Balanced Scorecard KPI Examples for a 2024 KPI Scorecard Template

As middle market strategy execution experts, we get asked many questions about KPI scorecards for firms to manage the metrics that matter. We get hundreds of thousands of yearly views on our KPI blog posts alone! Our comprehensive KPI Guide is one of the most valuable free resources we offer to the middle market community for free of charge to help with your performance management. It helps middle-market companies determine the correct set of KPIs for their balanced scorecard KPI dashboard (BSC) to monitor their performance. If you are a CEO or executive, you might also want to check our blog on CEO KPIs that management should prioritize. Creating a KPI Scorecard is part of long-term success and essential to any managing strategy to drive organizational performance.

As you'll see below, we have various KPI examples across multiple industries to help you explore some of the more common KPIs middle-market CEOs and their executive teams use to manage their business dashboard. You'll want to ensure you provide a good mix of leading indicators (how to create a leading indicator KPI), which hint at future performance, and result indicators, which report results already achieved. As they say, what gets measured gets managed, so make sure that you choose your KPI examples wisely and build an accountable team to exceed your annual targets. Your KPI report's key metrics and time frame will help you achieve your goals faster through focus and clarity with improved organizational alignment.

The balanced scorecard was created in 1992 by Kaplan and Norton to ensure that all the different attributes of a company's success were accurately measured with key performance indicators to achieve your strategic objectives. We often use this as a lens when looking through company KPI dashboards, as we often find that financial metrics dominate them and aren't that balanced. A complete KPI scorecard should have performance measurements that include financial targets, customers and stakeholders, internal processes, and employee learning and growth to develop a comprehensive dashboard to drive business objectives and goals.

As the balanced scorecard institute defines the Balanced Scorecard KPI categories for your metrics:

Financial: often renamed Stewardship or other more appropriate names in the public sector, this perspective views organizational financial performance and the use of financial resources

Customer/Stakeholder: this perspective views organizational performance from the point of view of the customer or other key stakeholders that the organization is designed to serve

Internal Process: views organizational performance through the lenses of the quality and efficiency related to our product or services or other critical business processes

Organizational Capacity (originally called Learning and Growth): views organizational performance through the lenses of human capital, infrastructure, technology, culture, and other capacities that are key to breakthrough performance

Balanced Scorecard Examples Across Industries

Balanced scorecards are versatile tools that can be adapted to any industry. They provide a comprehensive view of an organization's performance by looking at various aspects, including financial performance, customer satisfaction, internal processes, and learning and growth. Let's explore some balanced scorecard examples across different industries:

Manufacturing Industry
In the manufacturing sector, a balanced scorecard might focus on the following KPIs:

Financial: Gross margin, operating income, return on assets
Customer: On-time delivery rate, customer satisfaction score, customer retention rate
Internal Process: Production yield, defect rate, order fulfillment time
Learning and Growth: Employee turnover rate, training hours per employee, number of process improvements implemented

This balanced scorecard helps manufacturing companies monitor their financial health, operational efficiency, and employee development efforts, all while keeping customer satisfaction at the core.

Healthcare Industry
For healthcare providers, a balanced scorecard could include these KPIs:

Financial: Operating margin, revenue growth, cost per patient
Customer: Patient satisfaction score, readmission rate, patient wait time
Internal Process: Medical error rate, patient safety incidents, average length of stay
Learning and Growth: Staff turnover rate, hours of staff training, number of new procedures or treatments introduced

This balanced scorecard allows healthcare providers to track their financial performance, patient outcomes, operational efficiency, and staff development.

Retail Industry
In the retail sector, a balanced scorecard might look at these KPIs:

Financial: Sales growth, gross margin, inventory turnover
Customer: Customer satisfaction score, customer retention rate, average transaction value
Internal Process: Stockout rate, order fulfillment time, store footfall
Learning and Growth: Employee turnover rate, hours of staff training, number of new products or services introduced

This balanced scorecard helps retailers monitor their financial results, customer relationships, operational processes, and employee development.

Balanced Scorecard KPI Examples Video

KPI Scorecard

Use these balanced scorecard KPI scorecards as templates to get your KPI scorecard started. Each of these KPIs measures the performance of a critical part of your business to help you meet the team's objectives. Remember that the list is just a starting point; you'll need to work with your team to find the most valuable for your department to create a balanced scorecard execution rhythm to measure your progress on your company's strategic initiatives for growth. Our extensive list of BSC KPI examples is listed below and available for download and includes customer KPIs and scorecard measures for any industry and should be part of any strategy map. If you use objectives and key results, OKRs vs. KPIs is explained in this related blog post that will help you mold these into the best metrics to help you achieve your strategic objectives through performance management.

