Topics
This chapter includes the following sections:
Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management is a performance management tool that lets you describe and communicate your business strategy.
You can drive and assess your corporate strategy and performance from the top of your organization down, or from the bottom up.
Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management also enables you to either align your objectives and initiatives with traditional balanced scorecard perspectives, or to create your own to reflect your fundamental business competencies. See What Is a Balanced Scorecard?
Use Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management to:
Simultaneously define the objectives (that is, goals such as Decreased Operational Costs) and initiatives (that is, processes or tasks such as Form Cost Minimization Team) that form your strategy to which you assign KPIs to measure progress and performance. For more information on:
Objectives, see What Are Objectives?
Initiatives, see What Are Initiatives?
KPIs, see Using KPIs and KPI Watchlists
Align objectives and initiatives with customized or traditional perspectives (fundamental business competencies and areas such as finance or customer relations). This later enables you to depict the extent to which corporate strategy supports these perspectives. See What Are Perspectives?
Define target numeric ranges to evaluate the values of KPIs within corporate or department-level objectives and initiatives. See Defining Assessment Mappings for Scorecards
Graphically communicate strategy and strategic dynamics using strategy maps, cause & effect maps, custom views, and strategy trees. See:
Discuss the implementation and status of objectives and initiatives by adding, reading, and replying to comments. See About Comments.
Because you use KPIs in scorecards to measure progress and performance over time, you should include appropriate time dimensions when defining KPIs to be used within scorecards. For information on time dimensions, see your administrator.
Creating a balanced scorecard provides a clear view into various aspects of an organization.
Traditionally, companies focus heavily on financially driven strategies without sufficiently considering other contributing perspectives. Because financial goals are usually backward looking, tending to be defined in terms of growth over historic numbers, they do not account for future market conditions or leverage objectives. Balanced Scorecard is a strategic management system that maps an organization's strategy into clear objectives, measures, targets, and initiatives, which are organized into four perspectives: Financial, Customer, Internal Business Processes, and Learning and Growth. These perspectives are typically framed by questions, such as "To achieve our vision, how should we appear to our customers?" or "To succeed financially, how should we appear to our shareholders?" As a methodology, Balanced Scorecard provides businesses with the language to define strategies that cater to multiple, relevant perspectives. Much in the way that financial statements (income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet) describe the financial health of an organization, Balanced Scorecard provides a framework to communicate the strategy in a consistent and insightful way. The illustration depicts a representation of these four perspectives.
"The four perspectives of the scorecard permit a balance between short-term and long-term objectives, between desired outcomes and the performance drivers of those outcomes, and between hard objective measures and softer, more subjective measures." (Robert S. Kaplan, David P. Norton, "Linking the Balanced Scorecard to Strategy," California Management Review Reprint Series, 1996 by the Regents of the University of California CMR, Vol 39, Number 1, Fall 1996).
Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management provides four default perspectives that you can use to define strategies that holistically include all relevant perspectives and to define strategy structures that ensure stability and success in all perspectives.
These four default perspectives, which are in support of the Balanced Scorecard methodology devised by Dr. Robert Kaplan and Dr. David Norton, are:
Financial —Used to identify financial measures that help to answer this question: "How do we look to our shareholders?"
Customer — Used to identify measures that help to answer this question: "How do customers see us?"
Internal Process — Used to identify measures that help to answer this question: "At what processes must we excel?"
Learning and Growth — Used to identify measures that help to answer this question: "How can we continue to improve and create value?"
You can customize the perspectives provided or create your own to best align objectives, key initiatives, and KPIs with your business competencies.
Kaplan and Norton's four perspectives reflect a specific organizational strategy. These perspectives and strategies would not necessarily be suitable for government, public-sector, or nonprofit organizations; therefore, the objectives and key questions should be amended and supplemented to capture the desired strategies.
Treat the balanced scorecard as a living document. The process of assessing objectives, initiatives, and so on is reiterative. The process should provide not only quantitative, but qualitative insight into the health of your organization and should guide your organization in a timely fashion to achieving your desired results.
The Scorecard editor lets you create a scorecard of your entire organization or of individual departments.
The Scorecard editor consists of numerous panes and tabs:
On the left side of the editor are the panes that you use to create the objects that comprise your scorecard. For example, it includes the Strategy pane, which you use to create, organize, and leverage the objectives that form the strategic structure (also called the strategy tree) of the corporate entity (department, for example) that you want to evaluate.
On the right side of the editor is the tab area. When you first create a scorecard, you are presented with the Overview tab. This tab enables you to view summary information for the selected initiative, objective, or KPI.
As you create your scorecard objects, detailed tabs are generated dynamically for each object. For example, when you create an objective, a tab is generated for that objective. You use this tab to define the objective and to view detailed information about the objective, such as which KPIs are to be used to evaluate it and which initiatives drive it.
At the top of the editor are toolbar buttons and the point of view area. The point of view area displays the dimensions of the KPIs that are used in the scorecard to measure the progress and performance of initiatives and objectives. You use this area to pin (or set) values for the dimensions. When you pin a dimension, the data in the scorecard is filtered to give you a new point of view (that is, a new view of the data). See About the Point of View Area.
The illustration shows an example of the Scorecard editor for Sample Scorecard-Lite.
Scorecard objects can perform a variety of functions.
Scorecard objects are items that you create or arrange to:
Represent and evaluate corporate strategy, including:
Objectives. See What Are Objectives?
Initiatives. See What Are Initiatives?
Perspectives. See What Are Perspectives?
