Howski Associates is an independent insurance agency that sells business, automobile, home, and life insurance. Maya Howski, senior partner of the agency, recently attended a workshop at the local university in which the balanced scorecard was presented as a way of focusing all of a company’s functions on its mission. After the workshop, she met with her managers in a weekend brainstorming session. The group determined that Howski Associates’ mission was to provide high-quality, innovative, risk-protection services to individuals and businesses. To ensure that the agency would fulfill this mission, the group established the following objectives:

• To provide a sufficient return on investment by increasing sales and maintaining the liquidity needed to support operations

• To add value to the agency’s services by training employees to be knowledgeable and competent

• To retain customers and attract new customers

• To operate an efficient and cost effective office support system for customer agents

To determine the agency’s progress in meeting these objectives, the group established the following performance measures:

• Number of new ideas for customer insurance

• Percentage of customers who rate services as excellent

• Average time for processing insurance applications

• Number of dollars spent on training

• Growth in revenues for each type of insurance.

• Average time for processing claims

• Percentage of employees who complete 40 hours of training during the year

• Percentage of new customer leads that result in sales

• Cash flow

• Number of customer complaints

• Return on assets

• Percentage of customers who renew policies

• Percentage of revenue devoted to office support system (information systems, accounting, orders, and claims processing)

Required

1. Prepare a balance scorecard for Howski Associates by stating the agency’s mission and matching its four objectives to the four stakeholder perspectives: the financial, learning and growth, internal business processes, and customer perspectives. Indicate which of the agency’s performance measures would be appropriate for each objective.