Macy’s Balanced Scorecard

A balanced scorecard is a tool that that is used by management to measure, identify and improve various internal functions of a business and its outcomes. It provides feedback to organizations on collected data. The process is crucial as it provides quality information which is interpreted by experts and managers. The information is important to better decision making in various organizations. The tool is used to enhance good conduct in organizations among the stakeholders. The balanced scorecard is used in enhancing company goal, measurements, initiatives and aims that lead to the success of the business. A balanced scorecard can be used b companies to identify factors hindering the companies’ performance. Managers- use the balanced scorecard to implement strategic objectives so as to see where the value is added within the organization. Macy’s Balanced Scorecard on Coca Cola Company is further discussed below in four perspective namely financial, customer, internal and learning.

Coca cola’s b alanced Scorecard defines its performance and measures whether it is achieving its desired goals or not. The Balanced Scorecard translates Mission and Vision Statements of the company into an objective set and its performance level. These measures include; f inancial performance, customer value performance, internal business process performance, innovation performance and employee performance (Niven, 2005). The balanced scorecard helps the company to articulate the business vision and strategy, take action to close unfavorable gaps, ensures company wide acceptance of the measures and establish objectives that supports the business vision and strategy. It is also used in identifying the performance categories that link the business vision and strategy. The Scorecard helps the company to update or clarify a entity’s tactics. It also connect the company’s strategic goals to long-term aims and yearly predictions , track the main elements of the enterprise operations, enhance organizational change, incorporate the company’s goals into resource allocation procedures, compare performance in various levels of the diverse business units and improve companywide understanding of the corporate vision and mission. (Kaplan, Robert & David, 2006).

Different organizations differ in terms of their balanced scorecard. There are areas that need improvement in every organization. Below is Coca cola Company’s balanced scorecard on departments and areas that need change for the success of the company.

Financial: Measures that customer, creditors and other stakeholders use to evaluate financial performance (revenue and surplus growth).

Internal: Measures that management uses to evaluate efficiency of existing business processes (technology and market share).

Learning and growth: Measures that management uses to evaluate effectiveness of employee training (employee training and compensation).

Customer: Measures that management uses to evaluate whether the organization is meeting customer expectations (consumer base and satisfaction)

Finance

Financial statements are the core standard measures for the company’s evaluation on its performance. Coca Cola Company’s worth is determined by how much the stakeholders want to invest in the company. The company’s current shares stand 4.32 billion with each share costing around US $43.50. These shares put the company's market capitalization at roughly $188 billion. Coca cola focuses on the enterprise value rather than its own company. Coca-Cola’ Company net value is approximated to be US $210 B with an asset of US $90 B. The assets include about US $24 B in monetary value, approximately $4 B in accounts due and $6 B in inventory, expenses and other assets. Coca-Cola's enterprises, assets and equipment make up almost $10 B after deductions of accumulated depreciations. Long-term investments add up to about $15 B. This includes the company’s stake and various bottling fountains around globally..

Coca-Cola has an advantage from the expanding beverage industry across the globe than other established similar companies such as Pepsi in the market. The beverage industry (not including the United States) is expected to add value by US $290 B by the end of the year 2020.Coca-Cola having approximately 29% of the global beverage industry’s market share is a plus for increasing its revenue growth. By the year 2020, total addition of US $ 85 B to its market cap is expected if the company keeps its market share in the world at a constant. The company has a potential to increase its growth by increasing brands of their products and partnering with companies that are more innovative to increase the brand quality. The company will continue to increase its market share since according to statistics, young generation of teenagers have not have the pleasure to use the products in the past one month. Countries that have a low per capita income generally have low consumption levels than other countries. This gives the company a chance to put more efforts on increasing their supplies to such countries as the market is less saturated hence increasing their customer base. Increasing beverage consumption in terms of per capita will create emerging markets that will expand Coca Cola’s revenue.

Customers

Coca Cola Company has a great customer base making it the leading beverage company worldwide. The company seeks the help of other companies to develop a marketing strategy that aids in attaining its set goals more effectively. With a good market program, Coca Cola is able to capture a wider range of customers compared to other beverage companies. Coca Cola carefully analyzes internal and external factors that may affect the business and come up with effective strategies. These strategies help the company to operate effectively and continually monitor possible external threats and opportunities. Monitoring the company’s internal and external environment will make it easier for the management to identify its target market hence increasing its customer base. There have been fluctuations in the global economy which have impacted customer attitudes and values, and the demographic patterns. These changes have positively influenced the success of the company over time. Numerous advertisements through media and other platforms of the company’s products have caught attention of a large number of audiences since many people have access to social media. This has relatively increased the number of their customers. Increase in the number of brands of different flavors has increased its number of customers since the products satisfy customers with different tastes and preferences. Offers and promotions on the company’s products have attracted many customers because most of the time customers prefer awards on the products they purchase. Coca cola provides cabs for tourists for their personal use with free drinks. This encourages the tourists to consume the company drinks hence increasing their base.

