The BSC Designer platform is widely used in academic settings to teach strategic planning and related disciplines in strategic management courses and MBA programs. In this case study, we’ll explore common academic applications, including options available under the free and academic subscriptions. We’ll also provide an example of a strategic planning course structure.
Testing the Waters with the Free Plan
The free plan of BSC Designer provides a basic way to introduce students to strategic planning:
- Students sign up with individual accounts and complete assigned tasks.
- The results are exported as a strategy map, which professors review manually.
This approach is a good starting point, but implementing it at scale may not be effective because:
- It adds complexity for professors, who must manually review scattered student submissions.
- It does not replicate the collaborative nature of real-world strategy development and implementation.
- It lacks customization and standardization options.
- Professors cannot control the use of built-in AI—students may rely on AI to complete tasks instead of developing their own analytical skills.
Collaborative Strategy Course Using Academic Subscription
The academic subscription allows both professors and students to use a specialized academic plan with enhanced collaboration features.
Key Advantages Include:
- Involving students in teamwork on strategy and its implementation.
- Centralized strategy workspace—professors can oversee and review students’ work in one place.
- Flexible customization—modify the interface, templates, goal properties, KPIs, and initiatives to fit course needs.
- AI usage control—limit built-in AI functions to focus on developing students’ analytical skills.
With an academic subscription, educators can replicate a real-world collaborative strategy environment:
- Involve students in teamwork on strategy and its implementation.
- Develop comprehensive strategies with multiple scorecards and cascading levels.
- Apply strategic analysis frameworks, including stakeholder analysis, growth strategies, and external factor evaluation.
- Use functional scorecards for corporate governance, risk management, compliance, M&A, and more.
Support for Educators
BSC Designer provides tailored support for professors:
- Dedicated support via email.
- Hands-on live training sessions.
Additionally, educators can become certified as BSC Designer Specialists—a formal recognition that they have mastered the latest version of the platform.
Academic Subscription Offer
To request an academic subscription offer, contact the BSC Designer team with the estimated number of professors and students participating in the course.
General conditions:
- This plan is available exclusively to accredited educational institutions.
- Customer support and live training are provided only to professors; students are not eligible for these services.
- A minimum of two users is required.
Example of Course Content
Below is an example of a course structure designed to simulate real-world strategic planning challenges.
Preparation
- Choose an imaginary or real organization as a case study. For example, XYZ Eco Group—a company used to demonstrate strategic planning in BSC Designer.
- Add students as users and organize them into teams.
Creating the Strategy Core
- Introduce stakeholder analysis—have students identify stakeholder needs and map insights using the platform’s template.
- Demonstrate key platform mechanics in class, including:
- Adding items such as objectives, KPIs, and initiatives.
- Connecting items to show relationships and dependencies.
- Discuss strategic choices—how the organization can align with stakeholder expectations.
The platform includes additional strategic planning templates such as PESTEL analysis, Five Forces, and Ansoff Matrix to expand the analysis. Professors can encourage students to use these templates to conduct similar analyses and map observations.
Cascading Strategy into Scorecards
- Have students define the organization’s high-level strategy and break it down into scorecards, e.g., by department or function.
- Encourage the creation of functional scorecards for areas such as corporate governance, risk management, cybersecurity, safety, and logistics.
Strategy Description
Within a scorecard, suggest students to:
- Break down high-level objectives into specific, actionable goals.
- Quantify goals using leading and lagging KPIs.
- Identify risks related to each goal.
Encourage students to create cross-scorecard connections using data links and contextual relationships (e.g., stakeholder analysis, external factors, competitive landscape).
Performance Measurement Framework
Discuss the challenges of performance monitoring and data consistency:
- Suggest that students fill in scorecards with plausible data. (If AI was deactivated for earlier tasks, it can now be reactivated to assist with this step.)
- Ensure students use leading and lagging metrics appropriately.
- Guide students in scenarios where different performance functions are needed, such as minimization, maximization, or absolute values.
- Demonstrate the value of using weighted indexes, for example, to score the severity of security incidents.
Strategy Execution
Professors can simulate real-world business scenarios with students to illustrate the impact of strategic alignment and the importance of quantifiable objectives.
- Decision-making under uncertainty.
- Crisis response planning and recovery strategies.
- Risk management strategies.
- Market expansion, cost-cutting strategies, merger & acquisition strategies.
- The role of innovation in competitive positioning.
- Corporate social responsibility and sustainability integration.
Encourage students to practice strategy presentation to stakeholders using:
- Strategy maps
- Dashboards
- Performance reports
Didactic Materials
BSC Designer provides educational materials commonly used in academic courses and referenced in scientific literature.
Some key resources include:
Most articles include video tutorials.
Quality Score
The platform features a Quality Score—an automated tool for evaluating scorecard quality and suggesting improvements.
You can find the Quality Score indicator in the top-right corner of any scorecard. Click it to receive:
- Detailed feedback on areas for improvement.
- Step-by-step guidance on how to enhance the scorecard.
- Short instructional videos for reference.
Summary
BSC Designer is a tool of choice in academic settings for teaching strategic management, offering both free and subscription-based options.
- The free plan allows students to explore strategic planning individually at no cost, but it lacks collaboration features, requires professors to manually review submissions, and does not support customization or AI control.
- The academic subscription enables a collaborative learning environment, offering centralized oversight, customizable templates, AI usage control, and hands-on support, allowing professors to simulate real-world strategy development more effectively.
We invite education professionals to contact us to discuss their needs and receive a personalized academic subscription offer tailored to their courses.
Alexis is a Senior Strategy Consultant and CEO at BSC Designer, with over 20 years of experience in strategic planning. Alexis developed the “5 Step Strategy Implementation System” that helps companies with the practical implementation of their strategies. He is a regular speaker at industry conferences and has published over 100 articles on strategy and performance management, including the book “10 Step KPI System”. His work is frequently cited in academic research.