Balanced scorecard is an analysis technique designed to translate an organization's mission statement and overall business strategy. An organization can use the balance scorecard analysis to track progress and manage the implementation of their strategies. The scorecard measures an organization’s performance from four perspectives: (1) financial, the profits and value created for shareholders; (2) customer, the success of the company in its target market; (3) internal business processes, the internal operations that create value for customers; (4) learning and growth, the people and system capabilities that support operations. A company’s strategy influences the measures it uses to track performance in each of these perspectives (Horngren, Datar, & Rajan, 2012, p. 470). UNUM’s success with its balanced scorecard has been the result of getting a number of fundamental things right (Building and Implementing a Balanced Scorecard, Case Study: UNUM Corporation, 1999, p. 13).
Vision and Strategy, the vision is the future and the gap between now and the future leads to a plan of action to achieve the vision. How we get to the future involves strategies. UNUM’s strategic goals and measures are to support a clearly defined and meaningful corporate vision (Building and Implementing a Balanced Scorecard, Case Study: UNUM Corporation, 1999, p. 2). Each perspective in UNUM has a vision, quantitative measure and goal. What makes the UNUM scorecard particularly powerful is the strategic implementation framework; the scorecard aims to focus the organization onto time-sensitive achievements. UNUM’s corporate vision is, ‘We will achieve leadership in our businesses.’ The corporation has a specific vision for each of its four scorecard perspectives (Building and Implementing a Balanced Scorecard, Case Study: UNUM Corporation, 1999, pp. 2-3).
Financial Perspective evaluates the