Monitoring, analysing and forecasting of metrics in BSC Designer
BSC Designer doesn’t just record the values of your indicators; it can help you to evaluate them.
Use our new analysis tools to:
- Quickly identify your best- (and worst-) performing indicators.
- Easily see which indicators are most important to your whole scorecard, and to your whole business.
- Predict an indicator’s future value, based on its past performance.
- And set up automatic alerts to let you know when the indicator’s value reaches a particular range.
Accessing the Analysis Features
To access our analysis tools, just open your scorecard project in BSC Designer, and click on the “Analysis” tab at the bottom of the screen.
This tab includes three important sections:
- Analysis Type allows you to choose what kind of analysis to perform. We’ll look at each of these options later.
- The Indicator List shows each of your indicators, and the results of your analysis. You can double-click on an indicator here to see the same indicator in the Tree view.
- And in the Time Internal section, you can choose the time period on which to base your analysis. For instance, you might analyze an indicator’s performance over the past week, or the past month.
Performance Analysis
Click on Performance in the Analysis Type section to see the performance of your indicators, compared to their maximum and minimum values.
By default, the Indicator List sorts your indicators by performance, with your best-performing indicators first, and your worst-performing indicators last. To reverse the sort order, just click on the heading for the Performance column.
Progress Analysis
The Progress analysis type is similar, but here each indicator is evaluated on a scale from its baseline value to its target value.
For more details about the difference between performance and progress, please see our video tutorial, “Calculating an Indicator’s Performance and Progress.“
Again, the indicator list is sorted with your best-progressing indicators first. Click on the Progress column heading to reverse the sort order.
“Absolute Weight” Analysis
Choose Absolute Weight in the Analysis Type section to see all the indicators on your scorecard, sorted according to their absolute weight—that is, their importance to the overall value of your whole balanced scorecard. This type of analysis can be very helpful in helping you to prioritize the most important parts of your business.
Forcast Analysis
The Forecast analysis type allows you to predict the future behavior of your indicators, based on linear forecasting.
There are two options:
- You can choose a “Target Date,“ and BSC Designer will predict what value an indicator will have on that date.
- Or, you can choose a “Target Value,“ and BSC Designer will predict when the indicator will reach that target.
For instance, Indicator 1 had a value of 10 on 1 November, 2010, and a value of 20 on 15 November, 2010.
For the target date of 25 November, 2010, BSC Designer predicts a Forecast Value… of 23.406.
And BSC Designer predicts that this indicator will reach its Target Value of 30… on the Forecast Date of 4 December, 2010.
Creating Alerts
The Analysis Type section also includes an Alerts button.
Here, you can set up alerts to notify you if a particular indicator ever reaches a particular value, or if it reaches that value at a particular point in time.
Let’s say that I want to be notified if Indicator 1 reaches a value between 20 and 30… on a date between 1 November 2010 and 30 November 2010. (I could also click the “All Time“ box, to be notified if this indicator ever reaches that value.)
The current value of Indicator 1 is inside that range, and it’s November 2010… so an alert icon appears next to my indicator. This blue exclamation point makes sure I notice that the indicator has reached the value I chose, so I can take appropriate action.
