Developed by Kaplan and Norton, the scorecard counters the habit of managing purely by financial numbers, which report the past but say little about future health. By adding customer, process, and capability perspectives, it exposes the drivers behind the results and connects daily activity to long-term strategy.
Each perspective carries objectives, measures, and targets, and the four are causally linked: better learning improves processes, which improve customer outcomes, which improve financial performance. Reading them together gives a fuller, more forward-looking picture of how strategy is progressing.