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Section 1 Brief Description of the organization and its

Industry
The company we are looking into in this project is Wells Fargo Bank. Being
the fourth largest bank in the US by assets and the second largest bank by
market capitalization, Wells Fargo & Company is an American multinational
diversified financial services company with operations around the world.

Section 2 Description of Balanced Scorecard

2.1 - Background Information
The balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that
is used extensively in business and industry, government, and nonprofit
organizations worldwide to align and keep track of the execution of activities
by staff within their control and monitor the consequences arising from these
actions.
As a performance measurement framework that added strategic non-financial
performance measures to traditional financial metrics, Drs. Robert Kaplan
(Harvard Business School) and David Norton proposed the adoption of
balanced scorecard so as to give managers and executives a more 'balanced'
view when evaluating an organizations operational performance.
2.2 Four Perspectives of Balanced Scorecard
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The balanced scorecard suggests that we view the organization from four
perspectives, and to develop metrics, collect data and analyze it relative to
each of these perspectives:

The Financial Perspective

The financial perspective addresses the question of how shareholders view
the firm and which financial goals are desired from the shareholders
perspective. Besides including timely and accurate funding data, this
perspective also addresses a need to include additional financial-related data,
such as risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis.

The Customer Perspective

With increasing realization of the importance of customer focus and customer
satisfaction in any business, the customer perspective addresses the question
on how well the firm is serving its targeted customers and most importantly on
how the firm is viewed by its customers from various perspectives. For
instance, a customer may want to find out how responsive the supply chain is,
so they focus on ontime delivery of goods they have purchased.
Internal Business Process Perspective

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This perspective refers to internal business processes. Metrics based on this
perspective allow the managers to know how well their business is running,
and more importantly, to assess which processes are critical for satisfying
customers and shareholders so that the company has to concentrate its
efforts to excel. For instance, if the company wants to observe an increase in
design efficiency, it can look into the engineering processes of various
machineries.

The Learning & Growth Perspective

This perspective addresses the question of how the firm must learn, improve
and innovate to meet its objectives, including focusing efforts on employee
training and corporate cultural attitudes related to both individual and
corporate self-improvement. Other than this, the learning & growth
perspective also includes things like mentors and tutors within the
organization, as well as that ease of communication among workers that
allows them to readily get help on a problem when it is needed.

2.3 Objectives, Measures, Targets, and Initiatives

Before looking into the four perspectives in Balanced Scorecard, it is indeed

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crucial for a firm to define the four supplementary aspects, known as
strategic objectives, measures, targets, initiatives.
For strategic objectives, we refer to what strategy is to achieve in one
particular perspective.
For measures, we refer to how progress for that particular perspective
objective will be measured.
For targets, we refer to target value sought for each measure.
For initiative, we refer to what will be done to facilitate the reaching of the
target.
2.4 Case Study: Wells Fargo Bank
Since 1990s, Wells Fargo Bank has adopted Balanced Scorecard reduce
operating cost when serving each customer. We may use the three out of four
perspectives of Balanced Scorecard to see how well it is applied in practice to
evaluate ordinary business operations.
The first dimension is the financial Perspective. Since the objective is to
reduce cost per customer, Wells Fargo Bank thus focuses on measuring and
monitoring cost per transaction, cost per service call, call length, number of
service call.
The second dimension is the customer perspective. Wells Fargo Bank
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believes that making traditional sales more convenient is also one of the ways
to effectively reduce cost per customer. So, the bank focuses on monitoring
the transaction time as well as the percentage of transactions / services
performed online among all transactions and services.
And lastly, it is the Business Process Perspective. In order to effectively the
operating cost of serving customers, Wells Fargo Bank decides to automate
the call centre, and the bank works by measuring percentage of sales that are
automated among all services. Furthermore, the bank keeps monitoring the
number of customer representatives available from time to time to make sure
that their customers are well approached and taken care of in the whole
selling process.

