Porto Municipality and Social Security Financial Management Institute: two success stories in implementing Quidgest’s BSC
The session “Discover BSC: planning strategy execution with AI” took place on June 26 at the Quidgest Auditorium. The event showcased the evolution of Quidgest’s Balanced Scorecard (BSC) solution, developed in 2007 to facilitate strategic management in organizations but continuously updated with the latest technological advances to ensure its relevance and effectiveness today and in the future.
Speaker Susana Daniela Costa Gonçalves, Head of the Municipal Division of Integrated Management at Porto Municipality, explained to attendees how the 12 years of BSC implementation have been in the municipality, highlighting the main advantages of the tool: “It allows us to evaluate overall performance, providing insights into financial and non-financial indicators of all units; enables periodic performance diagnostics, enhancing timely action capability; facilitates the reporting process and information preparation for decision-making; shows deviations from targets for analysis in Management Review; and demonstrates evidence of monitoring objectives during Management System Audits.”
At Porto Municipality, Quidgest’s BSC supports managing approximately 4,500 employees and 25 strategic maps, divided into four perspectives (Customers, Processes, Organizational Development, and Financial/Economic) with their respective objectives monitored through indicators. For Susana Daniela Costa Gonçalves, there is no doubt about the utility and effectiveness of this Quidgest tool: “The perspective is of continuity.”
Following her, José Carlos Batista Figueiredo, Director of the Department of Management and Administration at the Social Security Financial Management Institute (IGFSS), an organization with the mission of unified financial management of the economic resources allocated to the Portuguese Social Security budget, spoke. Among other figures, he recalled that “the IGFSS manages a budget exceeding €63.6 billion and disburses €23.845 billion under the Single Treasury, for which 56.1 million records are made.” Additionally, 400 employees work in the organization, distributed across 22 district service offices. To support strategic management based on the Financial, Customer, Internal Processes, and Learning and Growth perspectives, IGFSS has relied on Quidgest’s BSC since 2007.
“This system has been our great support because it helps us measure to manage better”, stated José Carlos Batista Figueiredo, adding that IGFSS’s strategy is based on 10 strategic maps with 245 indicators, allowing real-time monitoring of various ambitious objectives for continuous improvement and quality. He also emphasized the importance of Quidgest’s tool for defining responsibilities, simply visualizing results, involving employees and managers in implementing the strategy and promoting transparency by making information accessible to everyone.
BSC Quidgest: the GPS for organizations
Luís Santana, Head of Specific Projects and Strategy Management at Quidgest, corroborated the testimonies of the previous speakers, reinforcing that “the Balanced Scorecard is an approach that supports the implementation of strategy and the monitoring of its execution at all levels of the organization. Among its main functions are communicating the strategy to the entire organization, aligning actions with strategic objectives, and measuring organizational performance.”
Considering that Quidgest’s BSC allows an organization to define its strategy and translate it into operational objectives, Luís Santana even used a metaphor: “The BSC functions as the organization’s GPS, and the success of its implementation starts with recognizing that it is not just a measurement system but a process of change.”
To illustrate how Quidgest is incorporating the latest advancements in generative AI into strategic execution planning, Marcelo Ribeiro, Software Developer at Quidgest, demonstrated the interaction between Quidgest’s BSC and ChatGPT. “This new feature allows interaction with the machine through natural language, making it possible to brainstorm, create the strategy map based on identified ideas and indicators, or validate the cause-and-effect relationships between defined objectives.”
To moderate the session and the Q&A segments on the main benefits, challenges, and positive impacts observed in implementing Quidgest’s BSC, the session was hosted by Carla Gomes, Public Sector Sales Director at Quidgest.
Find out more about the Quidgest BSC here.
