Assignment:
Purpose of Assignment
Students will have the opportunity to develop a Balanced Scorecard. This, in turn, will allow them to create effective strategic objectives to be included as part of their overall strategic plan. They will also be presented with the task of creating a brief communication plan that will be used by their proposed division to efficiently distribute information with regard to their strategic initiatives.
Assignment Steps
Resources: Strategic Planning Outline and textbook readings
Create a minimum 1,050-word Strategic Objectives Summary paper.
Include your balanced scorecard and its impact on all stakeholders, and the communication plan. Include your balanced scorecard and its impact on all stakeholders, and a communication plan. Follow the detailed instructions below.
See the Student Materials for a Balanced Scorecard Overview, which may help keep you on track for this assignment.
Identify key trends, assumptions, and risks in the context of your final business model.
Develop the strategic objectives for your new division of the existing business in a balanced scorecard format in the context of key trends, assumptions, and risks. The strategic objectives are measures of attaining your vision and mission. As you develop them, consider the vision, mission, and values for your business and the outcomes of your SWOTT analysis.
Consider the following four quadrants of the balanced scorecard when developing your strategic objectives:
• Shareholder Value or Financial Perspective, which includes strategic objectives in areas such as:
o Market share
o Revenues and costs
o Profitability
o Competitive position
• Customer Value Perspective, which includes strategic objectives in areas such as:
o Customer retention or turnover
o Customer satisfaction
o Customer value
• Process or Internal Operations Perspective, which includes strategic objectives in areas such as:
o Measure of process performance
o Productivity or productivity improvement
o Operations metrics
o Impact of change on the organization
• Learning and Growth (Employee) Perspective, which includes strategic objectives in areas such as:
o Employee satisfaction
o Employee turnover or retention
o Level of organizational capability
o Nature of organizational culture or climate
o Technological innovation
Evaluate potential alternatives to the issues and/or opportunities identified in the SWOTT Analysis assignment and table you completed.
Create at least three (3) strategic objectives for each of the four (4) balanced scorecard areas identified (Financial, Customer, Process, Learning and Growth), for a total of 12 strategic objectives minimum. Base your solutions on a ranking of alternative solutions including the following:
• Identify potential risks and mitigation plans.
• Analyze a stakeholder and include mitigation and contingency strategies.
• Incorporate ethical implications.
Develop a specific metric and target for each strategic objective using a balanced scorecard format:
Example: a strategic objective in the shareholder or financial perspective is to increase market share. A metric to actually measure this strategic objective of market share increase is, "The percentage of increase in market share." The target is the specific number to be achieved in a particular time period. The target for the metric of "Increase market share" could be "Increase market share by 2% for each of the next 3 years" of an increase of 2% per year for 3 years.
(Please see the Balanced Scorecard Template in this assignment's Student Materials.You may use this as a starting point if you wish.)
Outline a brief communication plan discussing how you will communicate the company's strategic objectives including the following:
• Define the purpose.
• Define the audience.
• Define the "owner" of the communication step (i.e., who will develop and deliver the communication).
• Identify the channel(s) of communication and why you selected that channel.
Be sure to submit the Balanced Scorecard chart itself (as either an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document with embedded table), along with the other content outlined above (i.e., Strategic Objectives Summary paper).
Format your assignment consistent with APA guidelines. Write the paper in third person voice.
Cite a minimum of two peer-reviewed references.