Section 3 Discussion of Advantages of Balanced Scorecard

By so far as we have discussed, we know that balanced scorecard is a means
of assessing overall business performance. From this, we may generalize four
major advantages of this practice.
1. Balance
Rather than focusing on a specific area of performance---usually
financial---business leaders learn to consider the full spectrum of business

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performance. In addition to financial measures, they look at measures of
customer experience, employee development and retention and process
efficiency. This prevents the problems that may arise when performance in
one area is improved simply by sacrificing another area, which renders the
whole company unsustainable as a result.
2. Employee Focus
By incorporating balanced scorecard, business executives can gain
insights into the employee experience. Evaluating information about employee
satisfaction, such as assessments of the success of employee development
and succession planning efforts is crucial as this will ultimately affect
employee retention which in turn determines business productivity and
profitability.
3. Proactive rather than Reactive
The balanced scorecard methodology helps leaders move from reactive
mode to proactive mode. A balanced scorecard does not only tell various
output or result metrics, but it also provides insight about ongoing
performance and drivers that influence results. So, managers can always be

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informed of the performance levels of the operations in a timely manner.

Section 4 Evaluation of the potential problems in practice

Of course, there are a number of problems that may turn up when
implementing Balanced Scorecard.
1. High Initial Cost
Implementing a balanced scorecard system (or any new system) can cost a
lot of money in training time and additional dollars for any consultants that are
needed during the process. Add to this, the company may also incur cost of a
cost for the software, plus software license expenses, and testing and
installation of the software. All these costs may pose huge financial burden on
companies.
2. Updates and maintenance
There are many different elements that go into creating a balanced
scorecard. Once the scorecard is created, the nature of your business can
change over time, requiring you to change the scorecard. There are
software programs that can manage the scorecard upkeep, but choosing
the wrong one may affect a company's ability to evaluate employees.
Companies may have to put in the time to create and change the

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scorecard from time to time.
3. Poor Linkage
Much often, companies may come across with situations where strategies and
goals are not linked to or say, have little relationship with performance drivers,
measures, initiatives, and individual goals and incentives. So, the Balanced
Scorecard may fail to keep track of the execution of activities by staff within
their control and monitor the consequences arising from these actions.

Section 5 Conclusions + Recommendations

To conclude, Balanced Scorecard can be used to determine whether the set
goals have been met by adding non-financial metrics to traditional financial
metrics to give a well-rounded view of the performance in an organization.
Still, there are some several recommendations that companies may adopt to
apply Balanced Scorecard to its fullest extent.
First of all, companies adopting Balanced Scorecard should ensure good
communications among employees so that enables everyone to contribute to
dynamic changes to meet customer requirements.
Managements commitment is vital to the success in the implementation of
Balanced Scorecard as well. Senior executive should adopt performance-

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based management principles with clear cause-effect relationship so that
employees can have a more comprehensive idea on how business objectives
can be achieved by various sets of strategies.

Appendix

Figure 1 Four Perspectives of Balanced Scorecard

(http://www.actionablestrategies.com/resources/Balanced+Scorecar
d.pdf)

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Figure 2 Four Supplementary Aspects Objectives, Measures, Targets,

Initiatives

References
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1. Actionable Strategies. (2009). The Balanced Scorecard Background
Discussion. Retrieved March 23, 2009, from
http://www.actionablestrategies.com/resources/Balanced+Scorecard.pdf
2. Kaplan R.S. & Norton D.P. (2004).Strategy Maps: Converting intangible
assets into tangible outcomes. Cambridge: Harvard Business School
Press.
3. Makhijani N. (2008). Creating a balanced scorecard for financial services.
The OTI thought Leadership Series, 1(4), 1-12
4. Niven, Paul R. (2006) "Balanced Scorecard. Step-by-step. Maximizing
Performance and Maintaining Results".
5. Norreklit H. (2000), The balance on the balanced scorecard - a critical
analysis ofsome of its assumptions, Management Accounting Research,
11, pp. 65-88.

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