How to use Stragegy2Act?

1. Sample Project
The first thing we'd like to recommend is to open a sample project. You will find it in a "sample-projects" folder in a program's directory.

2. Ideology
The next step is understanding the ideology of the program and of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) conception.

With Strategy2Act you can create a Balanced Scorecard using three tools:

* Strategy Tree. Use Strategy Tree to describe the strategy, mission and vision;
* Scorecard. Use is to analyze some solution or to put your ideas about the strategy goals as they exists today;
* Reports. Use reports to have a Balanced Scorecard documents, such as Strategy Tree and Scorecard for some solution

Strategy Tree

With Strategy2Act you can build a strategy tree of your company, department or your personal strategy tree.

As follows from Balanced Scorecard experience, the four perspectives are most important:

* Financial;
* Customer;
* Internal business processes;
* Learning;

Manage Strategy Tree

* Strategy Tree option in File menu. Use it to open, save and create new strategy tree;
* Edit Strategy Tree command in Edit menu. Use it to modify your strategy tree;
* Strategy tree edit box at the bottom of main form. Use it to specify goal name, description, measure and target;

With Strategy2Act you can use these perspectives or create your own.

For every perspective item you can add a related goal. For instance, for Customer perspective the related goals are Response Time and Support Quality.

The Strategy2Act has a balance function, so you can specify what perspectives and goals are most important for your company now.

Strategy2Act will help you to measure your performance. For every perspective and goal you can write a note telling what this goal is, how to measure it and what target values are you going to archive.

Scorecard

Once you have a strategy tree, you can create your scorecard.

Scorecard allows to analyze some solution in terms of your strategy. Balanced Scorecard system connects the new solution or goal with your strategy.

You can rate a new solution and put down your comment or related ideas. Strategy2Act program shows the total score of a new improvement, so you can decide whether to start working with this solution or other one.



Manage Scorecard
* Scorecard option in File menu. Use it to open, save and create new scorecard;
* Edit Scorecard properties command in Edit menu. Use it to change some properties of your score card, for instance, business response ;
* Use "Set a score for this goal" box at the bottom to rate how good is this solution in archiving this goal.
* Scorecard tool-bar;
* Scorecard info panel.

Reporting

Strategy2Act has a wide reporting ability. You can generate a report containing only strategy tree or score card. You can save the report as an Excel file for further analysis.

With Strategy2Act you can have the following reports:

* Score card report. Contains the score details;
* Strategy tree report. Contains detailed representation of your strategy tree;
* Full report. Has all the information about scorecard and strategy tree;
* Excel Export. Creates a cvs file, so you can open it in MS Excel;

Manage Scorecard

* Reports option in File menu. Use it to create your report;
* "report_template" folder with available report templates. Use it to customize your report.

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When use a Scorecard

Scorecard is a powerful tool, that help to make a decision based on your strategy, mission and vision. There are many ways to use scorecard. We suggest a "Solution-Scorecard-Strategy" model:

* Solution setup. You have some solution. You want to find out if it matches your strategy, mission and vision. You can create a scorecard for this solution, specify the name and the description of this solution.

* How does solutions acts on strategy goals. Then you can set some scores, which will show how good does this solution affects on goals in Strategy Tree; For instance, how good "On-line promotion project" (solution) is for "Improving Customer Support" (goal from Strategy Tree). The answer is 4 of 10, and the comment text you specify might be: "Applying on-line promotion we will be able to learn quickly customers' needs". Then you can rate all other goals in Strategy Tree.

* Business response. Once the job is done, you can go to the Scorecard properties ("Edit Scorecard properties" command in Edit menu) and put there your business response. For instance, you can recommend this solution in some way.