Case Study: Driving Strategic Alignment and KPI Management in the Food Industry

This case study explores how a leading company in the food sector strengthened strategic alignment, improved KPI management, and enhanced feedback loops by implementing BSC Designer.

About the Company

The company operates in the food industry and manages multiple production and distribution units. It has a strong strategic planning culture, relying on the Balanced Scorecard methodology to align objectives across the organization. Before implementing BSC Designer, the company primarily used Excel to track strategic objectives and indicators — which limited scalability, feedback integration, and effective performance measurement. In 2024 its reported total revenue was approximately US$ 6.6 billion.

Strategic Challenges

During the discovery session, the leadership team highlighted three strategic priorities: ensuring alignment between top-level and operational objectives, establishing effective feedback loops to track progress, and linking performance results to variable compensation.

“Our goal is a top-down cascading alignment. Then comes feedback, which is the second key strategic concept, ensuring we stay focused on the objectives set by top management. And finally, there’s a third technical concept: variable compensation.”

Another challenge was simplifying KPI creation and linkage. While the concept seemed straightforward, in practice it required a structured solution to ensure accuracy and consistency.

“What we were looking for was a solution to simplify KPI creation and linkage. It may seem simple, but in practice it’s not.”

Industry Trends Influencing Strategic Planning in the Food Sector

Food sector strategy is becoming more connected and future-oriented.

• Strategic planning must become cross-functional and connected across business units. Large food producers are increasingly integrating R&D, operations, supply chain, marketing, and sustainability functions into unified planning — enabling alignment across value chains and faster decision-making. ¹
• Sustainability and circular economy imperatives are moving from peripheral to core strategic themes. Food companies must plan for carbon-footprint tracking, waste reduction, regenerative sourcing, and shorter food supply chains — requiring cross-unit orchestration and future-oriented strategy. ²
• Consumers demand personalized, health-focused, and transparent food solutions, forcing companies to develop portfolio strategies that span different formats, channels, and nutrition positions — and coordinate across R&D, marketing, and operations. ³
• There is a growing capability gap: companies have invested in digital/analytics tools but struggle with workforce readiness, data governance, and cross-functional strategic use of those capabilities. Strategic planning must include capability-building and change management. ⁴

Implementing BSC Designer

The company began with a free trial and then moved to a pilot phase to test how cascading scorecards and structured KPI management could support its strategic goals. BSC Designer was introduced to replace fragmented Excel sheets with an integrated strategy management environment.

Key steps included:

• Creating a master strategic scorecard connected to functional scorecards for different business units.
• Using the cascading feature to align strategic objectives from top management down to operational levels.
• Designing KPI structures with clear linkages between objectives, initiatives, and indicators.
• Enabling structured feedback loops that support variable compensation strategies and performance reviews.
• Automating the creation of strategic maps and dashboards to improve visibility and communication.

The implementation was supported by internal champions, who used BSC Designer’s built-in training materials and templates to adapt the system to their specific needs in the food sector.

Integrating Quality and Food Safety into Strategy Execution

Another important pillar of the implementation was the integration of quality control processes into the strategic management framework. Operating under the requirements of ISO 22000 (Food Safety Management Systems), the company automated parts of its quality monitoring and reporting.

By connecting quality KPIs directly to functional scorecards, the organization was able to track compliance indicators in real time, link them to production objectives, and provide clear escalation paths when deviations occurred. This significantly reduced manual reporting time and improved visibility across production units.

Results Achieved

The company achieved significant improvements in strategic alignment and performance tracking shortly after implementation. Teams across the organization were able to visualize their contribution to top-level objectives more clearly, and reporting became more structured and reliable. The platform helped replace manual data aggregation with real-time strategic dashboards, supporting more informed decision-making.

“The technical walkthrough was excellent. BSC Designer team clearly explained the methodology and showed how the platform supports it. It aligns very well with what we were looking for.

Key outcomes included:

• Improved cascading of objectives and KPIs across departments
• Faster reporting and reduced dependency on Excel
• Clearer linkage between performance and variable compensation
• Better feedback mechanisms supporting continuous improvement

How to Align Strategy in Food Manufacturing?

To summarize the lessons from this case, alignment works best when objectives, KPIs, and feedback routines are clearly connected across the organization. This ensures that both corporate and production teams stay focused on shared priorities.

• Connect Objectives Across Levels – Define how corporate goals translate into departmental and plant-level objectives with measurable KPIs.
• Use Consistent KPI Structures – Standardize how KPIs are defined, measured, and reviewed to avoid conflicting interpretations.
• Establish Regular Feedback Loops – Schedule structured performance reviews that inform decision-making and support variable compensation fairly.
• Apply a Strategy Management Platform – Using a tool like BSC Designer helps maintain cascading scorecards, shared dashboards, and ongoing visibility without relying on Excel.

BSC Designer

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.