The company has a collaborative relationship with the customers. Coca Cola works with their customers to improve marketing and supply chain process. This improves collaboration and accelerates creativity among the stakeholders so as to provide more quality product selections to their consumers. The company-customer relationship has grown to be successful in meeting the customers’ expectations hence maintaining customer base. Coca cola is in the program of partnering with their customers to address various areas of concern which need change and come up with solutions to add value to their products. The company has a wide range of customers ranging from large international chains of retailers and restaurants and small independent businesses all over the world. The relationships aim in achieving mutual benefit. The company also partners with other companies such as bottling companies so as to meet their customers’ needs. 

Reducing costs, improving sales and profits in delivering of quality products of various brands to their customers has created a higher customer base of the company. The company aims at working on value addition of their products since the customers expect their demands to be met. The company povides customer support services such as conducting trainings to help them with their smaller businesses. This will help their businesses to grow and make profits at the same time maintaining the customer base for Coca Cola. Further, the company’s provision of wide range of products, nutritional information and ensuring quality standards of their products has earned it trust from the customers hence maintaining the customer base.

Internal

Technology has played a vital part in the success of the company. Coke has gone through various technological transitions. The introduction of greener bottles and packaging in 2009 impacted the company positively as it raised their production by 2.5 billion. The technology involved less use of petroleum. Many companies worldwide have adapted this technology. Coca-Cola use of technology in creating awareness on social media such Facebook and other platforms such as Twitter has helped it to reach many customers. There is power in social media considering that there are over 30 million active fans. This is of a great advantage to the Coca-Cola Company as it can invite users to play games associated with Coca Cola products and offering tests on aiming at advertorial campaigns for their products. Freestyle dispensers have been innovated and this has allowed individual selections on the products according to taste and preferences. These dispensers have been of great importance as they keep record information that concern consumers’ choices on the products. The information collected is important to the company in its research process about their products and market.

Endless efforts by the company have been put by use of technology to effect online advertisements. Coca-Cola’s product online advertisements are subtle but effective pushing one to the feeling of wanting to use the product. Expansion of the online advertisements to websites gives the company control over who sees their ads and when they see them. Coca cola ads appear when someone goes through the internet. Through technology, the company has been able to rebrand its product to meet its customers’ demands. Consistent advertisements of Coca Cola products have helped the company to keep its customer base and maintain its high sales. Through technology, computers have been used to keep records of data in every aspect of its operations.

Use of automated ordering in the Coca Cola locations has smoothen its operations in that product supplies and orders can be directly places into the system. Through this, customers have been able to purchase products at the lowest possible delivered cost. With the operational data, the company can easily work along with the management of the fountain and identify the products that have a high demand and those that are not selling out. This gives room for more promotions and adjustments to their products so as to meet the customers’ preferences. The company therefore gets perfect opportunities to adjust their prices and promotions. The company has merchandisers who take pictures of the company’s coolers and shelves when they get into store to discuss matters concerning promotion and orders. These photos are then studied by professionals and within a short time they get back to the company with counts of stocks for each product. Installing Coca Cola pumps all over the world will help to reduce the cost of the soft drinks as compared to the price of the bottled drinks. This will help to create more demand for the products hence the growth of the industry. Coca cola plans to introduce coke hookah that will make combined different flavors that are suitable for generations such as children and old people and are not harmful to their health.

Learning

For a successful organization, helping the stakeholders to realize their potential, skills and their capabilities will enhance its performance. Coca Cola Company has passed knowledge to various people in different ways. It has committed its efforts in educational extension and development projects to its employees at all organizational levels. There is an educational curriculum of the company that offers various courses through e learning programs, field trainings and classroom learning. This program aids in the increment of knowledge and the proficiency of the employees. Coca cola stakeholders get various forms of training from the company’s performance review system. The system is made up of two sessions in a year; end-year and midyear professional discussions among the company’s stakeholders. This training helps the stakeholders to know their proficiency towards achieving the set goal and objectives. The management provides training to enrich the stakeholders with the opportunities to empower themselves. Organizational management should monitor the employee’s progress in the offered trainings (Niven, 2006).

Employees when given the opportunity to grow in their skills makes them deliver quality services. This gives the company an advantage since there will be efficient and effective production. Peak Performance offers continual opportunities for employee rewards; developmental forums offer teaching opportunities; and functional developments let employees build job skills for their area of interest. Allowing employees the opportunity to grow in their skills and be trained to do even more is a big focus at Coca-Cola. The curriculum offered in Coca-Cola University provides an online teaching environment for employees. Furthermore, employees are given short-term assignments that give them a chance to work in a field different from their own, whether it's a different department or a different country interest. Coca-Cola University is an online teaching environment for employees. In addition, employees are given short-term assignments that give them a chance to work in a field different from their own, whether it's a different department or a different country.

Coca Cola Company encourages its employees to go for programs in higher education, with ranks offered for graduate and undergraduates seeking degrees at universities and colleges that are accredited. The company also gives them opportunities to take make use of the various e-learning resources more than what is offered as well as other training opportunities and conferences. The knowledge attained creates a working environment of open communication and to freely share ideas and skills and engage in frequent dialogue with other companies globally. This enables the company to get valuable information, which they can use to increase their product awareness, promote business strategies, share successes and opportunities, and synchronize employee opinions and ideas for the success of the company. Coca-Cola also offers an energizing environment that motivates its employees. This enables the employees to work to the best of their abilities hence success of the company.

