ACCA PM平衡计分卡：The four perspectives

You are part-way through your ACCA qualification and will certainly realise by now(if you hadn’t before)that accountancy is primarily a numbers-based discipline.In particular,the numbers focus on financial data:published financial statements,management accounts,financial management,tax calculations and auditing almost exclusively deal with financial information.

Of course,reliable financial information is vital for business management and survival,but reports of financial performance often show little more than historical score-keeping.Yes,sales might have increased but nothing in classical accounting explains why sales increased or suggests how sales growth can be sustained in the future.For a profit-seeking company,sustained financial success and long-term shareholder value are the ultimate objectives and the balanced scorecard of Kaplan and Norton(1992)suggests how this might be achieved.

The four perspectives

The balanced scorecard says that four sets of measurements are needed.The sets are called‘perspectives’and are:

financial perspective

customer perspective

internal business process perspective

innovation and learning perspective.

The financial perspective is the measurement of traditional financial performance:sales,costs,gross profit percentage,earnings per share,share price,etc.You will be familiar with these measures,but as explained above,they contain no explanation as to how the figures have been achieved.

To explain good financial performance,it is useful to look at the four perspectives as forming a hierarchy.Good financial performance depends on happy satisfied customers who return,spread the word and are happy to pay for the products or services offered.

Why do customers return?It is because the company is achieving excellence in areas that are important to customers.These areas can be listed as time,quality,performance and service(including flexibility),and cost.Customers differ in the emphasis they place on these.For example,some customers want fantastic quality and don’t worry so much about the cost.Others want very short lead times with a flexible approach.But whatever customers value,the company must deliver.

How are these customer requirements to be delivered?Of course,that will depend on the internal business process perspective,essentially the company’s capabilities to deliver what customers want.It might include long opening hours,an attractive and efficient website,high use of computer aided design or quality control procedures which ensure negligible rejected production.

So,the company might be achieving great financial results because it has a loyal band of happy customers who are buying an excellent product.But nothing in business stands still and you can be certain that customers’tastes will change and that competitors will be trying to muscle in.Therefore,it is essential that the company pays attention to innovation and learning.It must never relax and must continually strive to keep up to date and improve its products and service.Otherwise,although current financial results are good,these will not be sustained if competitors become more successful and better at pleasing customers by delivering well on customers’requirements.

Goals and measures

All elements of the perspectives must be reinforced by formal goals and measures.Goals define the general intentions and long-term ambitions of the business.An objective is a specific result that can be measured.For example,a company could have the goal of increasing brand awareness and one objective to achieving this goal might be to increase website visits by 20%.Or,the company’s goal under customer perspective could be to strengthen its customer base.This could be superficially measured by simply counting the number of receivables accounts but would be more usefully measured by counting the number of active sales accounts and more active sales accounts would be an objective.

Similarly,under internal business process perspective,excellent quality might be the goal,but this would need to be measured by metrics such as the number of reworked items,number of sales returns and number of warranty claims.Service industry measures can be more challenging.For example,the company might have a goal of delivering good service,but defining and measuring the various components necessary is difficult.Some sort of customer feedback is often used to assess employee performance.For example,'Was the employee able to answer your query?','Did the employee seem knowledgeable?'

Without numerous performance measures across all perspectives,the balanced scorecard is pointless:no one knows what’s expected of them and no one knows if performance in each perspective is adequate.If the company thinks that an aspect of the balanced scorecard is important for sustainable success then it makes no sense to then not attempt to set targets and measure attainment–even if that is difficult to do directly.With the exception of the financial perspective,many of the measures of performance are non-financial(such as rejected items,number of customers,days to fulfil orders,number of new products launched).Many metrics also address qualities which are not easily quantifiable(such as customers’opinions,service level,product styling,brand strength,etc).Even something as difficult to measure as employee morale is important in a service industry–no one wants to be dealt with by a grumpy employee!Possible indicators of morale are:staff turnover rate,days of employee sickness,customer feedback and complaints.These are imperfect,proxy measures of morale but are better than nothing–and if morale is important to success then attempts must be made to measure it.

