Strategy Maps

Strategy maps provide the means of linking the organisations Goals and Objectives to the Operational Scorecards. Although they were originally developed by Kaplan and Norton to support the balanced scorecard they can be applied to any scorecard framework. The strategy map, thus, provides a roadmap giving direction and linking the operation performance indicators to the strategy of the company.

I personally like to mix and match, using the Balance Scorecard The strategy has associated with it a destination statement giving an overall direction of where the business would like to be. This is an important addition to a strategy map giving it an ultimate set of goals to achieve within a specific time period. As show in the diagram above for each perspective there are a set of objectives. Measures within the scorecard framework are aligned to the objectives and targets set. An action plan is linked to the objectives and along with this an associated budget.
This framework for linking strategy to the measures and defining actions has been around for a long time. Many eminent professors and researchers have developed ways of grouping the processes resulting in an assortment of metrics frameworks. Some frameworks however are operational, such as SCOR, without an obvious link to the financial process types. Others like balanced scorecard do not push down to the operational processesto link the operational measures to the financial measures . Within balanced scorecard for instance there is a link from sales through the value proposition to finance through asset utilsation and revenue.