The traditional budgeting process can be a challenging for many organizations, as it may not clearly facilitate goal or financial tracking. The traditional process may tend to highlight amounts that are out of control of managers that can lead to misunderstandings between departments.

Organizations need to be able to track budgetary requests to specific objectives, priorities, and outcomes. As a result, managers increasingly must look at the budgetary process strategically rather than look only at the previous year's results. The use of linking performance, organizational activities, key performance indicators (KPI) and metrics can assist an organization with its strategic initiatives.

There are a variety of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can be used by companies in order to measure performance. These indicators can be used to compare financial, operational, as well as strategic objectives. Depending on the industry the indicators used maybe different this can include revenue growth, labour efficiencies, market share compared to competitors, and operational efficiencies. With the amount of analytics that is available it is important not to be sidetracked by a volume of indicators, but rather focus on a few key indicators as part of Balanced Scorecard. In order to provide meaningful information, KPIs should be specific, measured objectively, and understood in order to provide a meaningful context.