Present and analyze corporate strategy, including:
Vision statements. See What Are Vision Statements?
Mission statements. See What Are Mission Statements?
Strategy trees. See What Are Strategy Trees?
Strategy maps. See What Are Strategy Maps?
Cause & effect maps. See What Are Cause & Effect Maps?
Custom views. See What Are Custom Views?
KPI watchlists. See What Are KPI Watchlists?
Smart watchlists. See What Are Smart Watchlists?
Agents. See Creating Agents from KPIs
Because Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management provides you with a wealth of scorecard objects with which to build your scorecard, an overall process flow and description is provided to guide you.
It is recommended that you perform each task within the process flow in order. The illustration shows a graphic representation of the overall process flow to build a scorecard.
The ability to perform certain tasks when building KPIs and KPI watchlists, or within Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management (such as, creating scorecards or contacting owners) is controlled by privileges.
Privileges are managed by the administrator. Refer to Managing Presentation Services Privileges in Security Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition for general information.
Many tasks require a combination of privileges. There are three tables in Identifying Privileges for KPIs, KPI Watchlists, and Scorecarding in Security Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition which:
List the task object (for example, action link or related document).
List the tasks and corresponding privileges that you can manage.
Assume that your administrator has given your user ID or group the permissions to read or write to the necessary catalog objects and folders.
Note:
These tables do not address permissions. To alter the permissions for the scorecard or elements within the scorecard (that is, which users have access to the scorecard or elements within the scorecard), you need Full Control permission on the scorecard. See Managing Objects in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog.You should:
Review Privileges Required for KPI Tasks, and Privileges Required for Scorecard and Scorecard Object Tasks in Security Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to ensure that you have sufficient privileges to accomplish your task, and if necessary contact your administrator to grant you additional privileges.
Have the appropriate permissions for the Oracle BI Presentation Services layer object to delete any of the scorecard, KPI watchlist, or KPI objects using the catalog browser. See Setting Permissions for Presentation Layer Objects in Metadata Repository Builder's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.
The edit mode you use in the Scorecard editor depends on what you are trying to accomplish.
The Scorecard editor has two modes:
Edit mode — Enables you to create or edit mission statements, vision statements, initiatives, perspectives, objectives, KPIs, KPI watchlists, smart watchlists, and views, and create agents from KPIs.
You should not delete scorecard objectives, initiatives, or perspectives outside of Scorecard editor as that may result in scorecard issues.
View mode — Enables you to navigate and view mission statements, vision statements, initiatives, perspectives, objectives, KPIs, KPI watchlists, and views but not add or modify them. You also can add comments, override statuses, create agents from KPIs, and interact with smart watchlists.
In addition, the information that you can access and the tasks that you can perform in these modes depends on the following:
The privileges that are assigned to your account
The permissions that are associated with the individual scorecard objects and folders
Scorecards help display data analyses to describe and communicate business strategies.
Creating a scorecard helps your audience understand how performance and goals relate to each other.
The procedure to open or edit scorecards is the same.
Editing a scorecard ensures the information on it is current.
If you need your administrator to make a change to your metadata (for example, rename a dimension or delete a subject area), remove all references to the object within your KPIs and scorecards prior to contacting your administrator.
You can view summary information for initiatives, objectives, or KPIs.
The summary information displayed depends on which object you last selected in the Initiatives pane or the Strategy pane. If you last selected:
An initiative or objective, then the basic settings for the initiative or objective are displayed (for example, status, business owner, and so on) along with a status summary showing the number of KPIs and initiatives, or KPIs and objectives, that evaluate progress in each performance assessment range.
If there is at least one child or descendant objective, initiative, or KPI for a particular status, the status name is a hyperlink that displays the Scorecard editor: Breakdown tab, showing the child or descendant objectives, initiatives, and KPIs.
A KPI, then the basic settings for the KPI are displayed (for example, status, business owner, and so on) as well as performance data and a performance graph.
The point of view area of the Scorecard editor displays controls for the dimensions of KPIs that are used in the scorecard to measure the progress and performance of initiatives and objectives.
See What Are Dimensions and Pinned Dimension Values?
Controls are displayed for each KPI dimension that is referenced in a scorecard with the exception of those that you explicitly prevent from being displayed. If the same dimension is referenced in more than one KPI, then a control can be shared by the KPIs. See Setting Up the Point of View Controls.
The figure here shows a point of view area that displays the Region Hierarchy, Customer Segments, Offices Hierarchy, Products Hierarchy, and 2010/Q3 dimensions.
Each control includes a label and a down-arrow button that displays a list of the dimension values from which you can select, and a Search link (see Search Members dialog for additional information). The label is either the database name for the dimension (by default), a user-friendly label (if specified for the control), or one or more values (if the dimension is pinned to a specific value or multiple values).
You use this area to temporarily pin or set values for the dimensions. When you pin a dimension, the data in the scorecard is filtered to give you a new point of view (that is, a new view of the data). This enables you to focus on specific data of interest to you, such as the area of business for which you are responsible.
The point of view area settings are temporary and are not persisted when the scorecard is saved. To persist pinnings, you can use the:
Dimension Settings tab of the Settings dialog to affect all KPI usages within a scorecard.
Dimensionality area in the Analytics pane of the KPI Details tab of the Scorecard editor to pin the values for a particular KPI usage.
Add KPI dialog (also displayed as the Edit Watchlist Entry dialog) in the KPI Watchlist editor to pin values for individual KPIs.
