Customer-Centric Project For Courier Company Of Melbourne

Continuous Improvement Policy and Procedure of Fast Forwarding

Discuss about the case study Customer-Centric Project for Courier Company of Melbourne.

Fast Forwarding is a courier company of Melbourne that was established 5 years ago but it has been found that the particular company has been growing rapidly over the last 12 months. This has resulted into expansion of the business nationally. The particular company has the objective to deliver anything to anywhere within Australia rapidly. The services that the particular organization offers range from overnight, same day and standard courier services. The company employs more than 85 staffs across its three offices that are located in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne in different roles of administration, warehouse, sales and marketing. However, at present the firm has hit a lull and thus the business has dropped certainly. Therefore, the aim of this assignment is to streamline the present practices within the organization, to improve the productivity and also to help in order to put the practices into place with the aim to get the financial position back on their feet.

The present Continuous Improvement Policy and Procedure of the organization Fast Forwarding is composed of – firstly, client satisfaction surveys, secondly, unsolicited feedback and thirdly, management reviews. The objectives of this Continuous Improvement Policy and Procedure of the firm Fast Forwarding are to fulfill the mission, values and goals of the organization and also to operate the business effectively and efficiently. The reason behind this is to meet the demands and needs of the stakeholders and the customers of the company (Truss, Mankin and Kelliher 2012). It has been found that improvement in all the activities of the organization is considered as an important factor as it helps the company to run successfully in future (Schermerhorn 2013). However, by detailed analysis, it has been found that there are several gaps between the company and its clients and stakeholders. In addition to this, there is a gap in between the communication process of the management and the employees of the firm. Therefore, in order to strengthen the strategy of the organization, development of new ways is an essential factor that encourages and supports the staffs of the firm along with its operation and regulation actively. In other words, it can be said that the present Continuous Improvement Policy and Procedure should be updated, such that the decision making processes can be regulated rapidly (Robbins and Coulter 2014). The current Continuous Improvement Policy can be updated by modifying the particular system such that it helps the management of the organization in communicating with all its stakeholders. This can be modified by implementing the vertical communication process within the organization. This will help to communicate between the management and the stakeholders in both directions. The vertical communication can be implemented within the firm through the arrangement of meetings at regular interval of time (Robbins and Coulter 2011). This will help to communicate between the management department of the organization Fast Forwarding and its stakeholders. Secondly, all the team members of Fast Forwarding should be informed about the outcomes of the Continuous improvement efforts, thus arrangement meeting is an essential factor. The communication between the high level and lower level management with the staffs of the firm will help all the team members to get informed regarding the outcomes of continuous improvement efforts (Noe 2014). Lastly, by maintaining ethical practices and also by meeting the accepted industry standards, the particular firm can maintain its sustainability.

Missing Gap in Supporting Employees

It has been found that within the present organization Fast Forwarding, there is a major missing gap regarding the supporting employees in order to implement the continuous improvement processes of the firm that is monitoring and coaching. The close analysis has found that within the organization Fast Forwarding there is no process to support the staffs of the firm through mentoring and coaching. Therefore, the development of an effective coaching and mentoring processes is an essential factor in order to ensure the support of the teams and an individual (Mondy and Mondy 2012). An effective coaching and mentoring process can be developed through key five steps. These are – firstly, to access the needs of the organization or of the employees. Secondly, to set up the goals and also to clarify the expectations of both the employees and the management of the firm is the objective of this development program (Schermerhorn 2014). Thirdly, the aim of this development program that is to mentor and coach the employees of the firm Fast Forwarding is to highlight on cultivating the relationship. Fourthly, the management should look for opportunities in order to maintain the contact with the employees of the firm in order to update them regarding the continuous improvement processes. Lastly, the management should build up a mentoring network in order to justify the significance of the particular mentoring and coaching program within the firm in order to upgrade the technological skills of the staffs (Hitt, Black and Porter 2012). This particular process includes both horizontal and vertical communication procedures. The reasons behind this are – the horizontal communication helps to communicate between the employees of the organization. This helps them to discuss regarding the technological skills they learnt in the coaching and mentoring program among themselves. On the other hand, the vertical communication helps in communicating between the upper level management and the lower level management (McDonnell 2012). In addition to this, the vertical communication also helps to communicate between the management of an organization and its employees in both the directions. Thus, it helps to reduce the major missing gap between the management and the staffs of the organization.

