What part does customer and employee satisfaction play in overall business success?

Management Accountants developing business models must consider this question, especially if they are taking the popular "balanced scorecard" or "strategy mapping" approaches to performance measurement. When doing so, stating cause-and-effect relationships between measurable factors like satisfaction and profitability is common practice. However, few companies test their own hypotheses. If the links are incorrect, these models can actually guide the firm down a path to failure.

Strategy...