Case Study: HAGLUND DEPARTMENT STORE (Balance Scorecard)

Haglund Department Store is located in the downtown area of a small city. While the store
had been profitable for many years, it is facing increasing competition from large national
chains that have set up stores on the outskirts of the city. Recently the downtown area has
been undergoing revitalization, and the owners of Haglund Department Store are somewhat
optimistic that profitability can be restored. In an attempt to accelerate the return to
profitability, management of Haglund Department Store is in the process of designing a
balanced scorecard for the company. Management believes the company should focus on
two key problems. First, customers are taking longer and longer to pay the bills they incur
using the department store’s charge card, and the company has far more bad debts than are
normal for the industry. If this problem were solved, the company would have more cash to
make much needed renovations. Investigation has revealed that much of the problem with
late payments and unpaid bills results from customers disputing incorrect charges on their
bills. These incorrect charges usually occur because salesclerks incorrectly enter data on
the charge account slip. Second, the company has been incurring large losses on unsold
seasonal apparel. Such items are ordinarily resold at a loss to discount stores that specialize
in such distress items. The meeting in which the balanced scorecard approach was
discussed was disorganized and ineffectively led possibly because no one other than one of
the vice presidents had read anything about how to build a balanced scorecard.
Nevertheless, a number of potential performance measures were suggested by various
managers. These potential performance measures are:
a. Percentage of charge account bills containing errors.
b. Percentage of salesclerks trained to correctly enter data on charge account slips.
c. Average age of accounts receivables.
d. Profit per employee.
e. Customer satisfaction with accuracy of charge account bills from monthly customer
survey.
f. Total sales revenue.
g. Sales per employee.
h. Travel expenses for buyers for trips to fashion shows.
i. Unsold inventory at the end of the season as a percentage of total cost of sales.
j. Courtesy shown by junior staff members to senior staff members based on surveys of
senior staff.
k. Percentage of suppliers making just-in-time deliveries.
l. Sales per square foot of floor space.
m. Written-off accounts receivable (bad debts) as a percentage of sales.
n. Quality of food in the staff cafeteria based on staff surveys.
o. Percentage of employees who have attended the city’s cultural diversity workshop.
p. Total profit.
Required:
As someone with more knowledge of the balanced scorecard than almost anyone
else in the company, you have been asked to build an integrated balanced scorecard. In
your scorecard, use only performance measures listed previously. You do not have to use all
of the performance measures suggested by the managers, but you should build a balanced
scorecard that reveals a strategy for dealing with the problems with accounts receivable and
with unsold merchandise. Do not be concerned with whether a specific performance
measure falls within the learning and growth, internal business process, customer, or
financial perspective. However, use arrows to show the causal links between performance
measures within your balanced scorecard and explain whether the performance measures
should show increases or decreases.

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 ANSWER:

FINANCIAL
Total profit +

Average age of Written-off

accounts receivable  accounts receivable as a 
percentage of sales

Customer satisfaction with

CUSTOMER accuracy of charge account
bills
+

Unsold inventory at end of

INTERNAL BUSINESS season as a percentage of
total cost of sales

PROCESS Percentage of charge
account bills containing
errors 
Percentage of
suppliers making just-in-
time deliveries
+
Percentage of sales clerks
LEARNING AND trained to
correctly enter data on charge +
GROWTH
account slips

A number of the performance measures suggested by managers have not been

included in the above balanced scorecard. The excluded performance measures may have
an impact on total profit, but they are not linked in any obvious way with the two key
problems that have been identified by management—accounts receivables and unsold
inventory. If every performance measure that potentially impacts profit is included in a
company’s balanced scorecard, it would become unwieldy and focus would be lost.

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