Dimension Pinnings dialog to pin values in a view that has been added to a dashboard.
Dimensionality page of the KPI editor (also displayed as the KPI tab of the Scorecard editor) to pin values in a KPIs definition. This approach is less flexible than when you let a KPI's definition be reusable in different contexts and pin only within views that reference the KPI.
The Scorecard editor also contains the Back and Forward buttons that enable you to move forward or backward through your point of view history to select a previous point of view or the point of view with which you started.
To temporarily pin a dimension:
Click the down-arrow button to the right of the dimension.
To:
Select a specific single value, click the value.
Select multiples values, click the Search link to display the Search Members dialog, make your selections, and then click the OK button. You can also select multiple values by pressing and holding the Ctrl key, and then clicking the desired values.
If the value is a hierarchical column, click the sideways triangle button to expand the levels. Press and hold the Ctrl key, and then click the desired values.
Click the down-arrow or outside the dialog box to close it.
The data is filtered and a new point of view is displayed.
You use the Dimension Settings tab of the Settings dialog to set up the controls for dimensions in the point of view area of a scorecard.
Specifically, you can specify:
One or more default values for the dimension.
Whether a control for the dimension is to be displayed in the point of view area
The label to be displayed in the point of view area for the dimension.
A vision statement is a short statement that describes what your organization wants to become sometime in the future.
For example, a vision statement might be to become the most successful business in the South America Polypropylene Market. (A vision statement is optional.)
Often, from this statement, you define the key goals and priorities that form your mission statement. See What Are Mission Statements? and Defining Vision Statements.
Creating vision and mission statements requires a very specific set of privileges. If the vision or mission statement toolbar button is disabled, contact your administrator. See Identifying Privileges for KPIs, KPI Watchlists, and Scorecarding in Security Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition for additional information.
A vision statement is a short statement that describes what your organization wants to become sometime in the future.
Defining a vision statement helps align data results with the goals of the organization.
A mission statement specifies the key business goals and priorities that are required to achieve your vision.
A mission statement is optional. See Defining Mission Statements.
You define your vision in a vision statement. See What Are Vision Statements?
Defining a mission statement provides an overall goal with which to compare data analyses.
You can create a mission statement to align users with the overall goals of the organization.
Perspectives are categories in your organization with which to associate initiatives, objectives, and KPIs.
A perspective can represent a key stakeholder (such as a customer, employee, or shareholder/financial) or a key competency area (such as time, cost, or quality).
You associate an initiative and objective with a perspective when you create or edit it. See Creating Initiatives and Creating Objectives. You associated a KPI with a perspective when you edit the details of the KPI. See Working with KPI Details.
For example, when you create an objective called Improved Client Response Time, you might associate it with the Customer perspective as the objective sustains and supports customer-related operations.
There are four standard perspectives that are defined by the Balanced Scorecard Methodology:
Financial — Groups objectives, initiatives, and KPIs that relate to or support the monetary or economic health and development of your organization.
Customer — Groups objectives, initiatives, and KPIs that pertain to or support your client base.
Internal Process — Groups objectives, initiatives, and KPIs that categorize and support your corporate internal policies and procedures.
Learning and Growth — Groups objectives, initiatives, and KPIs that relate to or support employee training and advancement.
In addition, you can create custom perspectives for your scorecard.
When you create a scorecard, you specify whether you want to use the default perspectives that are defined by the Balanced Scorecard Methodology using the Use Default Perspectives? check box.
If you:
Do not use the default perspectives, then you must create your own custom perspectives.
Do use the default perspectives, then you can create one or more custom perspectives to use along with the default perspectives.
You can now associate initiatives, objectives, and KPIs with this custom perspective. You associate an initiative and objective with a perspective when you create or edit the initiative or objective. You associated a KPI with a perspective when you edit the details of the KPI.
A KPI represents the result of a business measure (for example, Product Sales or Operational Costs) evaluated against a target for that measure.
You can use KPIs to assess the progress of the objectives and initiatives that form levels of organizational strategy.
You can create KPIs that you need:
Within a scorecard. This enables you to create the KPIs as you are creating or editing the scorecard.
Outside a scorecard. This enables you to create the KPIs in advance of creating or editing a scorecard.
Objectives are the required or desired outcomes that form your corporate strategy.
You can create an objective for:
An entire organization, for example, Oracle Corporation
A department, for example, Sales department
When you create an objective, you assign it one or more KPIs that are to be used to measure its progress and performance. For example, you can measure the progress and performance of an objective named Improved Customer Satisfaction by assigning it the following KPIs:
Average Customer Survey Satisfaction Score
Number of Customer Complaints KPIs
See Using KPIs and KPI Watchlists.
Within a scorecard, you also create the initiatives that are required to meet the objectives. See What Are Initiatives?
Objectives that you create are displayed hierarchically in the Strategy pane. The root objective represents the entity that you are scorecarding, that is the entire organization or a department. The KPIs that are assigned to assess the performance of objectives are displayed below the objectives in the Strategy pane.
The Strategy pane also shows the statuses of objectives and KPIs using the appropriate colors and icons that you specified for assessment mappings. See Defining Assessment Mappings for Scorecards.
When creating objectives, if possible, use subobjectives measured by KPIs to monitor results. Corrective action becomes incremental, reiterative, and more achievable. For example: the objective, Improve Financial Results, might include Increase Sales, Reduce Costs, Increase Employee Effectiveness, and Streamline Operations as subobjectives. Use related documents to provide supporting information for the objective, initiative, and so on.
