The government has made it clear that it intends to put performance measures at the heart of managing its strategy for the provision of services to the country.

The Balanced Scorecard is a strategic management concept devised by Robert Kaplan and David Norton and uses performance measures to articulate and to track strategy implementation. The Balanced Scorecard has been shown to be successful in commercial organisations and has a clear application in the public sector.

Fundamental to the concept of Balanced Scorecards is that financial measures do not always capture the important information and is therefore particularly suited to operations where profit is not the primary objective.

The basic balanced Scorecard can be adapted for non-profit making organisations. This can typically be achieved by putting the delivery of the service as the prime area of focus. Supporting perspectives showing how the organisation seeks to provide the service, both now and in the future, can be based on this.

Often, many of the implementation challenges will be the same in a public sector organisation as in a commercial company. Regardless, a move towards managing by measures may have profound effects on the culture and working practices of the organisation.

SAS can enable the development of this management tool to provide a balanced view of your organisation’s success. However, before success can be measured, it is essential to measure where you are now.

SAS software can help you implement a Balanced Scorecard system that aligns individuals’ actions behind the strategy and vision of the organisation, by allowing:

• access to all relevant data
• aiding communication of information
• providing a framework to start delivering management information that is tuned to the operations’ goals

SAS helps turn a successful management concept into a working business tool.