The certification programs below help strategy professionals improve their job prospects and enable consultants to offer more value by mastering strategy automation software.
Discover the methods and tools strategy consultants use in BSC Designer, including strategic analysis, cascading, presentations, teamwork management, and standardization.
BSC Designer® Specialist Certification
The Specialist Certification program is designed to formally assess the skills of participants in using BSC Designer software in the application to the strategic planning domain.
How Does Certification Work?
The certification program is based on the analysis of the participant-created prototype of strategy scorecards, developed in accordance with the requirements and validation criteria detailed below.
Any strategy is built around the stakeholders and their needs. Define the stakeholders in your account (Settings > Strategy tab > Stakeholders).
Validation criteria:
- At least 3 stakeholders are defined.
Any strategy should take into account the external factors. Use the PESTEL analysis template (My Scorecards > New > New Scorecard > More templates… > Frameworks > PESTEL Analysis Template) to define relevant external factors.
To define factors, add Initiatives of the relevant type (rationale, success factor, or expected outcome). Link these initiatives by the context with factors identified in the PESTEL analysis template.
Validation criteria:
- At least 3 factors defined.
Using the analysis of the stakeholders and PESTEL analysis as a starting point, practice value-based strategy decomposition.
Validation criteria:
- At least 2 levels of sub-goals are defined (perspective, goal level 1, goal level 2)
- Risks are defined for at least 30% of level 2 goals
- KPIs are defined for at least 50% of level 2 goals
- Stakeholders are assigned to the goals
- There are leading indicators among KPIs (Context > Indicator Type > Leading)
- Initiatives are defined for at least 50% of level 2 goals
- 100% quality score according to the automatic quality score check
BSC Designer automates various aspects of scorecard calculation. Apply its advanced functions to KPIs in your scorecard.
Validation criteria:
- At least 1 weighted index (includes sub-indicators with different weights; example: “weighted risk index“)
- At least 1 indicator with quarterly update interval
- At least 1 indicator with target values planned for each month of the year using target planning function
- At least 1 indicator calculated using the values of other indicators
- At least 1 indicator with a customized performance formula
Use strategy map function to create a classical Balanced Scorecard style strategy map as well as a custom map (Strategy Map > List of Maps > + Add map). A custom map can be a process map or similar.
Validation criteria:
- 100% quality score according to the automatic quality check
- Existence of a custom map
- Use of text objects on the custom map
- Use of goals on the custom map
Use dashboards to visualize important performance information.
Validation criteria:
- Existence of a gauge chart for some KPIs
- Existence of an initiatives diagram
- Existence of a diagram with goals
- Existence of a risk diagram for a specific risk
- Existence of a risk heat map diagram
- Existence of a Gantt diagram for all initiatives of the scorecard
- Existence of a Time diagram for at least 1 indicator
Use reporting function to generate relevant reports.
Validation criteria:
- Generate a report using “Strategic Plan” reporting profile (present a PDF report)
- Have a “Strategic Plan” report scheduled in your account (present a screenshot)
- Export and present a copy of the strategy map (Strategy map tab > Properties > Export)
- Export and present a copy of the dashboard (Dashboard tab > Properties > Export)
- Find the worst-performing indicators with Analysis function (present a screenshot)
Use the cascading function to connect scorecards.
Validation criteria:
- Scorecards connected by a normalized goal (present a screenshot)
- Scorecards connected by perspectives (present a screenshot)
Conditions
- Registration fee includes a one-month business plan subscription for a participant. Please plan the start date accordingly.
- The certification program is designed for individual participants and requires a unique prototype built by the participant. Prototypes built by a team are not eligible for certification.
- The BSC Designer Specialist Certificate is issued in PDF format upon successful completion of the certification.
- Participants of the certification can contact customer service with their questions and arrange a live call with our team to resolve doubts.
- Certificate validity period: 5 years.
Price
- $199.00 per participant.
BSC Designer® Partner Certification
With partnership certification, we are helping strategy consultants provide additional value to their clients by automating strategy planning and execution with BSC Designer.
The benefits of being certified as a BSC Designer Partner include:
- Permission to use the “certified partner” logo
- Permission to use graphical materials by BSC Designer
- Revenue sharing, based on a 15% discovery fee
- Assistance with preparing a sales website
- Assistance in resolving client queries
The learning part of the certification is focused on:
- Using a prototype of the strategy scorecard to attract potential leads
- “Selling” the idea of strategy automation to potential clients
- Obtaining necessary knowledge to answer pre-sale questions
Conditions
- Participants must possess a valid BSC Designer Specialist certification to enroll.
- Support: dedicated partners manager.
- Certificate validity period: 1 year.
Price
- Normal fee: $849.00 per participant. The certification fee is waived if the attendee has an active annual subscription to BSC Designer or consults clients with an active annual subscription.
BSC Designer is strategy execution software that enhances strategy formulation and execution through KPIs, strategy maps, and dashboards. Our proprietary strategy implementation system guides companies in practical application of strategic planning.