Balance Scorecard method used in Cattaraugus Country ReHabilitation Center
Cattaraugus County ReHabilitation Center had done an effective job of implementing a balance scorecard approach in a fashion that reflects their organizational mission and vision MAIN BODY: Although the BSC method has been used in the for-profit organizations for many years I believe that ReHabilitation Center has made it work for their organization.
There was a lot of push back from the people who work at the center when it was first introduced, they believed it was just another fly-by-night approach that would just fail but as the new Director of Strategic Management slow got the upper management to take a closer look and to start helping adapt the BSC method to their organization. Since the BSC wasn’t designed for the not-for-profit ReHabilitation Center had to do a bit of work to get everything working right and after a while they were able to get the BSC to work for their organization.
There are four score card quadrants that ReHabilitation Center uses they are; Perspective, Strategy, Operations, Core Indicators/Measures. They then broke that down to five different parts of the organization under Perspective, there is; consumers, financial, operational, learning, and one that isn’t defined but seems to be consumer relations and customer service. ReHabilitation Center has seen great benefits from adapting the BSC to the center but the greatest benefit maybe that the personnel within the center has noticed how much more encompassing process that strategic planning is and not merely looking at a long-term plan.
They now understand that is it necessary to align each are of the Center with the overall strategic objectives. Another benefit is that the Center has been able to develop metrics and link them to the strategic plan. The Center has begun to focus on the importance of interrelationships among the perspectives in the BSC and has enabled worker in the Center to see things they had not thought about in the past and relate them to the BSC.
Every year they update the BSC they have set into place to and make sure they are still following along with it and making any necessary changes to either the scorecard or to the organization. With everyone being involved within the organization of the strategic planning they have the ability to make sure that the strategic plan is being followed or seeing what changes need to be made on a consistent bases.
CONCLUSION:
“The conceptual framework of the Balanced Scorecard has been implemented and utilized effectively for years in a large number of for-profit organizations. More recently, the model has been effectively utilized in not-for-profit organizations as well. In this paper the authors have described how the Balanced Scorecard approach has been implemented in a ReHabilitation Center. In implementing the Balanced Scorecard approach, the ReHabilitation Center has placed equal emphasis on the consumer perspective and the financial perspective.
This equal focus is based upon the necessity of the Center to carry out its primary mission for its consumers (individuals with developmental disabilities) as well as the necessity to maintain financial stability within the Center. The emphasis on both of these perspectives has become a necessity in order for the Center to efficiently and effectively serve its customers. While the use of the Balanced Scorecard in the long range planning process for the Center is relatively new, the process has been accepted by the management of the organization.
The challenge ahead for the Center is to continue to develop outcome measures for the individual departments within the Center and tie these outcome measures to the strategic objectives of the Center. It is recognized this is an extremely difficult process as real outcomes are not easily measurable. The formulation of outcome measures is a continuous development process. It is felt this process will definitely enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the ReHabilitation Center in the long run (Martello, 2008). ”
