Each measure in each of the four perspectives is designed to help align individual, organisational and cross departmental initiatives in order to implement and realise the strategy of the organisation. .
The financial perspective deals with the ultimate question of how should the company appear to its shareholders? The combined financial measures are used to provide managers with a good picture of the economic consequences of action that managers and the organisation have already taken. Managers still require financial measures in order to equate the financial performance of the company which will indicate if the company's strategy implementation and its execution contribute to a bottom-line improvement. The main financial measures that are used within most organisations are return on capital employed, operating income, project profitability, and cash flow. In the balance scorecard the financial measures play a dual role. First they identify the financial performance that is expected from the strategy that the organisation implements and secondly they provide the goals and targets which the other 3 perspectives objectives strive for.
The Customer Perspective looks at the question of how do we appear to our customers? Its primary aim is to identify the customer and market segments in which the business units of the company will choose to compete. The manager should then deal with which measures of the particular business unit best suit the targeted segments. When dealing with this perspective managers must first concentrate on the core measures which according to Kaplan and Norton include customer satisfaction, retention, new customer acquisition, customer profitability and market and account share in each segment. Once managers identify these it is then important to recognize the features that the customer base value as well as the value proposition that the organisation wants to present to its intended customers.
