The term and methodology was introduced by David Norton and Harvard Business School Professor Robert Kaplan in 1992. They had found that typical financial reports most companies were churning out did not provide managers with enough information to run their companies. Instead reporting just the account numbers in the general ledger, Norton and Kaplan suggested that managers focus on the key performance indicators, whether financial or statistical figures, that really drive the business.

Source: Process Improvement for Effective Budgeting and Financial Reporting by
NILS H. Rasmussen, Christopher J. Eichorn, Corey S. Barak, Toby Prince