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As a company grows, it needs a software package that fulfills its needs for charting scorecard measures. Make sure yours has what you need
In prior articles in CMA Management, we have examined the design process for scorecarding systems and indicated attributes of these systems that contribute to their successful implementation. Another consideration in the implementation of these systems is die degree to which the system will be automated, both for updating data and disseminating reports. We consider here the effect of automation on the success of a scorecarding system implementation. We also discuss the various types of software available, the deployment of the software, and other automation-related issues. Our analysis is supplemented by the insights provided by our survey of scorecarding usage by North American organizations, sponsored by die AICPA, CAM-I, CMA Canada, IQPC, Targus Corporation, and Hyperion Solutions.
Software use
Periodically updating data and preparing scorecard reports can involve considerable time and effort. Our survey results indicate that 70% of organizations with scorecarding systems use some type of software in their implementation to reduce this effort. Of these organizations, 31% use off-the-shelf software, 43 % use software developed in-house (such as a spreadsheet or database application), and 27% use both types.
The use of software to implement scorecarding systems increases with organization size. As shown in Exhibit 1, most (59%) small organizations (less than 100 employees) don't use software for these systems. This percentage decreases as the size of the organization increases, down to 15% for the largest organizations. Off-the-shelf (OTS) software is used by only 18% of organizations with 100 or fewer employees. This percentage increases with organization size, up to 62% for organizations with more than 10,000 employees. The same generally holds true for software developed in-house, with 35% of the smallest organizations using this software compared to 62% for the largest organizations.
A major advantage of using software is that it frees up time that would otherwise be devoted to non-value-added activities, such as updating data. This gives employees a chance to ask the question, "why are we doing what we're doing?" The software encourages change in an organization's processes, which is critical to performance improvement. Our survey results support this idea: organizations that use in-house developed software...