Financial Balanced Scorecard KPI Scorecard Examples (Stewardship)

Net profit
Gross profit
Gross margin
Net margin
Profit margin
EBIDTA
Quick Ratio
Revenue per employee (FTE)
Payroll headcount
Revenue per customer
Revenue growth
Debt to equity ratio
Team effectiveness
MRR monthly recurring revenue
ARR annual recurring revenue
Cash conversion cycle
Product revenue
Service revenue
Number of days outstanding
Cash on hand
ROE return on equity
Current ratio
Cash Flow

Financial KPI Scorecard Examples (Sales)

Deals closed
Contacts made from networking
Number of calls made
Trade shows attended
Number of social media posts
Number of blogs written
Prospects identified
Sales qualified leads (SQLs)
Sales accepted leads (SALs)
Total outbound attempts
Outgoing Calls
Emails
Conversations
Pain identified
Number of first appointments set
Number of second appointments set
Face-to-Face Meetings
Proposals presented
Proposals pending
Closed - lost
Closed – won
Win rate
Networking events attended
Speaking events attended
Speaking events performed
White papers published
RFPs (requests for proposals) received

Internal Process Balanced Scorecard KPI Examples

Capacity utilization
On standard operating efficiency
Overall operating efficiency
Overall equipment effectiveness
Machine downtime
Scheduled downtime
Unscheduled downtime
Machine set-up time
Inventory turns
Inventory accuracy
First pass yield
Failed audits
Customer returns
Revenue per employee
Profit per employee
Number of parts produced
Overall equipment effectiveness
Reject ratio
Operating rates
New product SKU sales
Quality
Production/output
Labor cost
Delivery performance
Total cost
Material cost
Safety
Reject/scrap
Equipment utilization
Total cycle time
Overtime
Backlog
Open orders
On-time delivery
Maintain inventory level
Safety recordable (near-misses)
Stock-outs
Daily sales
Weekly sales
Monthly sales
Quarterly sales
Year-to-date Sales
Sales vs. budget
New revenue from existing customers
Revenue from new customers
Training hours
Internal quality
DPPM (defective parts per million)
Number of customer issues
Labor utilization
Operating margins
Training hours
Customer lifetime value
Processes and procedures developed
Quarterly rocks completed
Defined objectives and measures aligned with your strategic goals
Week in Sync (WIS) Notes from team meetings a week to week - is stuff getting done?
Number of action list items completed on-time
Number of action list items overdue

Organizational Capacity KPI Scorecard Examples

Voluntary attrition
Involuntary turnover
Number of key hires
Keep smart (learning)
Gallup employee engagement survey
Employee NPS (net promoter score)
Percentage of "A Players"
Percentage of "A Managers"
Number of new hire failures in 90 days
Number of starts per week
"Fill percentage" of open jobs
Percentage of redeployment
Weekly job orders
Spread or gross margin
Applicants-to-hire ratio
Employee retention or turnover rate
Billable hours
Number of timesheets submitted on time
Accounts past 60 days receivable
Submissions per hire
Temps to full-time hire
Continuing education and training
Number of quality meetings per week (sales leading indicator)
Glassdoor recommendations
Glassdoor ratings
Positive social media posts
Fill rate
Interview to hire rate
New hires vs. replacement hires
Number of billable hours closed/won
Number of billable hours delivered
Days to fill
Revenue
Client Substitutions
Hiring manager satisfaction rates
Job performance (sales quotas, customer satisfaction ratings, etc.)
Strategic planning rhythm to make adjustments

Internal Customer Balanced Scorecard KPI Examples

Meeting SLAs (service level agreements)
Customer satisfaction
Number of client issues resolved
Call pickup time
Abandon rate
Order Accuracy
Rework
Average time to resolution
Average reply time
Number of support tickets
First contact resolution rate
NPS (Net Promoter Score)
Top agents
Number of bugs reported
Customer retention rate
Support costs as a percentage of revenue
Customer service satisfaction rate

Financial Leading Indicator KPI Examples

Clickthrough rate
Conversion rate
Bounce rate
Email Sharing
Forwarding rate
Number of email clicks
Number of likes
Number of shares
Number of comments
Number of new visitors
Number of return visitors
Number of downloads
Number of organic search visitors
Cost per click
Average SERP (search engine results pages) ranking
Number of keywords in SERP top 10
Number of keywords in SERP top 3
Percentage of traffic growth over 90 days
Number of new blog posts
Number of blog post visits
Number of impressions
Customer acquisition

These KPI examples should be enough to create your own KPI dashboard to drive your desired business results and performance management. The real secret to making your KPIs is to pick actionable metrics. Use Rhythm Systems SMART AI Goal Coach to help you. If you see the number is off, there are concrete steps and actions your team can take to get them back on track. Suppose you measure things you can't influence, such as the weather. In that case, they can't drive your team to perform the right actions to execute your quarterly plan and hit the goals and objectives set up in your annual planning meeting that aligns with your overall strategy.

Whenever you set up a new business process or update an existing one, ensure you track the KPIs to achieve your business goals and objectives. This way, you can continually make adjustments at each team meeting to ensure that your processes drive the critical financial metrics that run your business and exceed your strategic objectives. Why are KPIs important?

Ensure to include both KPI types (leading and results KPIs) when creating your dashboard. Check out Rhythm Systems' KPI Resource Center for all you need to know about Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and how to use them in your organization for real-time feedback on your business. See how Rhythm Systems software can help you execute your balanced scorecard KPI strategy and strategic initiatives. You can download the complete list of KPI examples for any industry by clicking the link.

Ted Skinner