Strategic Analysis of Telstra's Balanced Scorecard - ACC3002 Report

This report provides an analysis of Telstra Corporation's implementation of the balanced scorecard. It outlines the company's long-term goals, stakeholder groups, and suitable perspectives for a balanced scorecard, including financial, customer, and internal perspectives. A strategy map is developed to illustrate the relationships between different objectives, and key performance indicators (KPIs) and key performance drivers (KPDs) are identified. The report also includes a critical analysis of the issues concerning the implementation of the balanced scorecard based on academic and professional literature, highlighting challenges such as poorly defined metrics, data collection inefficiencies, lack of training, and an overemphasis on internal focus. This assignment was submitted by a student and is available on Desklib, a platform offering AI-based study tools and a wide range of solved assignments for students.

Accounting
Assignment

Prepared By
Student Name:
Date: 20th January 2019
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Executive Summary
The following assignment deals with the introduction of balance scorecard in the
financials of the company and how balance card has helped the company in making
the appropriate changes and how helpful it has been. The company that has been
selected is Telstra Corporation and the company has recently introduced the
concept of balance score card in its operations. Analysis of the same has been done
in the given assignment.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents............................................................................................................. 3
Introduction................................................................................................................ 4
Analysis...................................................................................................................... 4
Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 6
References..................................................................................................................... 7
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Introduction
1.Telstra Corporation is one of the largest telecommunication company in Australia.
It builds and operates telecommunication networks and mobile and internet access
lines and indulges in various consumer goods that includes the mobile phones,
home phones, mobile devices etc. The company has recently introduced the
concept of balance scorecard to incorporate materiality issues into the overall
sustainable performance and accountability (Alexander, 2016).
Analysis
2.The long-term goals of the company will include to develop such technology that
would help in connecting the people and empower them, the aim of the company is
to include the social and environmental considerations into the business in such
ways that it would create value for the stakeholders of the company (Choy, 2018). It
is opting for sustainable growth and development of the company in such a way
that the stakeholders get the best results. The stakeholders in case of Telstra will
include the investors who have invested into the company, the employees, the
consumers, the suppliers, the government and any such party that is dependent on
the company directly or indirectly.
3.Various perspective that can be included in balance scorecard and the various
specific objectives that can be included in that-
Financial Perspective- In case of this the company can include large scale cost
optimization, improving the overall asset utilization and improving the overall
customer value and creating new revenue horizons. The overall aim would be
increase the profit considerably that would help in increasing the overall return to
the shareholders of the company, and the dependent parties (Farmer, 2018).
Customer Perspective – In case of the customers the company includes improving
the overall quality of goods, prices of the goods, availability of the products,
improving the overall brand value. The main aim of this is to include the overall
customer growth in the balance scorecard and providing the customer with new
items again and again.
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Internal Perspectives- The internal perspective in case of the customers will include
improving the overall performance management, improving the customer
management, including innovation process and being compliant with the various
social and regulatory practices that would include compliance with respect to
corporate social accountability and related standards (Werner, 2017). The aim
would be to increase the overall efficiency of the performance of the company and
that would help in reduction of wastage and generating more profit in the long run.
4.The strategy map is a tool being introduced by the creators of the Balanced
Scorecard technique, Robert S Kaplan and David P Norton. It helps the organization
in describing and communicating the strategies within the organization (Linden &
Freeman, 2017). It forms the base for developing the financial and non-financial
Balanced Scorecard measures which can later be used for monitoring the execution
and implementation of the strategies. The strategy map of Telstra has been shown
below:
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5. The Key performance indicators would include the increase in the overall net
income of the company, the increase in the share prices of the company. It shall
also include the growth of the comparison to the past years. It can also be
deciphered from the overall movement of the share prices of the company, the
movement in the value of the investments that are done by the company. All such
information is present in the financial statements of the company and decisions can
be taken based on that (Dumay & Baard, 2017). The key performance drivers on the
other hand will include different aspect of the overall business that are directly
related to the overall results and outcomes that the company generates. In case of
the given company the key performance drivers can be defined as processes like
introduction of a new product, starting a new marketing campaign, changes in the
methods of valuation of assets, and making new investments that would help in
improving the overall growth of the company that would be indicated through key
performance indicators for the company (Kewell & Linsley, 2017).
Conclusion
6.Critical Analysis of the issues concerned with the implementation of the balance
scorecard-
 The overall metrics are very poorly defined, they are not very relevant and
clear. These metrics needs to be collected at ideal frequency for taking
appropriate decisions.
 There may be lack in the efficient data collecting and reporting the same. The
companies do not focus on other metrics that much but focuses more on
financial metrics and thus the overall balance is not established for the
company and this is one of the major disadvantage associated with the
implementation of the balance scorecard.
 The companies need to make sure that there is proper training given to
implement the balance scorecard. Many companies are not able to reap in
the proper benefits that are associated with implementation of the balance
scorecard (Sithole, et al., 2017).
 One of the major criticism that is involved in case of balance scorecard is that
there is lot of focus on internal focus and to overcome this it is important that
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proper balance between the internal and external focus should be
established.
 It is not appropriate for all the industries to implement the balance scorecard,
as it is not suitable for all the companies.
References
Alexander, F., 2016. The Changing Face of Accountability. The Journal of Higher
Education, 71(4), pp. 411-431.
Choy, Y. K., 2018. Cost-benefit Analysis, Values, Wellbeing and Ethics: An
Indigenous Worldview Analysis. Ecological Economics, 3(1), p. 145.
Dumay, J. & Baard, V., 2017. An introduction to interventionist research in
accounting.. The Routledge Companion to Qualitative Accounting Research
Methods, 12(3), p. 265.
Farmer, Y., 2018. Ethical Decision Making and Reputation Management in Public
Relations. Journal of Media Ethics, pp. 1-12.
Kewell, B. & Linsley, P., 2017. Risk tools and risk technologies.. The Routledge
Companion to Accounting and Risk, 15, 3(1), pp. 22-35.
Linden, B. & Freeman, R., 2017. Profit and Other Values: Thick Evaluation in
Decision Making. Business Ethics Quarterly, 27(3), pp. 353-379.
Sithole, S., Chandler, P., Abeysekera, I. & Paas, F., 2017. Benefits of guided self-
management of attention on learning accounting. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 109(2), p. 220.
Werner, M., 2017. Financial process mining - Accounting data structure dependent
control flow inference. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems,
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Volume 25, pp. 57-80.
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