Aligning employees with the company's strategic vision is imperative as simply monitoring financial and operational performance is no longer enough.

This is according to Kerry Evans, general manager: Financial Services at SAS Institute SA. She says that companies today need to communicate the strategic vision to employees and empower them to execute it proactively.

"Businesses must draw upon corporate knowledge to make decisions based on hard facts - not assumptions. And they need to analyse key performance indicators that generate shareholder value, gauge performance and drive behaviour based on business strategies," says Evans.

Recognising this, Nedbank recently implemented balanced scorecard methodology from SAS, leaders in business intelligence.

"Balanced scorecard is a key business tool to ensure that the efforts of all individuals, teams and business units support our strategy, as well as provide effective measures of business performance," says Ariana Swanepoel of Nedbank's Retail Division.

"It also gives us a clear focus on shareholder and client expectations," says Swanepoel.

"It enables us to develop and maintain efficient, effective processes as well as ensuring a motivated and prepared workforce."

The bank identified balanced scorecard as the strategy management tool for the organisation and invested in Strategic Performance Management from SAS in 2003. The first phase of the project went live in the third quarter of 2004.

Other benefits of the methodology for the bank include the alignment of all business strategies, and the alignment of individual objectives to the business unit strategy.

"This encourages buy-in to the strategy. The balanced scorecard also ensures that strategy is communicated to individuals in a format understood by all, and it links rewards to the achievement of strategy," concludes Swanepoel