It has been found that a major client of Fast Forwarding i.e. “Build with Us” took their business elsewhere, thus the business of Fast Forwarding has certainly dropped down. This situation has provided a massive shock to all the employees of Fast Forwarding. A detailed analysis has found that the organization Fast Forwarding was unable to deliver the products on time, as Build with Us required on-line ordering of services along with tracking of their deliveries at all time. However, Fast Forwarding was unable to provide these services as the present IT system of Fast Forwarding was incapable to offer tracking deliveries due to lack of adequate support. In addition to these, it has also been found that delay in the deliveries of the goods occurred due to the system of manual recording of dispatch items within the firm Fast Forwarding. Therefore, a new company strategy should be implemented in order to ensure operational progress and customer service within the firm (Harrin and Peplow 2012). The new strategies that the firm Fast Forwarding should implement include – firstly, the IT department of Fast Forwarding should be developed such that the on-line ordering of services and the tracking of deliveries could be done easily and rapidly. Secondly, the support to the IT system of Fast Forwarding should be increased. Thirdly, the top management should become more responsible such that any laggings in any particular department can be solved rapidly (Dessler 2014). Fourthly, the management should monitor the performance of each department regularly in order to enrich the operations of the firm as well as its customer service. Lastly, the performance of the staffs should be monitored by differentiating between the actual performance and the standard performance of the employees. According to the deviation, proper training should be provided to them in order to enhance the performance of both the employees and the company (Werner, Schuler and Jackson 2012). Moreover, the enhancement of the employees’ performance will also enrich the customer service of the organization.

New Company Strategies

The communication strategies that have been implemented in the Continuous Improvement Policy and Procedures are the horizontal communication and vertical communication. The reason behind this is that these types of communication process help to communicate and inform the staffs regarding the new changes. Moreover, it can be said that the most suitable communication strategies that can be applied in order to inform all the stakeholders of the firm Fast Forwarding follows the stated communication strategies. The information regarding the new company strategies can be communicated with the stakeholders in order to monitor the company operations through the following methods – meetings, conference calls, emails, newsletters, posters, lunch or dinner meetings and voice mail (Dessler 2013).

The present situation of the organization Fast Forwarding indicates that a future planning is an essential factor for the success of the business. Therefore, the following list ensures that the future planning has been undertaken within the organization Fast Forwarding:

• Planning helps the management to decide both the things to be contributed and the process to obtain it (Strohmeier 2013).
• The process of evaluation makes the management able to judge the impact of the plan, contributed changes in the situation and whether the goal can be achieved or not.
• To know important things about planning and evaluation
• The particular challenges that the non-profit organizations face with the context of planning
• The most common issues that arises from any ineffective planning
• To ensure that the particular plan is useful and it contributes to an effective result
• The planning and the evaluation of the process should be participative
• The process of planning and evaluating it should be in a systematic order
• The particular planning should involve agreements regarding the process and the duration when the achievements and progress will be evaluated
• The specific planning should be strategic
• An effective planning should require a major commitment from each individual within the firm
• Both the process of planning and evaluation should be considered as a cyclic process of learning and improvement
• To implement eight basic steps for planning
• Preparing to plan and ensuring commitment
• Analysis of the condition and needs
• To prioritize and to select the objectives
• Development of particular aims and goals
• Identification of alternative strategies and to select the most efficient one
• Implementation of plan
• Planning of evaluation
• Summarization of the total plan

Conclusion

Therefore, it can be concluded that for proper operation and regulation of any organization, implementation of continuous improvement policy and procedures is considered as an important factor. Thus, as per the provided case study, a detailed analysis has been made that indicates the importance of the implementation of this continuous improvement policy and procedure. In addition to this, the process of monitoring and coaching the staffs has also been highlighted. Moreover, the process of development of the new company strategies, various communication strategies that should be used to inform among the employees and the stakeholders of the company have also been analyzed in order to understand the future planning better.

References

Dessler, G. 2013. Human resource management. Boston [u.a.]: Pearson.

Dessler, G. 2014. Fundamentals of human resource management. Boston: Pearson.

Harrin, E. and Peplow, P. 2012. Customer-centric project management. Farnham, Surrey, England: Gower.

Hitt, M., Black, S. and Porter, L. 2012. Management. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Prentice Hall.

McDonnell, A. 2012. Global Human Resource Management Casebook. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 23(7), pp.1507-1509.

Mondy, R. and Mondy, J. 2012. Human resource management. Boston, MA.: Pearson Education.

Noe, R. 2014. Fundamentals of human resource management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Robbins, S. and Coulter, M. 2011. Management. Boston [u.a.]: Pearson.

Robbins, S. and Coulter, M. 2014. Management. Boston [u.a.]: Pearson.

Schermerhorn, J. 2013. Management. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

Schermerhorn, J. 2014. Management. Milton, Qld.: John Wiley and Sons Australia, Ltd.

Strohmeier, S. 2013. Employee relationship management — Realizing competitive advantage through information technology?. Human Resource Management Review, 23(1), pp.93-104.

Truss, C., Mankin, D. and Kelliher, C. 2012. Strategic human resource management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Werner, S., Schuler, R. and Jackson, S. 2012. Human resource management. Australia: South-Western Cengage Learning.