The Scorecard Tree
The Scorecards section is the heart of Spider Impact. It's where you keep all of your performance metrics, as well as where you manage your overall strategy as an organization.
The idea behind Scorecards is simple. At the bottom of your scorecard tree are KPIs. (If you're using the balanced scorecard language, they're called measures, but it's just a different name for the same thing.) Each KPI has a goal, and every month the KPI's actual value is compared against the goal to give it a score and a color.
All of those KPI scores are then rolled up the tree to give scores to your higher-level strategic scorecard items. In this example, the score from this Training Revenue KPI is combined with other similar KPI scores to give the Increase Revenue objective a score. That objective score is then rolled up with other objectives into the overall Financial perspective's score.
For more information about how Spider Impact calculates scores, see the How Scores are Calculated article.
Overview Tab
The Scorecards overview tab shows all of the information about a scorecard item and how it's performing. As you click around the scorecard tree on the left, the information for the selected item is shown on the right.
- The speedometer shows the performance for the current calendar period (purple arrow). In this example we're looking at a KPI and we can see its actual value, goal, and how much it has changed since the previous period.
- The historical performance chart shows how this KPI has changed over time. You can hover/tap on the chart to see the specific values.
- The actual and threshold values table includes everything that goes into the score calculation. In this example we're looking at a monthly KPI in quarterly mode (purple arrow), so we see three months' worth of data in the table.
- You can designate just about anything in Spider Impact as a related item. For example, you may want to link to a supporting document in the Files section. If you choose an Initiative as a related item, Spider Impact will tell you if the initiative appears to be affecting this scorecard item's performance.
- You can create notes for scorecard items that can apply either to specific periods, or to the scorecard item in general.
There settings in Application Administration that allow you to configure the default appearance of the Scorecards Overview tab.
In this example we’ve set the description to show, and we’re charting 4 periods on a bar chart with no background thresholds.
KPIs (or Measures) Tab
When you're viewing a high-level strategic scorecard item, you'll sometimes see a red icon on the KPIs tab. (This tab is called Measures when you're using balanced scorecard language.) This means that there's a red KPI somewhere under this scorecard item.
If you click on the KPIs tab, you'll see the performance of every KPI that is underneath the currently selected item. This is a great way to see all of the low-level data that's behind a high-level strategic item.
By default, any KPI below a score of 3.3 will trigger the red icon, but you can configure or disable this threshold in the Scorecards panel of Application Administration.