Bizcom Limited is a medium-sized firm that specializes in clearing and forwarding services and has a number of strategically located offices with a head office carrying out administrative and management responsibilities. The firm’s local offices are dispersed across the nation with an international office abroad. Customers place orders at the various local branches, which are forwarded to the main office for onward dispatch to their international office.
The customers pay a fee for this particular process. Bizcom’s management is employing the balanced scorecard to assess the financial, customer, internal processes, and innovative and learning perspectives, which are typical components of the balanced scorecard to assess the viability of an internet-based application that will allow customers to scrutinize their order status.
The financial perspective
The financial perspective relates to the financial objectives and obligations of a company (Kaplan & Norton, 1992). In this particular case, the financial perspective will involve Bizcom Limited. Measurement techniques such as net present value, return on investment, economic value added (EVA), and investment rate of return can be used to assess the financial perspective of Bizcom. A cost-benefit analysis of the internet-based application will enable the management to make the right decisions in relation to the operations and processes at Bizcom. Bizcom Limited is sourcing part of the project cost internally, whereas the other part is covered by a bank loan.
The interest rates currently stand at 16%, and Bizcom has a repayment period of twenty-four months. While employing the EVA, the management has a positive EVA, an indicator that wealth has been created by the implementation of this internet-based application.
The internal process perspective
The internal processes perspective covers Bizcom’s Limited goal, which is in part to provide satisfactory clearing and forwarding services at the most competitive price. An important question to ask concerning this perspective in relation to the internet-based application may be how the adoption of the internet-based application is going to improve the internal processes at Bizcom. It is very likely that the implementation of this system will improve the processes at Bizcom whereby employees’ productivity will be enhanced while the client service is greatly improved.
The customer perspective
Customer perspective is directly related to internal processes perspective (Bose & Thomas, 2007). The customer perspective affects the internal processing that must align it to meeting the customer expectation through expedient online order status inquiries at Bizcom, which is the desired feature of the internet-based application to be implemented. The application will enable the customer to run direct online order status inquiries, which is likely to positively contribute to customer satisfaction and increase profits for Bizcom through customer retention.
The learning and innovative perspective
The internet-based application will enhance all the processes and make Bizcom’s service more efficient. The employees and customers will gain alike from the deployment of the internet-based application, which will ensure efficient service delivery by the employees as well as a more efficient order inquiry status for the customer. The most updated customer order status will enable Bizcom to address each customer’s requirement effectively and efficiently. The system will also encourage customers to learn and handle some processes of the system.