See Creating Objectives.
You can create one or more objectives.
Objectives that you create should be strategically relevant and measurable using KPIs. See What Are Objectives?
Initiatives are time-specific tasks or projects that are necessary to achieve objectives.
You can use initiatives that support objectives as milestones as they reflect progress toward strategy targets. For example to implement an objective called Improve Customer Satisfaction, you might create these initiatives:
Create online feedback forum
Form response team
Generally, an initiative supports multiple objectives.
When you create an initiative, you assign it KPIs that are to be used to measure its progress. See Using KPIs and KPI Watchlists.
Initiatives that you create are displayed hierarchically in the Initiatives pane. The root initiative represents all the initiatives that you implement to achieve objectives and goals. The KPIs that are assigned to an initiative are displayed below the initiative in the Initiatives pane.
The Initiatives pane also shows the statuses of initiatives and KPIs using the appropriate colors and icons that you specified for assessment mappings. See Defining Assessment Mappings for Scorecards and Creating Initiatives.
You can create one or more initiatives.
Use initiatives to track major milestones as a closed loop by assigning strategic objectives, taking remedial action by monitoring KPI targets and metric results, and using annotations and related documents for collaboration.
Initiatives that you create should be measurable using KPIs and strategically relevant.
You can send a message to the business owner of a scorecard object.
The business owner is the person who is responsible for managing and improving the business value and performance of a scorecard object. (The business owner might or might not be the same as the person who creates the scorecard or creates the KPI.) You specify the business owner of an object when you create it.
You use the Contact Owner button or menu option to contact the business owner. This button is available in many places in a scorecard, for example, on the toolbar of most tabs, such as the Objective Details tab of the Scorecard editor.
Oracle BI EE uses an agent and the delivery devices and profiles that the business owner specified in the Delivery Options tab of the My Account dialog to determine where to deliver the message (for example, email, phone, or pager).
Comments provide a way for users to discuss initiatives, objectives, or KPIs.
Collaboration between users is essential to gain a consensus in order achieve the stated and desired results. Comments (also known as annotations) enable you to discuss changes in performance and progress for an initiative, objective, or KPI for a specific set of dimension values (that is, for a specific point of view). Use annotations and overrides to increase employee collaboration, participation, and accountability, and to prevent future occurrences of identified deficiencies.
You can add, view, and reply to comments in many places in a scorecard. For example, you can add a comment directly to an objective in the Scorecard editor: Objective Details tab. You can also add a comment to an objective in the Diagram tab of a view, a smart watchlist, and a perspective in which its referenced. You cannot delete KPI annotations.
A comment is associated with:
An initiative, objective, or KPI that measures the progress of an initiative and objective.
When an initiative, objective, or KPI that has a comment associated with it is referenced elsewhere in a scorecard and the point of view being displayed matches that of the comment, a comment indicator is displayed as follows:
In a watchlist, a blue triangle is displayed in the row containing the initiative, objective, or KPI.
In a node in the Diagram tab of a view, the Comment button is displayed in the upper-right corner of the node.
A certain column.
A comment is normally associated with the Status column of an objective, initiative, or KPI, unless (for KPIs only) the comment is added to another column such as Trend or Variance.
A specific point of view.
Comments are filtered by the values in the point of view area in the Scorecard editor that are currently in effect for the object being viewed. As a result, the comment for Eastern Region Sales can be different than the comment for Western Region Sales. See About the Point of View Area.
Any dimension pinnings on the KPI.
Comments are filtered by any other dimension pinnings that are in effect (on a KPI, scorecard, scorecard diagram, dashboard prompt, or KPI watchlist).
Before you can work with comments, your administrator must enable this feature. See Configuring the Repository for Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management in Metadata Repository Builder's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.
Comments permit additional commentary about items in a scorecard.
You can work with comments in many places in a scorecard, including in:
The Collaboration pane of the Initiative Details tab, Objective Details tab, and the KPI Details tab of the Scorecard editor. See Working with Comments in the Collaboration pane.
Watchlists. See Working with Comments in Watchlists
The Diagram tab of a view. See Working with Comments in the Diagram Tab of a View.
Note:
Before you can add comments to an initiative or objective, the initiative or objective must have at least one KPI assigned to it.As you work with comments, remember that a comment is associated with a specific point of view. See About the Point of View Area and About Comments.
Comments can be added to and edited in the Collaboration pane.
In the Collaboration pane of the Initiative Details tab, Objective Details tab, and KPI Details tab of the Scorecard editor, you can view, add, or reply to comments for that particular initiative, objective, or KPI.
In a watchlist, you can view, add, and reply to comments for initiatives, objectives, and KPIs that are displayed in the watchlist.
You can add comments for certain areas of the watchlist, such as the Western region KPI status.
In the Diagram tab of a view, you can view, add, and reply to comments for objectives and KPIs that are displayed in the view.
For example, you can work with comments in the Diagram tab of the Strategy Tree tab.
You can also work with comments in this same way when a view is rendered as a diagram in a dashboard.
Viewing initiative or objective performance assessments provides an overall view of a family of initiatives or objectives.
Oracle Business Intelligence assesses the performance of an initiative or objective by aggregating the assessments of its children. In the process, it uses:
Scorecard assessment mappings that you define. See About Assessment Mappings.
Assessment formulas (such as Weighted or Best Case) assigned to all objectives and initiatives. The assessment formulas include:
Worst case — Specifies that the status of the worst performing child KPI or objective is to be used.
