Choosing the data you want to collect is fundamental to Balanced Scorecards
What are best practices for collecting strategic initiative information? In the context of the Balanced scorecard, there are some basic datapoints to consider when creating your strategic initiatives.
First, choose some basic definitional fields for your strategic initiatives:
As shown above (and written before), the following fields are a good start:
- Name
- Start/End Date
- Scope/Definition
- Key Deliverables
- Relationship to a strategic objective
- 3-5 proposed milestones/tasks
- Project manager, sponsor, and team
Strategic Initiatives Examples:
The above template is primarily useful when designing your Balanced Scorecard and inventorying initiatives. However, organizations will also need to regularly report on initiatives. While that may be accomplished in PowerPoint, it is much easier when aided by Balanced Scorecard software. When reporting on initiatives, additional useful fields are:
- Status
- Percent complete
- Performance Analysis
- Recommendations
These fields will add a critical qualitative dimension to your Balanced Scorecard, and help leadership teams make better decisions based.
Here is what a completed initiative template looks like in ESM:
Don't overlook choosing the right template
You'll be using your strategic initiative templates all the time, so make sure that you're collecting the right data up-front.
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