This case study shows how a Southeast Asian energy company is moving from spreadsheet-based KPI monitoring to a connected system of vertically cascaded and horizontally aligned strategy, risk, and stakeholder scorecards using BSC Designer.
Company Profile: An Integrated Coal Mining Company
The company is a publicly listed regional group operating across the coal value chain, from mining and processing to logistics and energy services. It also invests in renewable and future-oriented energy technologies.
In recent years the company has generated around USD 3.0 billion in annual revenue and employs roughly 1,800–2,000 people across Southeast Asia and selected international offices. Its operations span multiple open-pit coal mines, coal terminals, barge-loading facilities, and supporting infrastructure in key mining regions. The business plays an important role in regional power generation and export supply chains.
Given this scale, strategic decisions on production, logistics, safety, and sustainability have direct implications for:
- National energy security – Ensuring stable coal supply for domestic power plants and industrial users.
- Government and regulators – Meeting mining, safety, and environmental regulations at national and regional levels.
- Communities around mine sites – Managing impacts on land, water, infrastructure, and livelihoods.
- Employees and contractors – Providing safe working conditions and clear performance expectations.
- Shareholders and lenders – Maintaining profitability and a resilient long-term strategy in a volatile commodity market.
Business Context & Strategy Execution Challenges
The company has a Digital Transformation Team that connects internal teams with external solutions, and an Enterprise Risk and Performance Management Team responsible for strategic KPIs and risk oversight. Together they are seeking a more structured and connected way to manage strategy execution across multiple business units.
Before engaging with BSC Designer, most strategic KPIs were monitored quarterly using spreadsheets. This created several practical and strategic challenges:
- Fragmented KPI ownership – Each unit maintained its own files, making it difficult to consolidate corporate, mining, logistics, HSE, and sustainability metrics into a coherent picture.
- Weak strategic cascading – Corporate objectives were defined, but translating them into clear KPIs and targets for each business unit and function was not systematic.
- Limited horizontal alignment – Cross-cutting topics like risk management, HSE (Health, Safety & Environment), and stakeholder engagement were difficult to connect to operational scorecards and real KPIs.
- Heavy data entry burden – Persons-in-charge (PICs) in each unit were more comfortable with Excel and found web applications demanding if they required complex forms or many clicks.
- Growing expectations on risk and evidence – New regulations and stakeholder pressure demanded evidence-backed performance numbers, especially for safety, environmental, and risk-related indicators.
How to manage shared KPIs?
During the initial analysis and strategic assessment with the company, one of the key concerns was how to keep shared KPIs meaningful and transparent when several teams contribute to the same indicator:
If two functions share a KPI, we want the dashboard to show how each contributes to the final result, not just a single number at the corporate level.
This clarified the core strategic challenge: the company needed a model that enables both vertical alignment (corporate → business units → operations) and horizontal alignment (risk, HSE, sustainability, stakeholder relations), all while maintaining clear and traceable data ownership.
Implementation Approach: Connecting Scorecards, Risks And Stakeholders
The implementation began with close collaboration between the Digital Transformation Team and the Enterprise Risk and Performance Management Team. The goal was to create a unified architecture of connected scorecards that could later be expanded to other business units.
The architectural solution is built around cascaded and connected scorecards that reflect real organizational domains and strategic themes:
- Corporate Strategy Scorecard – Capturing top-level objectives around profitability, growth, sustainability, and operational excellence.
- Mining Business Scorecard – Translating corporate goals into production, productivity, and safety KPIs at mine level.
- Sustainability & Risk Management Scorecard – Integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals with risk mitigation plans.
- Health, Safety & Environment (HSE) Scorecard – Tracking safety incidents, pit conditions, and critical controls across sites.
- Stakeholder Analysis Scorecard – Mapping stakeholders such as regulators, national disaster management agencies, and local communities, and tracking the value delivered to each.
- Risk Event Scorecards – Risk Event Scorecards for specific risks (e.g., pit flooding or haul road damage), aligning causes, consequences, controls, and mitigation actions directly with the company’s broader strategic objectives.
