طراحی یک سیستم مبتنی بر دانش برای برنامه ریزی استراتژیک:دیدگاه کارت امتیاز دهی متوازن

First developed by Kaplan and Norton [Kaplan R. S., & Norton D. P. (1992). The balance scorecard – measures that drive performance. Harvard Business Review, 70(1), 71–79], balanced scorecard (BSC) provides an integrated view of overall organizational performance and strategic objectives. BSC integrates financial measures with other key performance indicators to create a perspective that incorporates both financial and non-financial aspects. BSC has proven a powerful tool for strategic planning and communicating strategy that assists in strategy implementation. Successful strategy implementation is based on effective strategic planning. Owing to the strategic planning being a virtual necessity in business, this work proposes an integrated approach for the balanced scorecard tool and knowledge-based system using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method, and then develops an intellectual BSC knowledge-based system for strategic planning that sets or selects firm management or operational strategies based on the following perspectives: learning and growth, internal/business process, customer, and financial performance. This system can help determine specific strategy weights. The intellectual BSC knowledge-based system facilities efficient automated strategic planning.

Academicians and researchers involved in strategic management and managerial accounting have devoted increasing attention in the recent decade to the influence of balanced scorecard (BSC) on organizational performance and strategic planning. The BSC designed by Kaplan and Norton (1992) uses a sequence of four perspectives that reflects firm value creation activities. The sequence is as follows: learning and growth perspective, internal/business process perspective, customer perspective, and finally financial perspective. Core outcome (performance) measures within each perspective are adopted as leading indicators of the core outcome measures in the next perspective. Since, its initial development by Kaplan and Norton, BSC has been widely adopted by manufacturing and service companies, nonprofit organizations, government entities, and other industries around the world. Firms are increasingly implementing new performance measurement systems to track non-financial metrics, with related research including Andrews, 1996, Banker et al., 2004, Banker et al., 2000, Frigo, 2002 and Said et al., 2003. Since its introduction in the early 1990s, the BSC has evolved from a performance measurement tool to a strategic management tool. The BSC methodology creates an infrastructure for strategic management activities. The scorecard introduces four new management processes that, separately and in combination, contribute to linking long-term strategic objectives and short-term actions (Kaplan & Norton, 1996a). By combining the financial, customer, internal process, and learning/growth perspectives, BSC helps managers understand numerous interrelationships and causal effects. This understanding can help managers transcend traditional notions regarding functional barriers and ultimately improve decision-making and problem solving. Strategy and execution reviews can help management teams review the strategic plans, the planning process, including BSC metrics and strategy maps (Frigo, 2002 and Frigo, 2004). Strategic planning is virtually essential in business. A strategic plan differs from an operational plan. A strategic plan should be conceptual, visionary and directional. Owing to the complexity and importance of strategic planning, the knowledge-based system (KBS) is frequently used to support decision-making. Knowledge-based systems (KBS) are computer-based tools that facilitate managerial decision-making by presenting various effective alternatives. By the 1990s, intelligent knowledge-based systems came to play an important role in new decision support tools. But few studies involving KBS with BSC strategic management or planning have been done (Berler et al., 2005, Martinsons et al., 1999, Sohn et al., 2003 and Sundararajan et al., 1998). This study thus provided an intelligent knowledge-based system for strategic planning that sets or selects firm strategy based on the BSC perspectives. This KBS can be used as a strategic planning tool planning or setting strategy based decision-making information. KBS is designed to offer a conclusive reference for helping decision makers make correct decisions in the face of complex situations and large quantities of information. Intelligent BSC knowledge-based system (BSCKBS) is designed to develop a strategic planning system for implementing business systems to support needs. Consequently, KBS adopts a user-oriented interface, and establishes management strategies based on assessment of the business vision and strategy. Based on the above concern, this work has two related aims: (a) to propose an integrated framework for the balanced scorecard tool and knowledge-based system using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method; and (b) to develop an intellectual BSC knowledge-based system for strategic planning that sets or selects firm’s strategy from the following perspectives: learning and growth, internal/business process, customer, and financial performance. Using the AHP method for the analysis, this work examines how management can select objectives and measures using the BSC hierarchy. This work addressed two key topics: setting objectives and the selection of appropriate measures. Firm executives are well aware that rapid implementation of change is difficult. However, strategic planning is important for strategy execution. Consequently, this work describes the use of AHP to prioritize all of the measures and strategies in a BSC framework and tries to establish an intelligent BSC strategic planning and management decision support system for strategic planning, that is, the BSC knowledge-based system (BSCKBS). The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 briefly reviews the knowledge-based system (KBS) and related applications. Section 3 briefly reviews the BSC view and related research. Section 4 then describes the AHP theorem and related research. Next, Section 5 describes the architecture of the BSC knowledge-based system and related content. Finally, concluding remarks and a summary are presented in Section 6.

6.1. Conclusions This work focused on the question of how management can select objectives and measures using the balanced scorecard hierarchy. This work applied KBS to examine this question, namely the BSC knowledge-based system (BSCKBS). Consequently, this work describes the design of a BSCKBS for strategic planning and management. The potential contribution of this work is as follows: first, this work provides a logical and reliable means for individual business units to describe and implement their strategic planning. This work used a nonparametric AHP method to analyze the organizational strategies and their relative weights. Thus, this work proposes using the analytic hierarchy process to prioritize all of the measures and strategies in a BSC knowledge-based system. Second, this system can help determine the weights of specific strategies. The intelligent BSCKBS can help clients to more effectively execute strategic plans for improved business results. Furthermore, the intelligent BSCKBS is suitable for substantial start-ups, established businesses and strategic business units. 6.2. Implications and future research The work concludes discussing theoretical, research and practical implications. This study has several practical implications. BSC has been demonstrated to be a powerful tool for setting objectives and appropriate measures to facilitate objective achievement. Management thus makes an effort to learn how to practically apply the integrated BSCKBS to achieve organizational competitive advantages and effective strategic planning. This work concludes that firm or organization administrators can use this analysis to help identify and manage strategic indicators and linkages when adopting BSCKBS. Several recommendations regarding future work and research can help explore BSCKBS, including not only the concept of the architecture of BSCKBS, but also its practical usefulness. First, BSCKBS is web-based, and uses Windows to access the Internet. This system is designed using HTML and ASP, and managed by Access database. Second, recently, rule-based reasoning (RBR), case-based reasoning (CBR) and model based reasoning (MBR) have emerged as important and complementary reasoning methodologies for application to intelligent systems. For complex problem solving, it is useful to integrate RBR, CBR and MBR in decision-making. In the future, BSCKBS should integrate RBR, CBR and MBR for strategic planning and strategy implementation. Finally, it is recommended that the approach outlined in this work be replicated in other industries and firms. Future studies should focus on validating the proposed BSCKBS and associated strategic objectives and performance measures, and on implementing BSCKBS to the other companies or organization to test its effectiveness for strategic planning.