BizAnalyst Network

In this issue:

• Aligning Support Functions
• Surmounting the Competitive Squeeze: Thai Manufacturer Adapts and Thrives with the BSC
• Catalyst for Global Growth: The Strategy Management Office at Serono
• Return on Customer: A Metric for Customer Profitability: An Interview with Martha Rogers
• Demonstrating the Value of Your BSC Program

Dear Reader,

This is what you'll find in the January - February issue of the Balanced Scorecard Report:

Aligning Support Functions
* * An exclusive preview of Kaplan and Norton's forthcoming book, Alignment. * *
Support units have long been regarded as "discretionary expense centers," but it's a mistake to view them this way. When aligned to the strategy of the enterprise and the business units they support—through strategy maps and Balanced Scorecards—support units can become value-creating organizations. Of course, alignment isn't a one-time event; sustaining it calls for establishing processes, relationships, and tools with which the support unit can carry out its partnership with corporate and the business units.

Surmounting the Competitive Squeeze: Thai Manufacturer Adapts and Thrives with the BSC
As Thailand-based Thai Carbon Black knows from hard experience, it takes a lot to survive as a commodity producer in a global economy, with relentless competition and volatile commodity prices conspiring against success. Yet this enterprise is thriving, thanks in part to the Balanced Scorecard. In 2000, the world's largest single-plant producer of carbon black—the fine powder used in rubber manufacturing—adopted the BSC as an overarching strategy management framework. Along with the company's other management disciplines, the BSC has helped Thai Carbon Black avert a raft of threats, sharpen efficiencies, and shift strategic gears in today's ruthless environment.

Catalyst for Global Growth: The Strategy Management Office at Serono
Serono International's office of strategic management has been a study in evolution. Initially chartered with a limited mandate, it assumed a dramatically expanded role after a new CEO took over. In the past 10 years, the office has played an integral part in the transformation of the Geneva-based biotechnology and pharmaceutical company from a relatively small, family-run, mainly national player to a $2.5 billion global giant with eight manufacturing plants and 4,900 employees in 45 countries—the largest biotechnology company in Europe and the third-largest worldwide.

Return on Customer: A Metric for Customer Profitability: An Interview with Martha Rogers
With more and more companies chasing a finite number of customers, smart companies are focusing on customers—how to keep the valuable ones and grow the relationship. Customer relationship management experts Don Peppers and Martha Rogers recently introduced an innovative metric that they believe may be the next great breakthrough concept in customer strategy and business: return on customer. Analogous to the return on investment concept, return on customer is designed to measure the lifetime value of the customer. Rogers speaks with BSR about why this metric matters.

Demonstrating the Value of Your BSC Program
For a Balanced Scorecard program to take root and flourish, it requires executive sponsorship, a committed team, and a well-crafted project plan. But it needs more than this. It needs to demonstrate tangible benefits. Indeed, any BSC program that fails to generate results in that first year or so is certain to go down in memory as just another failed "flavor of the month" management idea. Here's how to make sure that your BSC program enjoys ongoing success.

I hope you find the issue useful.

Yours truly,

Randall Russell
Executive Editor,
Balanced Scorecard Report

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