Performance Measures: Going Beyond Competitiveness

Traditional performance measurement systems have their roots in the industrial age governed by a system of quarterly and annual financial reports. In the information age, utility managers need a system to translate the organization's mission and strategy into a comprehensive set of performance measures that provide the framework for strategic measurement in management systems. This paper will present a balanced scorecard approach for measuring organizational performance across four perspectives: financial, customers, internal business processes, and learning and growing. This paper will show how performance measurements can be used in this balanced format to measure not only the efficiency and competitiveness of a utility organization but more importantly be utilized to measure the effectiveness of carrying out the missions and strategies or the organization from both an internal and external customer perspective.This paper will define a process for taking the organization's vision and translating it to a specific business strategy with definable outcomes and performance measures around these four balanced areas for measuring success and implementing the strategies. Examples from the Sarasota County implementation of this program across its water and wastewater and solid waste programs will be utilized to illustrate the process.