Quick! Show Me Your Value

In this Chapter:

• Step 6 of the financial value process: develop scorecard

• How to define your scorecard so that you are always comparing apples to apples

• How to use your financial value chains to fill in the benefits part of your scorecard

• How to fill in the costs in the second part of your scorecard

• How to finish your scorecard by summarizing your value

• Why you should update your scorecard every time you change or improve your intervention

• Some rules for tracking and presenting data from your scorecard

• Tips for special cases

• A case study of a financial scorecard for Marcella, the fictitious WLP character introduced in chapter 8.

In the previous chapter, you were briefly introduced to the concept of the financial imperatives scorecard. As you followed the exploits of Marcella, you were able to see that she might have avoided budget cuts had she been able to continuously communicate value and discuss how much she had improved versus where she started.

That ‚ s where the financial imperatives scorecard comes in. Using a financial imperatives scorecard is a continuous, disciplined effort. It is important to create and maintain your scorecard to demonstrate how much benefit you are delivering versus how much it is costing to obtain that benefit.

Your financial imperatives scorecard is personal. You don ‚ t have to show it to anyone if you don ‚ t want to. You can use sophisticated spreadsheets or a napkin that you scribble notes on every so often, just so long as you commit to the discipline of using a scorecard and follow a few rules. If you are an external consultant, you probably keep some type of case or scorecard for yourself, but can take the concept further by discussing how you can help your clients create scorecards for themselves .