Balanced Scorecard: linking strategic planning to measurement and communication Gulcin Cribb and Chris Hogan Bond University, Australia

OBJECTIVES  Discuss how BSC methodology can facilitate linking a library strategic plan to that of the parent entity  Examine the process of identifying performance measures  Examine cause-effect relationships between measures  Present Bond University library as a case study

Bond University

Bond University

Balanced Scorecard (BSC)  Devised to overcome shortcomings of previous systems  Four Perspectives : Customer - How do customers see us? Internal Business - What must we excel at? Innovation and Learning - How can we continue to improve? Financial - How do we look to stakeholders?

Aims of Bond’s BSC  To enable the measurement of all critical activities  To provide a strategic management system to monitor implementation of the strategic plan  To facilitate communication with all stakeholders in particular with staff

Bond University’s Balanced Scorecard A Balanced Pathway to Development

In the beginning….  Strategic plans, lots of stats collected  Are we doing things right? (How) - process To  Are we doing the right things? (What) - outcome  Holistic strategic management system linked to the University’s BSC  Cascaded to all levels and units

Then… What processes must function effectively to achieve the things stakeholders regard as important - objectives What information could be collected to help judge the degree to which they are operating effectively -measures

Cause-effect linkages How individual staff members and teams help contribute to the overall outcomes Connecting the desired outcomes with the drivers of results E.g. shelving and student retention; Information literacy training and excellence in teaching, learning and research

Objectives, measures and targets Large numbers of objectives Challenge of culling them Measures Quantifiable Easily understood Relevant Inclusive Targets for each of the measures E.g. Shelving turnaround times, number of unfilled document delivery requests

Customer Perspective

Internal Business Perspective

Innovation and Learning

Financial Perspective

Adoption Linking the BSC to a set of initiatives and projects Each project with its own set of objectives, owners, timelines and targets Review – three times a year Annual review by all staff – reprioritisation Team and individual staff adoption of their own BSCs

Issues Time-consuming Takes a long time to cascade to all levels Needs to be driven both top down and bottom up Quantitative measures – culture of libraries Need to eliminate non-strategic initiatives and objectives Linking budgeting to the strategy development

Conclusion BSC provided a way of articulating what, why and how well aspects of our plan and how the plan complements the University strategic plan Ease of integration into all aspects of activities Another tool, methodology A strategic management system Tool to communicate with the stakeholders Tool to help achieve continuous improvement Journey, not a project

Bond University