by default recommends that we model our business.
