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Here’s Proof that Balanced Scorecards Work:
Would You Believe 28% ROI Improvement?
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This long term study by two independent professors matches companies that use Balanced Scorecards against those that don't. Across 42 matched pairs of companies those using a Balanced Scorecard increase their financial performance by approximately 28%, but it doesn't happen right away.

Beware of Creating Complex PDFs with Excel Scorecards and Dashboards
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In Balanced Scorecards and Operational Dashboards with Microsoft Excel I recommend using Adobe Acrobat as a way of aggregating and publishing multiple worksheets and workbooks. Here are some big provisos!

Creating Dynamic Cascading Combo Boxes (Drop-Down Lists) in Excel for Long Lists
(New Excel Files)
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Drop-down combo boxes, those drop-down menus in Excel, are difficult to use when the list has more than twelve or so items. A much better way to create long drop-down combo boxes is to create two, the first contains a list of categories and the second contains items in a category. When you select from the first category the second drop-down automatically updates to show that categories contents.

This example is from an actual dashboard built to monitor Joint Commission standards for a hospital, so if you are working on hospital quality here's a step in the right direction. It's cool, it helps users, and it's not that hard to do.

Sample Census Data File to Experiment With in Excel
(New Excel Files)
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Creating sample data files to experiment with in Excel is about as much fun as weeding the lawn. So here's one that's used in the book examples. Change it so it looks like different data sets using search and replace (Ctrl+H) to replace text data and use a formula with the RAND() function to insert random numbers.