Balanced scorecard example

What it shows

The balanced scorecard, introduced by Kaplan and Norton (1992), drawn in the form Kaplan (2010, Figure 1) gives it: financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth perspectives around a central box for vision and strategy. Each perspective has Kaplan’s question for it.

Two objectives sit in each perspective, each with a measure and a target, for Northfield Coffee Roasters, a fictional specialty roaster whose strategy is differentiation focus. Initiatives, the scorecard’s fourth column, are left out.

How to read it

1. 1

   Start at the center: the vision (the most trusted specialty roaster in its region) and the strategy (differentiation focus). Every objective should follow from them.

2. 2

   Read each row as objective, measure, target. The objective “Keep subscribers”, for example, is measured by the share of subscribers who cancel each month, with a target of under 3%.

3. 3

   The four perspectives balance the money (financial) against what drives it: customers, the processes customers depend on, and the people and skills behind those processes.

The example scorecard

• Financial: subscription revenue growth per year, 15%; gross margin on wholesale beans, 40%.
• Customer: subscribers who cancel each month, under 3%; new wholesale accounts per year, 12.
• Internal business process: days from roasting to dispatch, 2 or fewer; batches passing the taste test, 98%.
• Learning and growth: baristas who have finished brewing training, 100%; staff still with the firm after a year, 80%.

Ways to use it in teaching

• For their own program or department, students write one objective, measure and target per perspective.

• Ask which Northfield measures lead, driving future results (barista training), and which lag, reporting results already earned (gross margin), and why Kaplan treats the financial ones as the outcome measures.

• The scorecard grows the subscription by 15% a year. The BCG matrix example plots that line as a star, a high-share line in a fast-growing market, while the VRIO path calls it cheap for rivals to copy. Ask which of these the financial target is betting on.

Sources

• Balanced scorecard. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 19, 2026, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_scorecard
• Kaplan, R. S. (2010). Conceptual foundations of the balanced scorecard (Working Paper No. 10-074). Harvard Business School. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1562586
• Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1992). The balanced scorecard: Measures that drive performance. Harvard Business Review, 70(1), 71–79. https://hbr.org/1992/01/the-balanced-scorecard-measures-that-drive-performance-2