Cascading at a holding company
07/30/08 2:19 PM

Hi,

I've just been tasked with thinking about how to cascade our corporate scorecard, but our structure is a little unique: we're a holding company that has 4-5 organizations that share little to nothing (except maybe funding). How best do we cascade in this situation?

Jess

RE: Cascading at a holding company
07/30/08 2:37 PM

I've found that creating a matrix is the best way to create alignment between holding companies and portfolio companies. You can find synergies by mapping the corporate objectives to the subsidiary objectives.

RE: Cascading at a holding company
08/05/08 12:57 PM

It's a lot more difficult to create a "corporate" scorecard at a holding company. But you can create a portfolio of scorecareds for your operating businesses so that you can report and analyze the performance of the businesses using the same framework. As Jessica notes, you may also want to have some shared measures that you enforce across the group.

RE: Cascading at a holding company
08/05/08 9:03 PM

The holding company is usually in place for a reason. It might be to leverage financial resources or infrastructure. It could be that you want to share best practices or leverage human capital (people) across the separate businesses. Build your enterprise scorecard around these things to ensure your businesses are leveraging their reason for being together.

RE: Cascading at a holding company
09/10/08 8:08 AM

I didn't see a need to link to the enterprise. We just use the scorecard at our division and it works pretty well. I wouldn't over-complicate your scorecard if there is no demand for it at corporate.