The "Balanced Scorecard", developed by Kaplan and Norton, is now widely recognised as being a significant advance in performance measurement. Kaplan and Norton's work puts forward a methodology for a balanced set of measures, whereby financial measures are but one element. According to them, there are four aspects that any performance measurement system needs to cover. These are Financial, Customer (or externally) oriented, Business Process (or internally) oriented, and "Learning and Growth". All are necessary. Moreover, there is logic that sees financial performance emerging form customer understanding, from internal operations, and these last two being sustained and renewed by learning and growth.

See the next figure.