accounting

Stellar Performance Group

Case Summary & Student Assignment

You are a new employee with Stellar Performance Group, a company that helps its clients create balanced scorecards. You are asked by your boss to draft a balanced scorecard for two current clients.

Format of Report

The report should be no longer than four (4) written pages, double spaced, with an additional two (2) pages of appendices permitted. Appendices may be completed in Word or Excel.

The report is to be typewritten. Reports are to be submitted to the appropriate Dropbox on D2L. No reports will be accepted after the due date.

The format of the report should follow the following structure:

1. Cover page, identifying the case, date, your name and student number.

2. Introductory paragraph: This paragraph introduces the report, and outlines the major highlights of what is addressed in the report (no executive summary is required).

3. The required components of the report are clearly outlined, so there are no special instructions other than to ensure that you have answered the requirements.

4. Concluding paragraph: This paragraph should summarize your findings, and provide closure to the report.

5. Appendices: Appendices should have appropriate titles, and be referenced in the report.

STELLAR PERFORMANCE GROUP

The Stellar Performance Group (SPG) helps companies to build balanced scorecards. As part of its marketing efforts, SPG conducts an annual balanced scorecard workshop for prospective clients. You are SPG’s newest employee, so your boss has asked you to participate in this year’s workshop by explaining to attendees how a company’s strategy determines the measures that are appropriate for its balanced scorecard. Your boss has provided you with the excerpts below from the annual reports of two current SPG clients. She has asked you to use these excerpts in your portion of the workshop.

Excerpt from Allied Pharmaceuticals’ annual report:

The keys to our business are consistent and timely new product introductions and manufacturing process integrity. The new product introduction side of the equation is a function of research and development (R&D) yield (e.g., the number of marketable drug compounds created relative to the total number of potential compounds pursued). We seek to optimize our R&D yield and first-to-market capability by investing in state-of-the-art technology, hiring the highest possible percentage of the “best and the brightest” engineers, and providing world-class training to those engineers. Manufacturing process integrity is all about establishing world-class quality specifications and then relentlessly engaging in prevention and appraisal activities to minimize defect rates. Our customers must have an awareness of and respect for our brand image of being “first to market and first in quality”. If we deliver on this pledge to our customers, then our financial goal of increasing our return on shareholder’ equity should take care of itself.

Excerpt from Haven Resorts International’s annual report:

Our business succeeds or fails on the quality of the service that our front-line employees provide to customers. Therefore, it is imperative that we strive to maintain high employee morale and minimize employee turnover. In addition, it is critical that we train our employees to use technology to create one seamless worldwide experience for our repeat customers. Once an employee enters a customer preference (e.g., provide two extra pillows in the room, deliver fresh brewed coffee to the room at 8:00 AM, etc.) into our database, our worldwide workforce strives to ensure that a customer will never need to repeat this preference at any of our destination resorts. If we properly train and retain a motivated workforce, we should see continuous improvement in our percentage of error-free repeat customer check-ins, the time taken to resolve customer complaints, and our independently assessed room cleanliness. This in turn should drive improvement in our customer retention, which is the key to meeting our revenue growth goals.

Required

1. Based on the excerpts above, compare and contrast the strategies of Allied Pharmaceuticals and Haven Resorts International. List at least three similarities in their strategies, and three differences in their strategies.

2. Your boss has asked you to draft a preliminary balanced scorecard for each of the companies. She wants you to use the following template for each scorecard:

Perspective: refers to the four perspectives of the scorecard.

Strategic Objective: refers to the overall goals of each of the perspectives. Each perspective should have at least one strategic objective. For example: under the customer perspective, a strategic objective may be “on-time flights”. Overall, there should be no more than 8 strategic objectives. The strategic objectives should be related to the company’s strategy.

Performance Measures: refers to an appropriate measure that allows management to understand if strategic objectives are being met. For example, a performance measure for “on-time flights” may be “percentage of flights arriving on time per month”. There should be at least two performance measures per perspective, but no more than 16 overall. Feel free to create measures that make sense given the strategic objectives of each company.

Increase/Decrease over Time: refers to whether the performance measure should increase or decrease over time. For example, if improvements are being made, then the percentage of flights arriving on time should increase over time.

1. Explain the cause-and-effect relationships of your strategic objectives for each company. For example, how do(es) the strategic objective(s) of learning and growth help the company achieve its strategic objective(s) of internal process? Take this analysis right to the financial strategic objective(s) of the company.

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