Editing Scorecard Items

To edit an existing scorecard item, just select it in the tree on the left and then go to its Edit tab.

Creating New Scorecard Items

To create a new scorecard item, select its parent in the tree and click the New Scorecard Item button. This will put a placeholder for the new item in the tree and you can start filling out the form.

Once your scorecard item is ready to go, click the Create button (or type the return/enter key on your keyboard).

Not only does this save your scorecard item, but it also automatically moves on to creating the next scorecard item in the list.

With a little practice you can quickly create all of your scorecard item siblings this way at once. Just type the scorecard item's name, hit enter on your keyboard, and then start typing the next item's name. You can also hit tab to jump to another field like Description.

Assigning Owners

You can assign users or groups a an Owners of any scorecard item and optionally send them an alert when they've been assigned.

Accountability is incredibly important to managing your organization's strategy. By clearly stating who is responsible for a KPI, there will be a point of contact if performance starts to take a turn for the worse.

It's also helpful for the owners because they'll know exactly what they're responsible for. They're able to see a list of all KPIs they own in the Home section.

KPI (or metric) Details

KPIs (or metrics if you're using balanced scorecard language) are a little more complicated than other types of scorecard items. The good news is that all of the default KPI settings work wonderfully. Most of the time you can just give your KPI a name, an owner, and a couple threshold values. If you really want to customize your KPIs, though, Spider Impact has the tools to do it.

First, let's review all of the KPI details.

1. Scoring Type is how your KPI gets its score. The default Goal/Red Flag option is the most popular by far. You choose a number where your KPI turns green, and a number where your KPI value turns red. Please see our Using KPI Scoring Types article for more information.
2. Calendar is how often you update your KPI.
3. Data Type is the kind of number you want to use. You can choose Number, Percentage, or Currency.
4. Aggregation Type is how to combine KPI data for multiple periods. For example, a monthly KPI's quarterly totals. Most KPIs are Sum or Average, but there are also options for Geometric Mean and Last Value (already aggregated).
5. Decimal Precision is how many numbers you want to the right of the decimal point. You can also set the default decimal precision for Spider Impact in the Application Administration section.
6. Currency allows you to choose a specific country's currency and is only an option when configured in the Application Administration section.

When you choose Number for the data type, you also have the ability to specify a unit of measurement if you've configured Units in the Application Administration section.

KPI Series

Every KPI has actual values that are updated regularly. Depending on the KPI's scoring type, it may also have one or more scoring thresholds that can change month to month.

In this example we're using Goal/Red Flag scoring and we have three series to configure:

1. Every series has an update type. It defaults to manual, but you can also choose Calculated or Template Rollup. Please see the Calculated KPIs article for more information.
2. Every manual threshold has a default threshold value. In this example our KPI will turn red if the value us lower than 255,000 and green if it's higher than 260,000. When higher values are worse, the Goal threshold is going to have a lower number than the Red Flag threshold.

KPI Updaters

The last thing you can configure for KPIs is Updaters. Here you can designate one or more users or groups as updaters for the KPI. By clicking the Update Thresholds checkbox you can also give them the ability to change things like the KPI's goals for each period.

Weight

By default all scorecard items are weighted equally for scoring. You can adjust these weights to reflect different priorities, which is covered in the Score Weighting article.

Start and Archive Dates

To set Start or Archive dates, click on a scorecard item's Advanced Options button.

By default, scorecard items appear for all time. In this example, however, we've set the Cost of Sale scorecard item to archive at the end of November 2024. As you can see, it still appears in the tree in November.

But, when we switch to December, it no longer appears. These start and archive dates allow your scorecards to change over time while still maintaining an accurate performance history.

If you want to lock in archived scorecard items so they can't be changed after they're archived, there is a setting in the Scorecards pane of Application Administration.

Tags

To set tags, click on a scorecard item's Advanced Options button.

Here you can tag scorecard items with attributes that you can report on. In this example we're designating some KPIs as leading indicators so that we can write a report showing all red leading indicators.

If you want to restrict the tags that people are able to use, you can define them in the Data Format panel in Application Administration.

Rearranging the Tree

When you're on the Edit tab, you can rearrange your scorecard items by dragging and dropping them in the tree.

Editing Multiple Scorecard Items at Once

On the top of the Edit tab is a blue notification box explaining how to edit more than one scorecard item at the same time. Please see the Editing Multiple Scorecard Items at Once article for more information.