BUS499 Discussions 1-4

                                            TridentBUS499Discussions 1-4

1. Financial Perspective

The material in this module tells us that many companies place disproportionate emphasis on the financial perspective at the expense of the other three perspectives. Give an example of an organization which you are familiar from either previous coursework, the news, or personal experience where this has been the case. What were the results of this focus on the financial perspective on customers and other stakeholders? Be as specific as you can and give concrete examples. [This TD is designed for you to respond to the above question/topic during the first week of the module. During the second week of the module please read through responses by peers and post a second response addressing one or more of the shared ideas. Please bring in new ideas/comments and research that haven't been mentioned yet. An "A" grade needs at least two strong entries with at least one of them supported by research, with the source cited.]

2.Who Are Customers

Can you think of any organizations that do not have relevant "customers" to take into consideration? If there are such organizations, how are they different from other organizations where all parts of the BSC operate equally?

3. Business Process Perspective

Organizations are complex systems with multiple stakeholders. Sometimes the interests of various stakeholders can conflict. For your initial post to this discussion, please give an example of a business process where the interests of two (or more) stakeholders are in opposition. For your second posting, choose an example of such a conflict posted by another student, and suggest a way that the business process can be changed so that the interests of the stakeholders can be brought into sync.

4. Learning and Growth Perspective

The home page of this module identifies several measures of the learning and growth perspective, such as

• Real-time availability of accurate customer and internal process information to front-line employees
• Ability to launch new products
• Ability to create more value for customers
• Ability to penetrate new markets
• Alignment of employee incentives with overall organizational success factors
• Rates of improvement in critical customer-based and internal processes

Consideration of these measures reveals that it can be difficult to quantify these factors. For your first posting in this Discussion, identify one specific example of a measure of learning and growth measure that you feel could be critical to an organization, but difficult to measure. For your second posting, choose another student's measure and propose a metric that could be used to quantify it.

4. Reflection

Please take some time to reflect back on what you have learned in this session.