Why Balanced Score Cards? For four reasons:
1. Kaplan & Norton have escaped the collusion of measurement and quantity. Measurement is not necessarily quantitative. That is a common source of confusion and of inefficiencies in numerous parts of human activity (to name a few: reporting (exhaustiveness), research (methodology), education (elite creation via selection on maths)). Measurement can be qualitative (see Georgescu Roegen work if you’re curious). It is no surprise if numerous initiatives in intellectual capital used Balanced Score Cards
2. Balanced Score Cards are notably visual, which is not so with quantitative ratios. That visual characteristic invites greater meaning and relevance.
3. Balanced Score Cards are heterogeneous and are therefore a more natural receptacle for a) qualitative and quantitative analytics and b) can encompass a variety of topics. In this regard, one can build official reporting encompassing both physical and knowledge activities.
4. Balanced Score Cards are aggregative so that one can build reports from various levels in the organisations. Coupled with its heterogeneous nature (previous point), one can build reports for HR, Marketing, Finance, … under the same format and surface analytics at one or many levels. The result is that some knowledge related metrics can climb the hierarchy up to the summit.
Christophe Gauthier on 16 Oct 10"Ten Leading Business Intelligence Software Solutions By Thor Olavsrud May 5, 2010 The Business Intelligence software market is shaping up as a David vs. Goliath struggle. Behemoths like Microsoft, Oracle and IBM offer feature-rich BI suites along with their many other enterprise software products. Meanwhile, pure-play business intelligence software vendors -- such as MicroStrategy and Tableau -- have avid followers and are known for innovating around new features and quickly adjusting to the shifting marketplace. Why is this important? Because Business Intelligence software is used to extract data from disparate sources -- spreadsheets, databases and other software programs -- inside companies and then analyze that business data to better understand a firm's internal and external strengths and weaknesses. A business relies heavily on this data. Bottom line: Business intelligence software enables managers to better see the relationship between different data for critical decision-making -- particularly opportunities for innovation, cost reduction and optimal resource deployment. The list below includes ten industry-leading BI solutions, from vendors large and not-so-large. If you're looking for a bird's eye view of this rapidly evolving market, the following condensed portraits should help. Business Intelligence Software: Ten Solutions Note: This list is NOT ordered "best to worst." The question of what business intelligence software solution is best for a given company depends on an entire matrix of factors. This list is simply an overview of BI solutions, with the debate about quality left to individual clients. SAP Crystal Reports Crystal Reports is part of SAP's Business Objects portfolio of business intelligence software solutions. It allows users to graphically design interactive reports and connect them to virtually any data source, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Oracle databases, Business Objects Enterprise business views and local file system info
