Essay Example for Everyone: Balance Scorecard: Focus on the Customer

The Balance Scorecard Institute defines the balance scorecard as a strategic planning and management system that organizations use to communicate what they are trying to accomplish, align the day-to-day work that everyone is doing with strategy, prioritize projects, products, and services, measure, and monitor progress towards strategic targets. The balance scorecard is broken into four perspective sections, namely financial goals, customer goals, process goals and people or learning and growth goals. For our focus of the balance scorecard, we will discuss the customer perspective.

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The customer focus scorecard addresses ways through which customers view the company. In the business world, the customers are the key factor to our existence. The customers fuel the business by purchasing its products or services. For Anthony's Orchard, the customers are important to the accomplishment of the long-term goals. The company wishes to purchase a new apple press and will need the financial stability from its customers to fulfill this goal. The revenue of the farm should be growing year after year to show entice shareholders and investors of its upper growth trend. The company wants to satisfy its current customers, build retention and bring in new customers.

From a customer perspective, we are validated by our external measures. This area is heavily validated by our external feedback from our customers. How well are we meeting our customer needs? Are we retaining our customers? Are our customers satisfied? Are they able to interact with employees? Are they willing to fill out surveys and give feedback about our customer service?

Anthony's Orchard has met some of its external goals by creating the new event to reach its customers. The company started an event that impacts the community with its services and products by displaying and selling them at the community festivals, and by offering scholarships. This was a plus for Anthony's Orchard because it brought in revenues of over $2 million in 2011. This event showed that there was an increase in customer growth. For future years Anthony's Orchard must ensure that it meets its customers' needs and provide a variety of apple products and provide additional services to invite more traffic to their retail store.

Future Results

The trend established by the Community Supported Agriculture presents a promising strategy for maximizing the reach of Anthony's Orchards in the local community, with opportunities for expansion to reach even more customers. Customer satisfaction is indicated by the increased sales in the last quarter, with loyalty being cemented by the various events and programs enacted by the company, including the agricultural education classes, harvest festivals, and the CSA program. In future years, community participation in these events will serve to increase Anthony's Orchard's dominance of the apple and apple products market.

Furthermore, the company's focus on customer satisfaction will continue to increase return sales, referrals, and the company's profitability. Services like Pick Your Own Apples and a focus on family fun-day type of product bundling is bound to attract large numbers of families by making the business a cultural fixture like Disneyworld where families and friends can visit for fun but still purchase the company's products.

Long-Term Growth and Performance

Long-term growth in Anthony's Orchards will depend on the services and products that customers enjoy on visiting the farm (Adrian, Eliza, Alexandru & Costel, 2011). As a fruit growing business, the company's sole focus is on apples, which limits somewhat the options available for diversifying into other areas in fruit growing. The management has diversified the company's services and product portfolio by introducing recipes and other apple fruit derivatives through its Apple Store.

To further increase the popularity of its products, demonstrate the versatility of apple themed cuisines, and create a new source of income, Anthony's Orchard should build a restaurant to feature cuisines with its products in them. Not only will the restaurant increase sales at the orchard (or whatever location the managers choose), it will increase overall sales because people will appreciate apple themed cuisines and indulge more in them.

Conclusion

Consumer products companies stand to gain a lot from the customer focus portion of the balance scorecard concept. For Anthony's Orchards, the focus lay in increasing satisfaction and reaching more customers with their products. The customer-centric programs enacted at the company are bound to increase the volumes of visits to the orchard and sales. To improve performance, the company can consider even more diversification of its products portfolio to minimize the reliance on apples and apple products. Adding apple cuisines to the portfolio would exponentially increase sales. Ultimately, the focus of the company in serving as many customers as possible and satisfying their demands will lead to more customers, a greater volume of sales and higher profits.

References

Adrian, M., Eliza, M. A., Alexandru, C., & Costel, N. (2011). Design of a customer-centric balanced scorecard -support for a research on CRM strategies of Romanian companies from FMCG Sector. Recent Advances in Management, Marketing, Finances, 1(1), 137-142

Reference:

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