Blo Boston Lyric Opera: Case Study Customer

BLO

Boston Lyric Opera: Case study

Customer objectives for its three strategic themes

Develop loyal and generous supporters

There are two major elements to this goal of the opera company -- that of building customer loyalty and generosity. Funds from tickets are not enough alone, so the opera must solicit donations. Keeping track of donations is an essential metric to using a Balanced Scorecard approach. But there is another component of this metric -- determining the demographics from whom the donations are solicited. The BLO wishes to build its young, professional donor segment to ensure that the opera has a long, steady source of revenue from a growing rather than shrinking consumer base. Lowering the demographic age of the donors and also measuring the extent to which attendees at specific types of fundraisers become regular patrons is also required.

Build reputation on the national and international opera scene

Ultimately, an opera company's objective is to produce great opera -- and also to ensure that the world knows that great opera is being produced at the BLO. The BLO wishes to attract new, fresh, rising talent as well as current stars. Creating a residency program for young talent; showcasing lesser-known works; creating a more coherent artistic style; and building artistic partnerships are all components of this objective. However, it can be more difficult to measure reputation as a metric of success, in contrast to other elements. To measure these objectives, the company can at least keep track of the numbers of members involved in the residency program; note the number of seldom-performed operas showcased each season (for example, how many operas were performed that had not been staged at the BLO for more than one or two productions in the past ten or more years); and the number of new collaborations. Creating a BLO 'style' is somewhat subjective to be measured as a metric and depends to a great degree on the vision of the individual director. However, opera-goers can be surveyed, post-production, based upon the information they provide at point of sale, to see if they perceive the productions they go to as cutting-edge and having a consistent artistic style vs. competitor organizations.

Reach the Boston-area community

Keeping track of the demographic age of the overall audience, and the number of community partnerships with different demographic groups (such as schools) can measure the effort devoted to achieving this objective. Doing follow-up surveys to measure satisfaction with attendees who participate in such programs, and surveying the public as a whole regarding perceptions of BLO 'brand awareness' is another metric.

Changes required adopting the Balanced Scorecard to a non-profit organization

When the Balance Scorecard was introduced, streamlining ticket-buying and gift-giving as well as keeping track of donor demographics; creating a coherent 'brand awareness' campaign; and using web-based services and tracking were required to ensure that metrics were measured in an efficient manner. Also, a new internal review process had to be created, including the development of three-year operational plans with specific goals of quality assurance, including 'product quality.' This is something of an intellectual shift for a nonprofit -- rather than seeing 'art' as something for 'art's sake,' the BLO had to see opera as a product that was 'sold.'

Benefits challenges and barriers of Balanced Scorecard

It is difficult to ensure that the organization is truly improving, and out-performing its competitors (or even keeping up) without keeping careful track of quality metrics. Improving the IT system to ensure that the necessary data was quantified and crunched in the correct manner was a vital component of changing the BLO. However, there was another factor at stake: a cultural one. The culture of the BLO had to shift to a more corporate point-of-view, and become more profit-directed to gain the full benefits of the Balanced Scorecard.

Department managers, artistic leaders, and employees at the BLO: Empowerment

Ultimately, the Balanced Scorecard approach was highly empowering for the members of the department. It is very easy to lose focus at an artistic organization. The Balanced Scorecard's focus on metrics made it much easier to 'check in' in terms of how the productions were faring and what the public desired. It enabled comparison between the past, present, and future of the organization, and made comparisons more objective, rather than based solely upon personalities and organizational influence. It offered a systematic way to analyze 'tradeoffs' of attendance vs. donation, such as pleasing some members of the public with traditional standards, versus donors who wished to see a more challenging repertoire.