A strategic planning and management system used extensively in business and by organizations worldwide. Benefits of the system include increasing focus on results, aligning business activities with organization strategy and improving performance and communications.
The balanced score card proposes that the organization should be viewed from four perspectives, with metrics developed, data collected and analyzed for each of them. These four perspectives are: Financial, Customer, Internal Business Processes and Learning and Growth.
The first balanced scorecard was created by independent consultant Art Schneiderman at Analog Devices in 1987. The concept was popularized by Dr. Robert Kaplan and David Norton in the early 1990s.