Best case — Specifies that the status of the best performing child KPI or objective is to be used.
Most Frequent (Worst Case) — Specifies that, if half the child KPIs and objectives have high performance and half have low performance, then use the status of the worst performing child KPI or objective.
Most Frequent (Best Case) — Specifies that, if half the child KPIs and objectives have high performance and half have low performance, then use the status of the best performing child KPI or objective.
Weighted — Specifies to use a weighted average based on the weights you have assigned to the child KPIs and objectives. See Assigning Weights to Child Objectives, Initiatives and KPIs.
If a child KPI has no data, it will not be included in the aggregation. Instead, its weight will be distributed among the other child KPIs and objectives.
You assign assessment formulas when you create an objective or initiative. See Creating Objectives or Creating Initiatives.
Weights that you assign to child initiatives, objectives, and KPIs (but only if the parent's assessment rule is set to Weighted) to identify the extent to which each child contributes to the overall performance of the parent. See Assigning Weights to Child Objectives, Initiatives and KPIs.
See Example of Determining the Performance Assessment for an Objective Based on Child Objectives and Example of Determining the Performance Assessment for an Objective Based on a Child KPI.
Assessment mappings are the score thresholds and assessment ranges that Oracle Business Intelligence uses to assess the performance of objectives and initiatives.
Oracle Business Intelligence uses these score thresholds and assessment ranges to:
Determine the status and score of an objective or initiative based on the aggregation of the assessments of its children.
If the assessment formula of an objective or initiative is Best Case, Worst Case, Most Frequent (Worst Case), or Most Frequent (Best Case), the score will be one of the defined score thresholds, for example, 0, 33, or 66. If the assessment formula is Weighted, the score is computed based on the weights assigned to the children.
Map the KPI scores of KPIs that are used to measure the progress of initiatives and objectives to scorecard scores so that they can be used to measure the performance of the objectives or initiatives.
The illustration shows an example of score thresholds falling in specific assessment ranges. The assessment ranges are defined as follows:
67 to 100 falls in the OK assessment range
34 to 66 falls in the Warning assessment range
0 to 33 falls in the Critical assessment range
See Understanding Initiative or Objective Performance Assessment for additional information on initiative and objective performance assessment.
See Defining Assessment Mappings for Scorecards for how to define assessment mappings.
Child objectives can help calculate a performance assessment.
Suppose the following about an objective named Improve Financial Results:
It has an assessment rule of Worst Case.
The assessment mappings defined for the scorecard that contains the objective are the same as those in About Assessment Mappings.
It has the following two child objectives:
Increase Sales, whose status is Critical and score is 0.
Reduce Cost, whose status is Warning and score is 50.
In this case, the performance assessment of the Improve Financial Results objective would be the status and score of the child with the worst status and score, that is, Increase Sales, which has a scorecard status of Critical and a score of 0.
You can use child KPIs to assess performance.
Suppose the following about an objective named Enhance Stockholder Satisfaction:
It has an assessment formula of Best Case.
The assessment mappings defined for the scorecard that contains the objective are the same as those in the illustration.
It has a child KPI named Revenue KPI, whose scorecard status is OK and score is 66.
Revenue KPI has a KPI status of 4 Stars and score of 80 based on the following KPI thresholds and scores displayed in the illustration:
When Revenue KPI was added to the Enhance Stockholder Satisfaction objective, Oracle Business Intelligence mapped the KPI score to a scorecard score so that it could be used to measure the performance of the objective. Since the KPI score of 80 fell in the scorecard assessment range of 66 to 100, it mapped to a scorecard score of 66 and status of OK.
In this case, the performance assessment of the Enhanced Stockholder Satisfaction objective would be the status and score of the child with the best status and score, that is, Revenue KPI (in this case the only child), which has a scorecard status of OK and a score of 66.
Use the Assessment Mappings tab of the Settings dialog to define the assessment mappings for a scorecard.
You assign weights to the child objectives, initiatives, and KPIs of an objective or initiative to indicate how much it affects the performance of its parent objective.
To assign weights to child objectives, initiatives, and KPIs, the Assessment Rule for the parent objective or initiative must be set to Weighted.
See Understanding Initiative or Objective Performance Assessment.
You can override the statuses of initiatives, objectives, or KPIs that measure the performance of initiatives and objectives.
To override a status, you must be the business owner of the initiative, objective, or KPI. You can also cancel an override.
Before you can work with status overrides, your administrator must enable this feature. See Configuring the Repository for Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management in Metadata Repository Builder's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.
You can work with status overrides in many places in a scorecard. For example, you can apply a status override to an objective in the Objective Details tab of the Scorecard editor. You can also apply a status override to an objective in the Diagram tab of a view, a smart watchlist, and a perspective in which its referenced.
A status override is associated with:
An initiative, objective, or KPI that measures the progress of an initiative and objective.
When an initiative, objective, or KPI that has a status override associated with it is referenced elsewhere in a scorecard, and the point of view being displayed matches that of the status override, a status override indicator — a red asterisk (*) — is displayed as follows:
In a watchlist, it is displayed to the right of the status symbol in the row containing the initiative, objective, or KPI.
In a node in the Diagram tab of a view, it is displayed to the right of the status symbol in the lower-left corner of the node.
The status column of an objective, initiative, or KPI.
A specific point of view.
Status overrides are filtered by the values in the point of view area in the Scorecard editor that are currently in effect for the object being viewed. As a result, the status override for Eastern Region Sales can be different than the status override for Western Region Sales. See About the Point of View Area.
