ASKED&ANSWERED
Exclusive INN interviews with insurance thought leaders
Balanced Scorecard Benefits
Insurers can use balanced scorecards to get a holistic view
of operations and drive business transformation.
Asa performanceman- agement tool, bal- anced scorecards give managers a mixture of inancial and non-fi-
nancial metrics in order to help assess
whether the organization is meeting
strategic objectives. Insurance Networking
News asked MetLife AVP of Business
Transformation Practices Ashish Gup-
ta, who helped develop the balanced
scorecard approach within MetLife’s
ITG organization, how insurers can
best leverage these tools.
have helped his team gain increased
transparency around its operations,
enabling it to quickly address chal-
lenges. In addition to helping to
identify and define key performance
indicators (KPI) that drive perfor-
mance and cost, scorecards provide
additional quantitative data, which,
in conjunction with qualitative data,
anced scorecards can help functions
better align with enterprise-level
strategies and goals.
INN: How can organizations iden-
tify KPIs that best align with value
drivers and customer proposition?
AG: Organizations need to assess
their internal core capabilities, pro-
survey internal stakeholders and
business partners. Through this pro-
cess, we identified the KPIs to achieve
our organizational goals, as well as
ensured they aligned with internal
and external stakeholders. However,
these KPIs are flexible to adapt to fu-
ture input from internal/external
stakeholders.
INN: How can insurers drive opera-
tional accountability and improve
service delivery by employing a bal-
anced scorecard approach?
AG: Balanced scorecards provide detailed metrics that enable a holistic
view of an entire operation. For example, in the Information Technology Group (ITG) of MetLife’s Technology & Operations organization,
we are currently using a balanced
scorecard approach to help us assess
our financial performance, as well as
our key processes and our associates’
success. This approach enables ITG
to thoroughly evaluate its complete
performance, which will help identify performance issues, conduct
root cause analysis and drive data-based decision making. To complement this approach, ITG is focused
on incorporating metrics to allow
managers to better gauge future performance and address any forecasted
challenges.
According to one of ITG’s CIOs,
Larry Blakeman, balanced scorecards
enable a better understanding of
root causes and trends.
INN: What role does the scorecard
play in performance management?
AG: By closely aligning the outcomes measured by scorecards with
their vision, strategic objectives,
goals and metrics, organizations can
successfully leverage balanced scorecards to transform strategy into action.
Within ITG at MetLife Tech & Ops,
the overall vision and strategy has
been tightly linked to the KPIs and
supporting metrics to help maintain
focus toward the desired goal. Ad-
ditionally, when performance short-
falls arise, a balanced scorecard can
be used to develop key action plans
to correct course. At a high level, bal-
cesses and product offerings in or-
der to identify their KPIs for driving
value. To paint a more robust picture,
organizations should evaluate their
key customers’ needs and wants, as
well as “dissatisfiers” and exciters
from their perspective. Armed with
these analyses, organizations are
then prepared to identify the KPIs
that will both drive business perfor-
mance and customer satisfaction.
Within MetLife’s ITG organization, we achieved a holistic view by
conducting voice of the customer
(VOC) interviews and leveraging the
Goal Question Metric framework to
INN: How can the balance scorecard
approach drive change toward a
more effective culture of account-
ability and responsibility?
AG: Within MetLife’s ITG organization, we are focusing on four key
elements of balanced scorecards to
drive business transformation, and
even cultural change.
• Key decision makers’ KPIs pro-
vide metrics that encourage a com-
plete assessment of performance.
• Robust, data-based, leadership
decision-making processes focus on
creating accountability through action planning and root cause analysis.
• Supporting communication
and training programs that ensure a
high level of understanding and en-
gagement by all ITG associates.
• An intuitive user interface and
agile technology provide current information based on the integration
of 20-plus systems in the back-end
to create a consolidated view of performances in various areas. INN
By closely aligning the outcomes
measured by scorecards with their
vision, strategic objectives, goals and
metrics, organizations can success-
fully leverage balanced scorecards
to transform strategy into action.
For more about performance management, search “BI
and Performance” at www.insurancenetworking.com.