Motivation is a management aspect that when managed properly, makes the employees delighted. According to statistics, motivated employees commit themselves and give their best in their work place. However, various companies’ employers and managers do not give much concern on motivation aspect. Instead, they tend to focus on other factors such as employee competencies, process efficiency and effectiveness, technology deployment, innovation, organizational learning, and others. Companies should reveal the kind of motivational factors available to employees and the attractiveness of those motivations. They should also determine the kind of relationship that motivation has with productivity of the company. Studies show that managers always know what motivates their workers. This enables them to create an enabling environment that helps to motivate the employees such as allowing for participation in decision making, creating opportunities for career progress, providing a satisfactory working environment and many more. In Coca-Cola company, the employee motivation has been improving in the past few years as well as the productivity of the company. Motivation positively impacts productivity of both the company and individual workers. This is because through motivation, employees are able to their proficiency at work. Motivation has a direct relationship on productivity in that the more the more the employees are motivated the more the productivity and productivity of the company. Motivation can be in various forms. These include ensuring equity in the motivational factors given, setting of measurable targets, providing realistic logistics and connecting all rewards to good performance among others. However, sometime productivity levels do not increase as required even if the employees are motivated. In this case, the management has to evaluate the company’s operations to know where the problem might be.

Employees’ compensation is a motivational tool towards achieving the organization’s goals. Coca Cola Company compensation and benefits packages to its employees have positively impacted the performance of the company. The company offers a variety of developmental opportunities for its stakeholders, such as Coca-Cola University which is a learning program for high performers. The company offers the employees with medical cover such as group life insurance, business travel accident insurance and dependent life insurance. This motivates the employees to commit their efforts to the company. Creating a fair environment, specialized employee groups, and mentoring programs has helped in broadening employees’ network in the company. The company provides casual business attire that makes it comfortable for the employees to work freely. The company also provides quality life benefits to the employees such as telecommuting, job sharing, holidays, flex times and local health dispensaries discounts. This helps in reducing work monotony among the employees

Rewards and Recognition programs in the company such as yearly merit reviews, compensation for remarkable performance, equity programs for employees in different levels of the company and the programs that recognize good performance with redeemable points for travel awards are major motivations for the employees in the Coca Cola Company. There are also educational advantages that include classes and a renewable scholarship finances for dependents of company stakeholders. This makes the employees to perform to their level best with the mind of being rewarded for the good performance. Various discounts for the employees including automobile discount plan and employee discount program in the company’s dry cleaning services, cafeteria, credit union, store and free parking services have greatly impacted the company’s performance. Employees enjoy a retirement plan from the company and annual matching gifts.

Below is a table that shows a balanced scorecard metrics for Coca Cola Company.

Perspective	Objective	Metric	Target Value
Financial	Sales Revenue Growth Increasing Surplus Growth Solvency	Annual Rate of Growth % Increasing Surplus Growth   Ratio of Assets to Liabilities	> 19% > 32% > 7.0
Customer	Increase number of customers Maintain customer base Improve the customer Satisfaction	Annual rate of customer Increase Average customer base per sale Median Score: customer	6%    $5 million  > 95%
Internal	Technology Improvement   Improving sales Maintaining market share	% of IT expenditure to revenue  Ratio of new to old number of sales  Market share	12%  5.0  30%
Learning	Employee Training Employee Turnover   Employee Compensation	Annual Hours of Training per Employee  Employee Turnover   Average Compensation	64  < 76% > $1 million

Coca Cola Company uses balanced scorecard as a tool to measure its performance metric and to point out and better a number of internal functions of the organization and its results in effective management. Balanced scorecard has been successfully used in various organizational levels. Balanced approach to employee performance appraisal is an effective way of getting a complete look at an employee's work performance. Most of the time the managers use balanced scorecards to measure the employee performance levels, their standard behaviors and to analyze results of employees' work. The managers are able to identify cause of the problem whenever the employees fail to meet the set objectives. The balanced scorecard provides relevant information the management can use to analyze the organization’s performance.

The balanced scorecard is able to translate the company’s vision hence helping the manager to review the company’s work plan. The balanced scorecard is of four different perspectives; financial, customer, internal and learning. Each of these perspectives is of great importance to the management of a company as they help in the administration of every department hence the organization’s success. A balanced scorecard measure employee’s performance level. Employee’s performance can be enhanced through motivation in various ways. Motivation positively impacts the productivity of both the company and individual workers. This is because through motivation, employees are able to their proficiency at work. Motivation has a direct relationship on productivity. An organization’s success depends on if its balanced scorecard is properly.

References 

Kaplan, Robert S., and David P. Norton. Alignment: Using the Balanced Scorecard to Create Corporate Synergies . Harvard Business School Press, 2006

Niven, P. R. (2005). Balanced scorecard diagnostics: Maintaining maximum performance . Hoboken (N.J.: J. Wiley.

Niven, Paul R. Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step: Maximizing Performance and Maintaining Results , 2d ed. John Wiley & Sons, 2006