Any dimension pinnings on the KPI.
Status overrides are filtered by any other dimension pinnings which are in effect (on a KPI, scorecard, scorecard diagram, dashboard prompt, or KPI watchlist).
You can override a status in specific areas.
You can work with status overrides in many places in a scorecard, including in:
Watchlists. See Working with Comments in Watchlists.
The Diagram tab of a view. SeeWorking with Status Overrides in the Diagram Tab of a View.
As you work with status overrides, remember that a status override is associated with a specific point of view. See About the Point of View Area.
Tip:
Prior to overriding a status, ensure that the business owner has been set for the KPI, initiative, or objective. See Creating KPIs.Maintaining status overrides ensures they are applied properly.
In a watchlist, you can view status overrides and override cancellations that were previously applied, and apply new overrides and override cancellations to the initiatives or objectives, and KPIs in the watchlist.
Status overrides can be layered to ensure a status is displayed regardless of the original status.
In the Diagram tab of a view, you can view status overrides and override cancellations that were previously applied, and apply new overrides and override cancellations to objectives and KPIs that are displayed in the view. For example, you can work with status overrides in the Diagram tab of the Strategy Tree tab.
A strategy tree shows an objective and its supporting child objectives and KPIs hierarchically.
A strategy tree also provides supporting information for the objective, such as business owner and related documents.
A strategy tree lets you explore and navigate:
The strategy for an entire scorecard (that is, the root objective) for example, ABC Corporation
The strategy for an individual objective, for example, Decrease Support Turnaround.
There are two types of diagrams for a strategy tree:
Strategy tree diagram. See Understanding a Strategy Tree Diagram.
Strategy contribution wheel diagram. See Understanding a Strategy Contribution Wheel Diagram.
You use a strategy tree diagram to view an objective and its supporting child objectives and KPIs hierarchically in a tree diagram.
A strategy tree diagram contains the following components:
The tree diagram — Consists of nodes that represent an objective and its supporting objectives and KPIs. Each node shows the status of the objective or KPI by displaying the icon and color that represents the assessment range. A KPI node also displays the actual value of the KPI and the percent variance from the target.
The bird's eye view — Provides an overhead view of the tree diagram.
The illustration shows an example of a strategy tree diagram.
You use a strategy contribution wheel diagram to hierarchically view an objective and its supporting child objectives and KPIs in a circular diagram called a strategy contribution wheel diagram.
The strategy contribution wheel diagram makes it easy to see the contribution (or impact) a specific objective or KPI has on a parent objective. It contains the following components:
Strategy contribution wheel — Consists of a center circle (or focus node) that represents the starting objective of the diagram. It is surrounded by concentric circles that are divided into sectors. Each sector is a node that represents a child objective or KPI.
The size of a sector is determined by the weight assigned to the represented objective or KPI in its parent's weighted assessment rule. See Assigning Weights to Child Objectives, Initiatives and KPIs. If the parent has no weighted assessment rule, then the child sectors of a parent are all the same size.
Information pane — Displays the following information about the current node:
The status icon and either the score (for an objective) or the actual values and variance percentage (for a KPI)
The status of its children
The weight assigned to it in its parent's weighted assessment rule
Focus trail — Consists of a group of small circles that represent the node in the center of the strategy contribution wheel and any of its ancestors that are included in the diagram. Each circle displays the status color of its corresponding node.
The illustration shows an example of a strategy contribution wheel diagram for the Improve Financial Results objective. The Reduce Cost subordinate objective is highlighted.
A strategy tree shows an objective and its supporting child objectives and KPIs hierarchically.
You can create a strategy tree for the entire scorecard or for a specific objective as follows:
In Edit mode, you can create and save a strategy tree for an entire scorecard and for specific objectives.
In View mode, you can create a temporary, read-only strategy tree only for specific objectives. You cannot save the strategy tree.
A strategy map shows how the objectives that have been defined for a scorecard and the KPIs that measure their progress are aligned by perspectives.
A strategy map also indicates cause and effect relationships between objectives and other objectives or KPIs with connecting lines. You create cause and effect relationships when you create (or edit) an objective (see Creating Objectives) or work with KPI details (see Working with KPI Details). You also can create cause and effect relationships in a strategy map.
The illustration shows an example of a strategy map.
You can create multiple strategy maps to represent the strategy of different areas of your organization.
You can create strategy maps in Edit mode only. See Using the Edit and View Modes in the Scorecard Editor.
Ensure that associated objectives and KPIs relate to each other and identify cause and effect relationships. Review these relationships periodically to identify areas that might need improvement to increase collaboration and communication, thus impacting existing objectives and KPIs.
A strategy map shows how the objectives that have been defined for a scorecard and the KPIs that measure their progress are aligned by perspectives.
Strategy maps help users see how actual results compare with objectives.
If the objective or KPI is aligned with a specific perspective, then drop it anywhere in the diagram. It is displayed automatically in the section for the perspective to which the objective or KPI is associated.
You align an objective or KPI with a perspective when you create (or edit) the objective or KPI.
If the objective or KPI is not associated with a perspective, then you drop it in the section for the perspective to which the objective or KPI is to be associated. This does not permanently assign the perspective to this objective or KPI.
To add a cause and effect relationship, click the Draw A Casual Linkage Between Two Objectives button on the Strategy Map tab toolbar, select one of the nodes, and then select the second node. A line connecting the nodes is displayed.
To delete a node from the map, right-click the node and select Remove From Diagram.
