Balanced Scorecards are one of the seminal business ideas to come from the 20th century. They help organizations translate strategy into action. Operational dashboards enable managers to monitor operations and tactics. Balanced Scorecards and operational dashboards are in high use and high demand in for profit and non-profit organizations. The primary tool used to create Balanced Scorecards and operational dashboards is Microsoft Excel. Even in enterprise-level business intelligence and performance management systems the first step is often to build prototypes using Microsoft Excel. Although Microsoft Excel is widely used for developing scorecards and dashboards, most developers become frustrated and do not develop adequate or maintainable solutions.
Using the advanced office book packaging (Excel Advanced Report Development), this title will show medium and advanced level Microsoft Excel users how to create robust, maintainable and dynamically updated scorecards and dashboards. No other book covers both scorecards and dashboards with Excel. This book will cover several versions of Excel, so companies who have not yet upgraded to 2007 will still find this book useful and applicable for data visualization and overall business strategy. While there are many books devoted to Balanced Scorecards, operational dashboards, performance management and data visualization, there are no books focused on how to combine those and then implement them in Microsoft Excel.
The first part of the book will discuss the management process that leads up to software development, including interviews, process and strategy mapping, identifying metrics, etc. Then the book delves into the development and maintenance of the balanced scorecards and operational dashboards using Excel. The book will possibly include an introduction from Dr. Kaplan and Dr. Norton, the originators of Balanced Scorecards, or Paul Niven, author of numerous books on Balanced Scorecards. Ron Person has consulting and speaking engagements all over the country on this topic and plans to use the book as the centerpiece of his discussions.
