The second day of the Balanced Scorecard Forum continued to exhibit practical examples of how the Balanced Scorecard framework can be used in practice.

The presenters included:

1. Dr. Dan C. Lachica, President of First Philec Solar Corporation, from Philippines
2. Adil Khalfan, Regional Director of University Health Network International Programme, from Kuwait
3. Ramana Kumar, Senior Manager Business Planning and Strategy at National Bank of Abu Dhabi, from UAE
4. Pedro Pereira, Vice President of Coporater Middle East, from UAE
5. Mark Limpkin, Senior Strategy Manager of Abu Dhabi General Services Company (Musanada), from UAE.

The first presentation focused on how the Balanced Scorecard implementation combined with a variety of business excellence models have helped First Philec Solar Corporation achieve “Hall of Fame” recognition in 2010, from Palladium Group.

The second presenter highlighted the interconnections between building a Balanced Scorecard and developing a “straight talking” culture in a public healthcare organization.

The third presentation emphasized the importance of establishing challenging goals. The National Bank of Abu Dhabi did not take its market leader position for granted. The Balanced Scorecard approach has helped them become more competition oriented. After reaching the milestone of becoming the best bank in the country, the public organization is now aiming even higher, with the goal of becoming “the world’s best Arab bank”. The organization takes pride in its productivity, focus on continuous improvement, as well as its role modeling role for other banks and public organizations worldwide.

The fourth presenter showcased how a software can help you in different stages of strategy implementation:

1. to document a strategy
2. to structure and to clarify the strategy
3. to follow up and review it, and finally,
4. to communicate it.

The fifth presentation was a unique example of an organization that had the Balanced Scorecard framework imbedded in its strategy ever since the organizations’ establishment. In the context of Abu Dhabi’s Government having established a goal of becoming one of the top 5 governments worldwide, Musanada was established as a shared service organization aiming to:

• Reduce the size and scale of operations of the core government entities
• Improve the quality of service
• Achieve economy of scale

At Musanada, strategy is understood as responses to questions such as what is our vision, value proposition, scope of services, funding approach, form of entity, demand, service provision model, etc.

Some of the lessons learned from this young organization’s Balanced Scorecard journey included:

• Strategy is defined at the highest level as “a set of deliberated choices”
• Annual priorities should be aligned with Scorecard perspectives. Core competencies were introduced in strategy map to better understand how Musanada differentiates itself from others
• Future destinations and directions should also be defined and KPIs should help assess performance on those tracks throughout the year
• The strategic initiative management process should be elaborated based on the scorecards
• Employees working either to deliver a service or to plan a strategic initiative, need to set objectives and report to the specific KPIs of the service they are offering.