翻译参考

您已经获得了ACCA资格，现在肯定会意识到（如果您之前没有意识到）会计主要是一门基于数字的学科。特别是，这些数字侧重于财务数据：已发布的财务报表、管理账目、财务管理、税收计算和审计几乎只涉及财务信息。

当然，可靠的财务信息对于企业管理和生存至关重要，但财务业绩报告通常只显示历史记录。是的，销售额可能增加了，但经典会计中没有任何内容解释销售额增加的原因或表明未来如何维持销售额增长。对于追求利润的公司而言，持续的财务成功和长期股东价值是最终目标，Kaplan和Norton（1992）的平衡计分卡表明了如何实现这一目标。

四个视角

平衡计分卡说需要四组测量。这些集合称为“透视图”，它们是：

财务视角

客户视角

内部业务流程视角

创新和学习的观点。

财务角度是对传统财务业绩的衡量：销售额、成本、毛利润百分比、每股收益、股价等。您会熟悉这些衡量标准，但如上所述，它们没有解释这些数字如何已经实现。

为了解释良好的财务业绩，将四个方面视为形成一个层次结构是有用的。良好的财务业绩取决于返回、传播信息并乐于为所提供的产品或服务付费的满意客户。【点击免费下载>>>更多ACCA学习相关资料】

为什么顾客会回来？这是因为公司在对客户很重要的领域取得了卓越成就。这些方面可以列为时间、质量、性能和服务（包括灵活性）和成本。客户对这些的重视程度不同。例如，一些客户想要出色的质量，而不是太担心成本。其他人希望通过灵活的方法缩短交货时间。但无论客户重视什么，公司都必须交付。

如何满足这些客户要求？当然，这将取决于内部业务流程的角度，主要是公司满足客户需求的能力。它可能包括长时间的开放时间、有吸引力且高效的网站、大量使用计算机辅助设计或质量控制程序，以确保可以忽略不计的拒绝生产。

因此，该公司可能会取得丰厚的财务业绩，因为它拥有一群忠实的、正在购买优质产品的满意客户。但商业中没有什么是静止的，你可以肯定客户的口味会改变，竞争对手会试图加入。因此，公司必须注意创新和学习。它绝不能放松，并且必须不断努力跟上并改进其产品和服务。否则，虽然目前的财务业绩不错，但如果竞争对手通过满足客户的要求而变得更加成功，更擅长取悦客户，那么这些业绩将不会持续。

目标和措施

观点的所有要素都必须通过正式的目标和措施得到加强。目标定义了企业的总体意图和长期抱负。一个目标是可被测量的特定的结果。例如，一家公司的目标可能是提高品牌知名度，而实现这一目标的一个目标可能是将网站访问量增加20%。或者，公司在客户视角下的目标可能是加强其客户群。这可以通过简单地计算应收账款账户的数量来表面衡量，但通过计算活跃销售账户的数量会更有用，更活跃的销售账户将是一个目标。

同样，从内部业务流程的角度来看，卓越的质量可能是目标，但这需要通过返工数量、销售退货数量和保修索赔数量等指标来衡量。服务业措施可能更具挑战性。例如，公司可能有一个提供优质服务的目标，但定义和衡量必要的各种组件是很困难的。某种客户反馈通常用于评估员工绩效。例如，“该员工是否能够回答您的问题？”、“该员工是否知识渊博？”

如果没有跨越所有角度的众多绩效衡量标准，平衡计分卡就毫无意义：没有人知道对他们的期望，也没有人知道每个角度的表现是否足够。如果公司认为平衡计分卡的某个方面对于可持续成功很重要，那么不尝试设定目标和衡量成就是没有意义的——即使这很难直接做到。除了财务方面，许多绩效衡量标准都是非财务方面的（例如被拒绝的商品、客户数量、完成订单的天数、推出的新产品数量）。许多指标还涉及不容易量化的质量（例如客户的意见、服务水平、产品样式、品牌实力等）。即使像员工士气这样难以衡量的事情在服务行业中也很重要——没有人愿意被脾气暴躁的员工处理！可能的士气指标有：员工流失率、员工生病天数、客户反馈和投诉。这些是不完美的、替代的士气衡量标准，但总比没有好——如果士气对成功很重要，那么必须尝试衡量它。

【ACCA PM定价：Demand curves】