Integrated risk assessment
This model naturally supports both vertical and horizontal alignment. For example, the pit flooding risk scorecard connects to:
- the Sustainability & Risk Management Scorecard (risk mitigation),
- the HSE Scorecard (critical controls),
- and the Stakeholder Scorecard (impact on agencies and communities).
At the same time, relevant KPIs cascade vertically from corporate strategy into operational scorecards, keeping strategic and functional priorities aligned.
To solve the issue of shared KPIs, BSC Designer uses data connections rather than duplicated data. For example, a safety KPI maintained in the HSE scorecard can be reused in the Mining Business Scorecard and the Corporate Scorecard—preserving a single source of truth while showing functional contributions.
How data entry to KPIs was automated
The teams also raised concerns about data entry, preferring Excel for day-to-day work. To support this, BSC Designer introduced:
- Excel-based indicator templates – Units can fill in quarterly data and import without re-mapping.
- Role-specific interfaces – PICs see only the fields they need to update (values, comments, evidence).
- Approval workflows – Ensuring submitted data is reviewed before it affects official dashboards.
- Connections to internal databases – Automating data retrieval when indicators already exist in internal systems.
Train the trainer
A key success factor in the implementation was strengthening internal capability. The strategic challenge was significant: unifying corporate objectives, operational KPIs, risk events, and stakeholder expectations into a coherent, aligned system. This required shared understanding, not technical instruction.
To support this, BSC Designer facilitated an onsite training program for managers from both the Digital Transformation Team and the Enterprise Risk and Performance Management Team. The training focused on:
- Building a practical strategy architecture using connected scorecards,
- Defining vertical and horizontal alignment in real operational terms,
- Designing KPIs with evidence models and clear accountability,
- Linking risk events and stakeholder expectations to strategic themes,
- Using AI insights drawn from rich, multi-layered scorecards during strategy reviews,
- Developing internal trainers who can support future expansion of the system.
This approach ensured that internal teams gained the competence to manage, expand, and continuously improve the strategy execution system long after implementation.
Results: Faster Reporting, Risk-Aware KPIs, Better Stakeholder Confidence
The company has begun transitioning from spreadsheet-based reporting to an integrated strategy execution system. Even at this stage, several improvements are already evident:
1. Clearer vertical and horizontal alignment. Transparency comes not only from naming scorecards after real units, but from the visible connections between goals, KPIs, risks, and stakeholders—both in data and in context.
2. Risk and stakeholder considerations embedded in strategy. Risk event scorecards now feed into stakeholder analysis and HSE metrics, making operational risks visible in strategic reviews.
3. More efficient reporting cycles. PICs can use Excel, structured workflows, and automated data feeds, reducing friction while strengthening data governance. Automated scheduled reports deliver consolidated updates directly to key stakeholders.
4. AI-assisted interpretation. AI in BSC Designer interprets performance trends based on the entire structure of the real scorecards—objectives, KPIs, risks, initiatives, evidence—not just isolated values or prompts. This provides context-rich insights that generic AI chat sessions cannot replicate.
- More transparent cascading – Connections across units and functions are visible, creating shared understanding of contributions.
- Integrated risk and stakeholder view – Operational controls link directly to stakeholder value and risk exposure.
- Reduced reporting friction – Flexible data input with strong governance, plus automated scheduled reports.
- Capability uplift – Teams gain skills in strategy architecture, KPI design, and evidence-based performance management.
How Can an Organization Achieve Vertical And Horizontal Alignment?
Organizations seeking similar results can follow a structured approach to build alignment across strategy, operations, risk, and stakeholders:
- Create a clear strategy architecture – Develop interconnected scorecards that reflect real organizational units and cross-cutting themes.
- Clarify ownership and evidence – Define who is accountable for each KPI and what evidence demonstrates real performance.
- Connect risk and stakeholder expectations to strategy – Use dedicated scorecards to link operational realities with strategic priorities.
- Invest in internal capability – Equip internal trainers and champions to maintain and scale the system.
- Operationalize alignment with technology – Enable cascading, connections, evidence validation, and AI-assisted analysis in a single strategy execution platform like 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.