What Are Perspectives?

Perspectives are categories in your organization with which to associate initiatives, objectives, and KPIs. A perspective can represent a key stakeholder (such as a customer, employee, or shareholder/financial) or a key competency area (such as time, cost, or quality).

You associate an initiative and objective with a perspective when you create or edit it. See "Creating Initiatives" and "Creating Objectives" for additional information. You associated a KPI with a perspective when you edit the details of the KPI. See "Working with KPI Details" for additional information.

For example, when you create an objective called Improved Client Response Time, you might associate it with the Customer perspective as the objective sustains and supports customer-related operations.

There are four standard perspectives that are defined by the Balanced Scorecard Methodology:

• Financial — Groups objectives, initiatives, and KPIs that relate to or support the monetary or economic health and development of your organization.

• Customer — Groups objectives, initiatives, and KPIs that pertain to or support your client base.

• Internal Process — Groups objectives, initiatives, and KPIs that categorize and support your corporate internal policies and procedures.

• Learning and Growth — Groups objectives, initiatives, and KPIs that relate to or support employee training and advancement.

In addition, you can create custom perspectives for your scorecard.

See "Creating Custom Perspectives" for additional information.