Balanced scorecard problem

BSc is not ltd to 4 perspective in practical situation, but these 4 are core and its easy to put anything within them, (remember u have to link all the BSc items to each other for an effective BSc approach), So as u know the perspectives like:
Financial, Customer, Internal Business, Innovation & Learning.
These 4 perspectives are used to assess an organizations performance, so these are core for the companies in short from focusing to earning level.
Financial is so easy for evaluation as u asked: For e.g. if an organization sets the target profit and cost level & wants to evaluate its profit & cost performance, then what will the company do? obviously they will calculate ratios like gross profit, net profit & cost to sales ratio etc from existing as well as new projects or customers depends on companies policy, u can cover anything in this perspective which relates to finance, profit, cash flow, cost etc.
Customer Perspective: For e.g. i own a transport business and i want to focus on new customers, then how will i chk my business performance from this perspective? Obviously percent of sales from new customers, same as for hospitals percent of sales from new patients etc. U dont have to limit urself !
Internal Business: (What u should do to satisfy customer)Fore.g. Percent of new patients operations completed within budget and time, percent of patient query resolved in time etc. This related to ur efficieny and ur core processes which can achieve its targets. (Dont Limit urself)
Innovation & Learning: (3 E’s. economy, efficiency & effectiveness, apply them) Means to say in hospital, new instruments introduced, new methods of dealing with patients, percent of time devoted for nurses skill development, percent of revenue earned by the introduction of new innovation like new instruments etc. covers in it.

Balance scorecard is quite a broad term, dont limit urself in answering the question. If u need further help do lemme know.

Please recommend questions for practice other than Royal Laurel Hospital…

BSC should not be used just for performance measurement of a company.

BSC is also a performance MANAGEMENT tool for modern companies.

The reason why BSC looks into 4 perspectives is because traditionally, organisations focus on financial perspective only which is insufficient as a management system. If you remember, traditional accounting system/financial information/traditional budgeting is backward looking, internal-looking, myopic, short-sightedness etc etc.

Therefore, in today’s dynamic environment, organisations are competing in a competitive and complex environment. So an accurate understanding of their goals and methods to attain the goal is CRUCIAL rather than the traditional accounting system/ sole reliance on financial information etc. Kaplan & Norton suggested that during the time of research (around mid 1990s) ,they have come up with the other 3 perspectives that an organisation should focus on as part of their management system.

The use of BSC as management process is as follow :

1) Clarifying & translating vision & strategy
Firstly, the team work together to translate the strategy into objectives. They will then clarify and agree with each other the desired objectives

2) Communicating & linking strategic objectives and measures
The objectives and measures are communicated throughout the organisation to all employees at all levels of the org(strategic/managerial/operational). The communication is flowing in all directions, e.g high level strategic measures into specific measures at operational level.

3) Plan, set targets and align strategic initiatives
Measures are established early to be implemented in the organisation. To achieve financial objectives, managers must identify and stretch targets for customers, internal business process, and learning & growth. This enables org to integrate strategic planning with budgeting process.

4)Strategic feedback & learning
This is the most important part of the entire process where management monitors the whole implementation of scorecard is a success or not.

However, BSC too has problems.
Conflicting measures , e.g an org wants to speed up business processing times and this could mean that the org needs to invest in additional equipments which may be seen as increasing costs in the financial measure

Selecting measures, there can be many measures established during the implementation stage of BSC under all 4 perspectives. Kaplan & Norton suggested that only measures that add value should be selected.

Management commitment, this is normal, any changes to the system will require commitment and full cooperation of the employees/management. It applies to any other alternative of management system too, ABM,Performance Prism, Performance Pyramid, Fitzgerald & Moon building blocks, VBM.

Hope this helps. Correct me if my understanding is wrong/misleading. Im taking the P5 exam too!