BSC Toolkit for Crisis Management

Performance control during economic crisis is very important anywhere. This is more easily achieved through corporate communications or open communication across all department levels.

With the effects of recession sinking their hooks in the corporate world, it becomes more and more difficult for companies to seek whatever kind of relief that is available to them. This is precisely why it is important for companies to take the initiative themselves and find ways and means to do whatever it takes to stay afloat. The time has definitely come for companies to ensure performance control during economic crisis and one of the effective ways to do this is to implement corporate communications.

To do this, it is a must to define corporate communications first. This endeavor has certainly evolved in form over the years and with this evolution comes significant changes in the form of potentials and objectives. However, what does remain the same is the primary goal of maintaining open communication with stockholders, customers, the media, and even the employees of the enterprise. The great thing about corporate communications today is the fact that there are so many available tools in the market today. Thus, it would be so much easier to maintain performance control through this tool, right? Well, yes and no.

Yes, it makes thing easier because now, you can better reach out to your target audiences through the many communication mediums – blogs, web portals, RSS feeds, emails, and even podcasts. What makes it hard though is the search for the appropriate medium. Choosing the best medium demands comprehension of all aspects involved – including employees and situations. Effective handling of this economic crisis thereby requires not just the perfect medium but the perfect people as well – handled by equally perfect executives and managers.

But why corporate communications? Why shouldn’t the company just exhaust their efforts into something that could be more worth their while? This is because when information is not clear within the company – amongst employees and stockholders – then this basically opens Pandora’s Box. Employees and even stockholders might choose to desert the enterprise. Customers, on the other hand, would definitely switch to a more reliable and credible company. The media would then capitalize on this, airing rumors and false stories just to stir up some profit on their end. The government would then implement stricter rules, making it all the more difficult for the enterprise to stay afloat. With all these bound to happen, you yourself can say that corporate communications is a very important aspect in performance control during this crisis, right?

Economic crises would affect, first and foremost, the employees and the stockholders. It is understandable for employees to worry about the safety of the jobs they are holding. If the enterprise is not able to assure job safety to their employees, then this could result to high attrition, low morale, as well as less productivity. Also, if information is timely communicated to employees, this could be good for the company because the employees can very well be the strong base of the company, thereby giving a positive image. Stockholders, on the other hand, could easily sell off their stocks. Good for you if only one or two stockholders would leave the company – but what if this is done in larger numbers? This could then affect not just the present of the company, but definitely the future.

Performance control during economic crisis could definitely be achieved through corporate communications. This is then an option you should consider and prioritize.

Crisis Scorecard Articles about Crisis

Companies all over the world are struggling today. The effects of recession on performance are very discouraging. Companies need to deal with these as proactively as they should.

The effects of recession on performance across all companies and industries are certainly being felt all over the world. In fact, there just might be no country anywhere that is not feeling the effects of the present economic downturn. There are even so many companies who have already declared bankruptcy and this does not exempt even the big ones. Yes, a number of multibillion dollar corporations have certainly dropped off the high pedestals they used to occupy and this has led to millions of people losing their jobs. Employees all over the world are indeed feeling the pressure and are getting more and more scared of the possibility of losing their jobs.

Global recession raises a lot of questions and only a few are given answers – and uncertain answers at that. Everyone in the professional realm struggles to be at their optimum just to survive these hard times, which we do not really know for sure until when it would last. You can even compare this scenario with Charles Darwin’s very own evolution theory, which outlines ‘survival of the fittest’. And anyone who can make it through this crucial period of time would certainly come out stronger. Companies are certainly not exempted from this rule. Struggling to survive as best as they can, companies would then have to employ certain strategies just to stay afloat and swim through the rough waves. Cost cutting is inevitable here so there is always that possibility of companies laying off people. Likening a company to a ship that has too many passengers onboard, some of them need to be taken off the boat so that the majority of the passengers and the boat itself can survive.

The act of laying off workers is certainly one possible and commonly experience effect of recession. This, in turn, can do a lot of damage on employee morale. Once laying off starts, employees just might find themselves at the losing end of the equation so most, if not all, would start looking for other companies to work for. Of course, most would still wait until they get the boot because the chances that other companies would be hiring in this dire time of recession would still be slim. However, because employees are starting to look somewhere else, then they would be distracted and would not be able to work as productively as before. Moreover, they would not even be motivated to do their jobs well. With employee morale degrading, driving employees to perform at their best would certainly be made more difficult.

Moreover, the perks employees used to enjoy would also be minimized. Those benefits in the form of retention allowances, incentives, and bonuses – all these and more would have to be withdrawn or frozen for the time being. And you would not even be able to say for yourself that these benefits would be placed back in the picture when the global economy would finally start improving. Hopefully, these would be retained by that time. The effects of recession on performance are certainly discouraging in nature. That is why companies need to do all that they can to handle the passing of this economic downturn as well as they can.

