Question

What is the key role of the office administrator in the strategic planning process?

What are the perspectives used in a balanced scorecard?

Answer 1

Many organizations employ a professional corporate strategic planning administrator or manager, or a chief strategy officer to handle the strategic planning process. The key point in it is the better understanding of the administrator about the organization than an external consultant. He can keep in touch with the opinions, biases, and capabilities of the management team of the organization.

An administrator with relevant experience can provide a high-quality administration support service to the Strategic Planning Manager and team, enabling excellent organizational support.

The administrator can make sure that the administration work is carried out accurately to agreed standards, and within agreed timeframes. He can plan accordingly.

The administrator can assist the Manager-Strategic Planning to operate effectively and efficiently through effective management of customer and stakeholder contacts, and usual administrative support. Efficient strategic planning of organizations provides for monitoring of effectiveness on the departmental level. This effectiveness of strategic planning is based upon increased profitability, increased workload and consumer satisfaction. The administrator can monitor the workload, consumer satisfaction n addition to identify negative impacts on operations and profitability.

Responsibilities of an administrator in strategic planning

A coherent administrator understands and moulds the company’s strategy and mission by establishing plans to materialize strategy and analyze business proposals.

He can identify the business threats and opportunities and evaluate the company’s operational and strategic performance.

An administrator can align policies, resources-planning and organizational objectives with the overall strategy and direct the strategic shift.

The training senior executives in making effective decisions for aiding the strategic planning can be done by the administrator. By analyzing the market trends and industry directions he can direct the organization effectively.

Balanced Scorecard

In strategic management a balanced scorecard is used to measure the performance, to recognize and improve various internal functions of a business and the resultant external outcomes. The measurement and providing feedback to organizations can be done by it. The data obtained is interpreted by managers and executives and used to direct decisions for the betterment of the organization.

Purpose

Reinforce quality behaviours in an organization by isolating four separate areas like learning and growth, business processes, customers, and finance. The balanced scorecard can obtain objectives, measurements, initiatives and goals that developed from the primary functions of a business.

By using the balanced scorecard the organizations can easily identify factors hindering company performance and lead strategic changes tracked by future scorecards.

The organization is considered as a whole while viewing company objectives with the use of a balanced scorecard.

An organization can utilize the balanced scorecard to execute strategy mapping to assess where the value is added within an organization.

The development of strategic initiatives and strategic objectives can be made easy by the balanced scorecard.

The balanced scorecard has four components:

1. Financial Component

This component of the balanced scorecard assesses how well the company is doing financially with revenue and expenses. The financial concepts include salaries, cost of benefits, training, travel expenses, equipment, supplies, rent and taxes. The assessment of this information can aid the HR in determining ways to cut costs in certain areas.

2.Customer Component

The customer satisfaction, delivery of product and quick response to customer issues will come under the customer component of the balanced scorecard. This can improve the quality of the product in the organizations.

3. Processes Component

The processes component of the balanced scorecard represents the internal processes the company uses to get the work done. This can determine efficiency in time and cost.

4. Learning and Growth Component

It refers to how much the company has learned and improved during the years of operation. The employee satisfaction and morale are two critical factors while assessing the learning and growth component.

The four legs of the balanced scorecard encompass the vision and strategy of an organization and require active management to scrutinize the data collected. Hence the balanced scorecard is often referred to as a management tool, and not a measurement tool.