Hover the mouse pointer over the Comment button in the upper-right corner of a node to display the Status window, where you can read the comments that were previously added, add another comment, or reply to a comment.
Click the Options button on the right side of the node to which you want to add a comment and select Add Comment from the Node Options Menu. The New Comment dialog is displayed, where you can add a comment or read any comments that were previously added.
Hover the mouse over the red asterisk (if available) in a node to display the Status window, where you can view the overrides that were previously applied or apply another override.
Click the Options button on the right side of the node to which you want to apply the status override and select Override Status from the Node Options Menu. The Status Override dialog is displayed, where you apply another override or view any overrides that were previously applied.
A cause & effect map lets you illustrate the cause and effect relationships of an objective or KPI that is listed in the Strategy pane. Cause & effect maps are diagrams that are used in scorecard and are not related to map views. See Adding Views for Display in Dashboards.
The illustration shows an example of a cause & effect map for the Improve Financial Results objective.
You create cause and effect relationships for:
An objective when you create or edit the objective and identify:
Other objectives or KPIs that impact or support the objective (causes)
Other objectives or KPIs that this objective impacts or supports (effects)
See Creating Objectives.
A KPI when you work with KPI details.
Other objectives or KPIs that impact or support the KPI (causes)
Other objectives or KPIs that this KPI impacts or supports (effects)
A cause and effect map also indicates the proportionality (that is, whether changes in performance or value in the cause and effect relationship are directly proportional (direct) or inversely proportional (inverse) and strength (strong, moderate, or weak) of cause & effect relationships using symbols.
A cause & effect map helps you to better understand the implications of future strategic changes.
Create cause and effect linkages to automatically show operational metrics and dependencies.
You can create a cause & effect map in either Edit or View mode:
In Edit mode, you can create and save a cause & effect map.
In View mode, you can create a temporary, read-only cause & effect map. You cannot save it.
You can create a cause & effect map for any objective or KPI that is listed in the Strategy pane.
Watchlists are tables that list scorecard objects (that is, initiatives, objectives, and KPIs) that are related to a particular aspect of a scorecard or that are grouped together for a particular purpose.
Some watchlists are components of scorecard objects. These include the following watchlists:
Initiatives & KPIs watchlist — Lists the child initiatives and the KPIs that are used to evaluate the performance of an initiative.
This watchlist is displayed in the Analytics pane of the Initiative Details tab.
Objectives & KPIs watchlist — Lists the child objectives and the KPIs that are used to evaluate the performance of an objective or that are displayed in a view (that is, cause & effect map, custom view, strategy tree, or strategy map).
This watchlist is displayed in the following tabs:
Analytics pane of the Objective Details tab in the Scorecard editor
Details tab of the Cause & Effect Map tab
Details tab of the Custom View tab
Details tab of the Strategy Map tab
Details tab of the Strategy Tree tab
Objectives, Initiatives & KPIs watchlist — Lists the initiatives, objectives, and KPIs that are associated with a perspective.
This watchlist is displayed in the Perspective tab of the Scorecard editor.
Other watchlists you create to serve a particular purpose. These include the following watchlists:
KPI watchlist — Lists the KPIs whose performance you want to monitor.
This watchlist is displayed in the Performance tab of the KPI Watchlist editor. See What Are KPI Watchlists?.
Smart watchlist — Lists the initiatives, objectives, and KPIs within a scorecard that meet criteria that you specify.
This watchlist is displayed in the Smart Watchlist tab of the Scorecard editor. See What Are Smart Watchlists?.
Breakdown watchlist — Lists the child or descendant initiatives or objectives and KPIs that are used to evaluate the performance of an initiative or objective.
This watchlist is displayed in the Breakdown tab of the Scorecard editor.
A watchlist includes columns that describe the scorecard objects (such as Status, % Variance, and so on) and components (such as View or Summary) that allow you to view and manage these objects.
For example, you can create an Objectives & KPIs watchlist consisting of two objectives — % Early Shipped and Fulfillment Days — that are used to evaluate the performance of an objective named Enhance Customer Satisfaction.
You can use the Watchlist Styles tab of the Scorecard Settings dialog to customize watchlists used on Scorecards, Objectives, Initiatives, Perspectives, Smart Watchlists, Custom Views, Strategy Tree Views, Strategy Maps, and Cause Effect Maps.
For each watchlist in a scorecard, you can customize watchlist styles, change the column order, display or hide columns, and change column labels at the following levels:
Scorecard: Applies to all watchlists for the scorecard that do not have their own individual styles or column customizations.
Individual Watchlist: Applies to an individual watchlist. The individual watchlist style overrides the scorecard level style
If no watchlist styles are set, the default style is used.
You can include the following format options to customize the watchlists:
Font Name - You must enter the font name manually. You must a font name supported by a web browser used in your environment.
Bold - Yes or No or Default
Italic - Yes, or No or Default
Border Style
Border Color
Font Color
Background Color
You can set the above formats for individual cell (row and column) types independently and can apply different styles for alternate rows of the watchlist.
You can copy and paste styles from one cell to another, and with one click can apply a cell's style to the entire row. You can also set the styles for the header row and the selected (clicked on) row.
To customize watchlists:
A KPI watchlist is a collection of KPIs whose performance you want to monitor.
You can create KPI watchlists:
Within a scorecard. You create a KPI watchlist within a scorecard to help you view and investigate the progress of the objectives and initiatives. KPI watchlists that you create within a scorecard are saved as part of the scorecard. See What Are Smart Watchlists?