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Controlling performance during financial crisis is still significant if you want to keep your company operating and functional. Employing the downturn BSC can help you do this.

Recession is no longer looming over our shoulders for it is right here, right now. And from the looks of the recession periods that have happened in the past, today’s recession is far from its ending at this point in time. Economists and analysts have been hopeful in presenting their optimistic theories on how they are sure that today’s recession would end much like the past ones did. However, we cannot really be too sure, in spite of the trends and flows that have been studied and observed. After all, the economy is bound to change so who is to say that change would not happen in the prevailing trends about economic recession and financial crisis? Still, the best that we all can do in the corporate setting is to find ways and means of controlling performance during financial crisis. After all, we still need to prioritize earning as much profit as we can during this economic downturn, no matter how small this may be.

Sadly, there are not too many companies all over the world that can confidently say for themselves that they are still earning decent profit in spite of this financial crisis. As you are most likely aware of this already, there are even lots of companies that have closed down already, succumbing to the downpull of recession. But if you would take time to do some research on what these surviving companies have in common, it would be the fact that they implemented one important tool in their system and they have used this tool very wisely. This tool is none other than the downturn BSC or the downturn balanced scorecard.

The primary objective that the downturn BSC aims to achieve is all in its financial perspective. The development and the sustenance of the enterprise’s shareholders’ values should be upheld rigorously at all costs. You already have several choices of methods that can drive shareholder value, and there are even two or more of them that can foster revenue growth as well as productivity improvement. A third official method should also be incorporated in the downturn BSC, in the form of risk management. This way, risk management metrics could also be used to deal with entailed risks – which have surely gone up in number now with recession being full blown and all.

There is no reason to worry about implementing risk metrics because there are already a lot of them that have been incorporated before – this includes ‘value at risk’. But the fact that companies do not really prioritize risk management that much puts these companies at complete fault. Better than that, you should go beyond implementing risk management and go for the whole shebang – in the sense that companies should determine for themselves what they can and should do to deal with whatever risk is determined. The nature of the risk should be studied as well as what should be done to deal with it accordingly. Remedies should also be determined.

By incorporating risk management in the downturn BSC, you can better your chances at controlling performance during financial crisis. The key here is to look for all sorts of options and windows that you have at your expense then capitalize on them to control the performance of your company in spite of the financial crisis everyone else is experiencing.

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Controlling performance during economic downturn is a must to better deal with the effects of recession. Recession metrics should then be implemented to better handle the situation.

The recession that we are all experiencing and suffering from certainly has pretty much all of us on our toes – literally and figuratively. This is why controlling performance during economic downturn is a must and this should be prioritized by companies worldwide. Now, there have not been that too many set standards and forecasts in this arena because this recession is unlike any other that the world has gone through. Thus, this is just about the newest obstacle that the global economy has going on today. This is why it is extremely important to consider the implementation of recession KPIs or key performance indicators.

You might think that it would not be worth the risk to implement recession metrics or KPIs anymore because this period of recession might end anytime soon. Should it end, then the KPIs implemented would then be an unworthy investment altogether. However, you should not be worrying about that because this recession is not leaving us anytime soon, unfortunately, and this claim is supported by economic trends, stats, and figures presented by expert analysts. We are even quite far from the lowest point still. Thus, you should really consider implementing recession KPIs to deal with this economic downturn and control the performance of your enterprise.

How then should you begin the process of developing recession KPIs? The first step is actually one of the most important ones because it requires you to take a step back from your company and look at it from an objective perspective. This is a bit hard to do because you have been working in the enterprise for quite some time already. Still, you need to do this so that you can proceed to the next step.

The next step is to determine the possible causes behind all existing problems in your company. You have to look internally and externally for this so that all sorts of problems could be examined and analyzed. If you are not too sure about what problems to find, then look for signs – the qualitative and the quantitative. Quantitative ones can be in the form of declining market margins and increasing debts of the short-term kind. Qualitative signs, on the other hand, include high turnover – whether employee or manager – and the degradation of the company’s market value. With the company’s market value degrading, then it would not be too far off for employees and even clients to start looking for more reliable companies to do business with.

Next, you should determine if your IT systems are still effective. Look at the information that your existing IT systems are producing. Are they still relevant? Or do you need to modify your IT systems? And if yes, in what way? To do this, you can use business intelligence software to come up with the appropriate recession metrics.

The next step is to determine the necessary plans of action. For the most part, members of the senior management are the ones that would need to develop these strategies, as well as communicate these to stakeholders, investors, and the employees as well. All of these and more should be taken into account when developing recession metrics for the purpose of controlling performance during economic downturn.

Crisis Scorecard Articles about Crisis