Click here to view a sample

Click here to view a sample

In business performance management solutions following the Balanced Scorecard methodology, strategy maps play an important role in the initial design of a scorecard. They support the articulation of business drivers and communicate the causal relationships among KPIs and their objectives.

The book: Strategy Maps: Converting Intangible Assets into Tangible Outcomes by Kaplan and Norton is full of great examples from all difference industries of the use of the tool in the definition phase of a scorecarding project and it’s a fantastic reference to understand what the visualizations can enable.

From a functional perspective, there are a wide range of software that can be used to create strategy maps. At the 2004 Annual Balanced Scorecard Collaborative Summit last year in San Diego run by Kaplan and Norton, virtually every strategy map presented at the conference was done in Microsoft Office Visio, probably the most powerful and widely used diagramming software in the world.

Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 was designed to dovetails with those industry standard capabilities. There are a wide variety of options for bringing these technologies together:

Active documentation

Strategy Map documents created in Visio can be brought up in context as a user views and analyzes an Office Scorecard. Documents can be updated by end-users with appropriate permissions, versioned, checked-in and checked-out, as well as annotated.

Implementation: Upload Visio Strategy Map document into a SharePoint Document Library either on the same page as a scorecard or map a report view of the scorecard to the URL of the appropriate library. Note: For this scenario end-users require Microsoft Office Visio to be installed in order to view and update documents. End-users also require Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or better. Example: Microsoft Office Visio 2003 Strategy Map.

Casual relationship visualization

Instead of documents, Strategy Maps can be shown as simple images along with scorecards, illustrating the interrelationships between leading and lagging indicators and the potential impact of KPIs left unattended.  

Implementation: In Visio, use the File->Save as Web Page… option to generate a GIF of your strategy map (will be stored in …_files folder), store this in a SharePoint Image Library and map the URL to a report view. In this scenario, end-users only require Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or better. Example: GIF generated from Microsoft Office Visio 2003 Strategy Map.

Advanced visualization with search and clickthrough

An advanced pure thin Strategy Map with overview, zoom and clickthrough capabilities can also be used in place of a simple image.

Implementation: To add clickthrough capabilities on a shape, select the shape and use the file menu option Insert->Hyperlink to add the appropriate link and hovertext description. Then save the file as a webpage in SharePoint as mentioned above. The HTML Strategy Map will have a master-detail browser in the top left corner and below that are text search capabilities that can be used to bring up individual KPIs and objectives. Examples: Screenshot of HTML Scorecard, Screenshot of HTML Scorecard using Search, HTML Scorecard with Clickthrough (Click on “Average Discount”), Compressed file with HTML example and source Visio Strategy Map Document.

Data driven Scorecards

The update of the properties of a strategy map document can also be automated to reflect changes in Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager and/or in its underlying databases

Implementation: For simple properties changes in the HTML version of a scorecard you can write a simple parser that updates the XML definition. Alternatively you could write an extension that connects straight from the Visio document to data via web services. Resources: MSDN: Connecting to Online Data Using Visio 2003; MSDN: Visio-Enabled Solution: COM-Free Visio Automation in C++ (Using the Visio Wrapper Classes); Newsgroup: Microsoft Office Visio 2003 newsgroups; Slides TechEd CLI353: Programming the Microsoft Office Visio Graphical Platform; Video: TechEd CLI353: Programming the Microsoft Office Visio Graphical Platform; 

For help implementing a data-driven solution, you can contact a Microsoft Certified Partner (such as Visimation):
Microsoft Office Partner Directory (partners specializing in Office Products);
Microsoft Resource Directory (focused on Certified and Gold Certified partner directory)

Beyond these basic variations there are a wide array of scenarios for partners to explore through the Microsoft development platform: Auto-generating Visio strategy maps from Scorecard XML (and vice-versa), auto-segmenting strategy maps to be displayed as end-users drill into specific KPIs, synchronizing changes in Visio and Scorecard Manager, and many other variations. As an open platform, and with an integrated development stack that runs from programming languages to servers to end-user tools, Microsoft offers an unprecedented degree of freedom for supporting a wide range of scenarios.

Updated 10/17/2005: In Visio, if you "Right Click" on a shape you can add "Custom Properties" that will show up in the HTML rendering of the Strategy Map when you hold "Ctrl" and click on a shape. It's a very cool extra. You can also change the name of the shape from the right-click menu