Kaplan, Norton and the first study group developed the Balanced Scorecard to facilitate strategic business management, but the same logic that apply to BSC may also be used to manage projects and other management interventions.

We call it the Business Impact Scorecard.

Let's take the example of an Internet-based Knowledge Management project in a pharmacy retail chain.

The chain's strategy is based on customer intimacy, and their Customer Value Proposition may roughly be described as: "We're close to where you are and have plenty of parking space (convenience), you can trust our products to be genuine and effective (integrity / trust) and our staff will give you the best advice on all your health issues (relations)."

The eKnowledge Management (eKM) project is conceived to strengthen the chain's ability to deliver on their "Best Advice" promise.

As part of their general Balanced Scorecard, the chain has measured how their customers perceive the chain's staff knowledge relative to their most important competitor and the impact of that on revenues using the multiple-regression technique.

Everything else kept equal, a ten-percentage point change in Customer Perceived Relative Staff Knowledge Index (compared to most important competitor) translates into roughly $1,000,000 US change in revenues per year.

The eKM project objective is a sustainable 5-percentage point increase in relative perceived staff knowledge.

In the Finance perspective of our Business Impact Scorecard (BIS) we will measure the calculated revenue impact of the change in perceived relative staff knowledge, the cost of the project and the annual cost of running the system.

Our BIS will be active from project start and will be terminated two years after the end of the project itself.

In the Customer perspective we will, of course, measure the Customer Perceived Relative Staff Knowledge Index (RSKI).

In the Internal Processes perspective we will measure, as always, what we must excel in to achieve our Customer objective. Examples may be anything from the number of eLearning knowledge modules available to how many of our employees are active users of the eKM system at any given point.

In the Learning & Growth perspective we will measure the availability of core resources, competencies, IT-systems and other project-related infrastructure.

Why, then, do we advocate this new approach to project management?

Using BIS has the benefit of maintaining focus on the very reason why we decided to initiate the project in the first place -- increasing the company's revenues.

Using only Gantt-diagram project management tools often fail because "on-time on-budget" objectives substitute the main objective.

With the possibility of a $500,000 US increase in yearly revenues it may be well worth some extra time and cost to achieve that 5- percentage point increase in RSKI.

The BSI would be equally important if the project had tighter margins. It would then help curb the project ambition level in order to maintain project profitability.

Since the BIS will continue for a while after the official end of the project itself, the risk of losing the effect of the project due to resource cutback is also significantly reduced.