The balanced scorecard (BSC) measurement system, which measures a business and business relationships across four critical categories, will absolutely positively save — and even grow — accounts when appropriately tailored and implemented for your public relations agency and clients’ needs.
I got religious about the BSC scorecard during my tenure with global PR firm Porter Novelli. Gary Stockman, an executive at Porter Novelli at the time, introduced the BSC to the firm in the late 90’s (if memory serves me). We modified the traditional structure of the BSC to suit the requirements of a PR agency while fully guarding the traditional scorecard’s integrity and intent.
And when we used it properly, it not only saved a number of key, global accounts but uncovered numerous organic growth opportunities that may not never had been uncovered otherwise.
More recently, I was part of a BSC exercise with a firm’s very important (I know, they’re all important) client and the results were less than stellar. Among the reasons for the surprising results was that the client was “too nice” to be honest about how they were feeling about the relationship and the agency — until the BSC was introduced — wasn’t asking the right questions.
On the surface, the relationship was motoring along nicely. In reality, the relationship was skating on thin ice (you can read about the outcome in the P.S.).
If you’re not familiar with the BSC (some argue it’s really a management system that has measurement as a key component), it was created by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton of Harvard Business School and was introduced to the business world 21 years ago.
Since then, it has been implemented by scores of organizations around the world as a way to measure the strength of a business and a business relationship beyond financial parameters. Of course, there’s a Balanced Scorecard for Dummies if you’re interested in taking a deeper dive on your own; and related works that could fill a BSC library. There’s also the Balanced Scorecard Institute which apparently has trained more than 5,000 people on BSC practices.
A traditional balanced scorecard has four legs: a measure of a client’s level of satisfaction with a company’s products and/or services; a financial track; the internal business process leg (IE, what are we better at than anyone else?), and finally, the knowledge, education and growth leg (in simplistic terms, how do we improve upon our core competencies?).
For PR agencies, a BSC can be structured similarly with only a few modifications. It could go something like this: 
- 1, Strategy — these are questions that help an agency understand the client’s world. Questions like, “Does the agency understand my business?” and “Does the agency understand my internal challenges?”
- 2, Execution & Tactics — the goal of this leg is to understand from the client if the agency is acting strategically. Questions like, “Does the agency come up with program recommendations I would not have come up with on my own”? and “Do the agency’s program ideas reflect bigger picture thinking?”
- 3, Results/Impact — questions that get at issues around desired value and showcase the agency’s impact among client senior management. Questions like: “Are the agency’s results viewed by my management as having an impact?”
- 4, Income & Investment — is the client seeing a return on its investment. Questions like, “Does the agency do a good job of managing my budget”? and “Has the agency had a positive, measurable impact on my business.”
Any thoughts on using the BSC in your agency or if you’re a client, asking your agency about developing one? Are the categories reflective of a holistic approach to measuring and managing agency-client relationships?
P.S. The agency-client relationship that was skating on thin ice just prior to the BSC ultimately survived thanks to the quick action both sides took on the heels of the BSC.
What It Takes | Jim Barbagallo 