Outside a scorecard. This enables you to create a KPI watchlist in advance of creating or editing a scorecard. KPI watchlists that you create outside a scorecard are saved as standalone objects in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog.
When you create initiatives and objectives, you can assign KPIs to them to measure their progress and performance.
You can work with these KPIs within a Scorecard using the KPI Details tab of the Scorecard editor.
Specifically, you can:
View basic KPI settings as well as a graph that presents actual values and target values.
Override the label, description, and business owner that are defined for the KPI.
Pin dimensions. See What Are Dimensions and Pinned Dimension Values?
View documents that provide supporting information to the KPI.
Run actions that are associated with the KPI.
Associate the KPI with a perspective.
Specify an indicator type (for example, Leading) to indicate whether the performance of the KPI drives other KPIs, or is affected by the performance of other KPIs, or other data or processes.
View, add, or reply to comments.
Identify initiatives and KPIs (for a KPI listed in the Initiatives pane) or objectives and KPIs (for a KPI listed in the Strategy pane) that cause or effect the KPI.
Label, using the Label field
Description, using the Description field
Business Owner, using the Business Owner field in the Collaboration pane
A smart watchlist is a view into a particular scorecard based on criteria that you specify.
For example, a smart watchlist might show the top ten KPIs in a scorecard based on best performance or all the objectives, initiatives, and KPIs in a scorecard that are owned by a specific business owner.
The illustration shows an example of a smart watchlist for the Improve Financial Results objective and all its descendants.
A smart watchlist consists of the following components:
Filter pane — This pane is displayed as a control panel, as a text summary, or is hidden, depending on the setting of the Filter Criteria Display component in the Smart Watchlist Properties dialog. If displayed as a:
Control panel, it contains tabs that let you specify the criteria to be used to filter the smart watchlist. You can filter by object relationships, by object types, by perspective associations, by performance, and by business owner assignments.
Text summary, it displays a read-only text summary of the current filter criteria.
Smart watchlist — Lists the objectives, initiatives, and KPIs in a scorecard that meet the criteria specified in the Filter pane.
Smart watchlist toolbar — Contains buttons that allow you to save the smart watchlist and to specify smart watchlist properties, such as how the Filter pane is to be displayed (that is, as a control panel, a read-only text summary, or hidden).
Create smart watchlists as a conduit to properly align performance drivers (objectives and initiatives) with their proper business owners and to assist in arriving at a consensus between stakeholders that will build commitment to move goal and target setting along to achieve the stated and desired results.
You can create smart watchlists in Edit mode only.
In View mode, you can view a smart watchlist and, if the smart watchlist was saved with the Filter pane displayed as a control panel, you can specify filter criteria to dynamically change what is shown in the smart watchlist.
See Using the Edit and View Modes in the Scorecard Editor.
You can also add smart watchlists to dashboards. If the smart watchlist was saved with the Filter pane displayed as a control panel, end users will be able to specify filter criteria to dynamically change what is shown in the smart watchlist.
A smart watchlist is a view into a particular scorecard based on criteria that you specify.
Smart watchlists alert users of important changes in data.
A custom view lets you show a customized view of your business and strategy data.
For example, you might present information about objectives and KPIs on a background image of your choice, such as your company logo. See Creating Custom Views.
You can create custom views in Edit mode only. See Using the Edit and View Modes in the Scorecard Editor.
Scorecards can have custom views to alter how data analyses are presented.
You can create a view for a scorecard that is customized for your audience.
Several options are available when opening scorecard objects.
To open a scorecard object:
Cause & Effect Map tab
Custom View tab
Strategy Map tab
Strategy Tree tab
KPI Watchlist tab
Smart Watchlist tab
Mission tab
Vision tab
Strategy pane or the Initiatives pane. The KPI Details tab is displayed.
Catalog pane for Scorecard. The KPI tab is displayed.
You can edit scorecard objects in the Scorecard editor.
You also can edit scorecard objects from the Catalog page. See Managing Objects in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog.
You can delete scorecard objects from the Scorecard editor.
You also can delete scorecard objects from the Catalog page. See Managing Objects in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog.
Caution:
Before deleting an initiative, ensure that it has been completed or is no longer required to achieve an objective. Before deleting an objective, examine any child objectives or other objectives with which it is linked to ensure that its removal does not negatively impact these objectives.Specific types of scorecard objects can be added to dashboards.
You can add the following scorecard objects to dashboards:
Cause & effect maps. See What Are Cause & Effect Maps?
Custom views. See What Are Custom Views?
Strategy maps. See What Are Strategy Maps?
Strategy trees. See What Are Strategy Trees?
KPI watchlists. See What Are KPI Watchlists?
Smart watchlists. See What Are Smart Watchlists?
Note:
Embed scorecard visualizations (for example, smart watchlists or cause and effect maps) into dashboards for fostering interactive analysis.See Adding Content to Dashboards for additional information.
You can find troubleshooting information in a variety of sources.
In solving problems that you might encounter while using Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management, you might find the following information helpful:
For information on logging, see Diagnosing and Resolving Issues in Oracle Business Intelligence in System Administrator's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.
If the features to add comments and to override statuses are not enabled, see Configuring the Repository for Oracle Scorecard and Strategy Management in Metadata Repository Builder's Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.
For problems with the ability to create or access scorecard objects, see the information on privileges and permissions in Managing Objects in the Oracle BI Presentation Catalog and Managing Presentation Services Privileges in Security Guide for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.