Implementing Operations Performance Objectives For Citibank Thailand Ltd. Essay.

Choose any company of your choice in the manufacturing or service industry from any country. Discuss how the chosen company may implement the following based on its operations management of its manufacturing or service process:

1. operations’ performance objectives in terms of competitiveness.
2. order-winning, qualifying and less important competitive factors of its performance objectives.
3. how can its operations performance be measured.

Introduction of Operations Management

Operations Management is defined as the administration of business practices with an aim of creating the highest attainable level of efficiency possible within an organization (Cooke, 2012). The regime is mainly   concerned with converting labor and materials into goods and services as efficiently as possible in order to maximize the profit of a given organization (Jones & Robinson, 2012). The operations management has been regarded as a key input to the thriving of organization in their respective industries (Reid & Sanders, 2015) . Therefore, in the recent past, many businesses have been designing their own operations management frameworks in a comprehensive manner with an objective of improving performance and competitiveness in their respective markets.

Citibank Thailand Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Citigroup which is one of the largest financial services organizations in the world. Citibank Thailand provides some of the world’s leading range of financial as well as online banking services. The services include; deposit accounts, personal banking, credit card, business banking, loan services, ready credit, wealth management, insurance and more.

This report seeks to discuss how Citibank Thailand Ltd would implement operations performance objectives in terms of competitiveness, qualifying, order winning and less important factors of its performance objectives and lastly discuss how the operations performance of the company can be measured. 

It is important to ensure that the organization’s resources are allocated appropriately in operations through recording, maintaining and reviewing key aspects of operations performance (Weinmann, 2016). Therefore, a major task in this process is identifying the appropriate measures of performance that relate to the external and internal factors. The performance objectives include quality, flexibility, speed, cost and dependability (Berger, 2011).

Quality- from the perspective of a customer, quality characteristics include performance and reliability. However, from an operations viewpoint, quality is related to how closely customers’ specifications are met (Brown, et al., 2013). For instance, Citibank consumer banking services focus on maximizing consumer benefits. The banking company offers a variety of credit cards which provide a wide range of rewards and benefits that suit customers’ lifestyle. This virtue has significantly contributed to the delivery of enhanced and consistent client-centric banking experience. Customers of Citibank are able to enjoy the best shopping, travel and dining deals anywhere around the world with Citi World Privileges. The enhanced quality of their banking services has increased the reliability desired by the customers and operations performance hence streamlining its competitiveness in the industry.

Introduction of Citibank Thailand Ltd.

Speed- the objective measures how fast an organization can deliver its services and products (Slack, et al., 2015). It addresses issues of time such as the time a company takes to manufacture and process products or time taken to research and develop a new product or service. For instance, Citibank has a great selection of services and products which cater for customer needs regardless of their lifestyles. These include best-in-class and mileage, real-time online global funds transfer and timely and flexible credit plans. All these services are provided based on swift and real time framework that has helped to enhance the company’s competitiveness.

Dependability- the objective measures how dependable an organization is in regards to timely service delivery to its customers in line with planned costs and prices. For instance, Citibank designs a Revolving Card that enable its customers to withdraw cash at any bank’s ATMs around the globe whenever or wherever they need the cash through a Ready Credit Scheme.

Flexibility- this performance objective measures how well the company is able to configure the service and product lines to adjust them quickly to new requirements. Citibank has been able to provide different quality services and adapting its operations with the interest of suiting different deliver schedules and market conditions. For instance, Citibank is able to uphold value and convenience for its customers.

Cost- the objective looks at the extent of variation in the unit cost of a company’s product or service measured by changes in various factors like volume of service or product. Citibank has designed its products and services in such a way that volumes are increased through controlled variety with an aim of lowering unit cost.

Quality- the external benefits would be high specifications of banking services and error-free service delivery. In regards to internal benefits, the error-free processes will enhance internal reliability hence lower cost which would translate into a higher margin of profit.

Speed- externally, customers would queue less and their requests responded swiftly hence increasing customer satisfaction owing to excellence in speed. Internal benefits would be alleviation of bottlenecks and queues and shortened time for service delivery.

Dependability- externally, it would give the company opportunity to compete on an extremely reliable delivery time. Internal benefits would be higher confidence in the company and reduced production costs and more internal stability.

Flexibility- internal benefits would be enhanced responses of the company to unpredicted events. It would be able to accommodate a wide variety of consumer requests. The external benefits would be provision of new services and products.

Scope of the Report.

Cost- internal benefits would be higher profit margins owing to the low costs. Externally, the company will be able to offer its services and products to consumers at lower prices.

Creating the Company’s Performance Objectives through Competitive Factors.

A competitive factor is defined as a benefit or feature considered key or essential in promoting a product or service its intended in the market (Brown & Bessant, 2013). It is a constituent, an ingredient, characteristic or an element of the service/ product that is highly sought by the customers (Vlachvei, et al., 2017).

Order winners-these are things which significantly and directly contribute to winning business (Baum, 2013). Therefore, raising performance in the aspect of order winning will either improve the chances of gaining more business or lead to more business. The order winning factors include price, accessibility, ease of transaction, customization, quality of service and reliability in the banking industry.

Price- Citibank can make the prices of their services and products more affordable by conducting a market analysis that aims at achieving a consumer friendly charges. This would be attained by reducing unit cost of operations and service delivery.

Quality of service- customers tend to seek for those banking companies which offer high quality services across the industry. Therefore, Citibank should capitalize on this particular aspect by raising the standards of their services and products for their customers with an aim of building on the performance objective of quality.

Ease of transaction- at the present time, customers of Citibank are able to transact normally in regards to financial services. However, the company can further enhance the ease of transaction by capitalizing on the evolvement of information technology in order to develop the performance objective of speed in the banking industry.

Customization- it focuses on researching and developing service or product that meets the varying needs of individual customers. Citibank should consider designing a framework that incorporates the unique banking needs of its customers. This aspect would contribute significantly to the performance objective of dependability hence earning the company a competitive advantage. Customization of services and products helps in building customer loyalty with a potential to attract more customers in to purchasing the company’s services and goods in the long run. The efforts of the company in pursuing dependability will be boosted extensively.

Accessibility- this captures the aspect of how well the service and products are accessible or available readily in the market. Customers will always purchase services and products whose accessibility is guaranteed and convenient, wherever or whenever they need the company’s products and services. Therefore, if Citibank would be able to improve the accessibility of its banking services for the customers. The performance objectives of speed and dependability would also develop and achieved.

Contribution of Operations’ Performance Objectives to the Company’s Competitiveness

Qualifiers- they are those aspects of competitiveness where the operations performance is required to be above a given level just to be considered by the customers (Peters, 2013). Therefore, performance that is below this ‘qualifying’ level of performance is likely to disqualify the organization from being considered my majority of the customers.

Quality- the Citibank Company can harness the presenting benefits of enhanced quality as a way of positively impacting the existing and potential customers into subscribing to its banking services and products. The quality characteristics which include performance and reliability should be refined in order to develop performance objectives in a reliable manner that assures significant returns for the company.

Ease of transaction- this particular qualifier aspect helps to create a real time impression for the customers. It is evident that many customers will always purchase products and services which showcase more ease in transacting. Therefore, it would be important for Citibank to utilize the qualifier aspect in creating its performance objectives especially the speed.

Less Important- these are neither qualifiers nor order winning hence may not influence clients in any significant way.

Accessibility- it captures the availability aspect.

The balanced score card approach give top managers a fast but detailed view of the organization’s performance, process and results measures inclusive (Niven, 2010). It allows them to view the business from four critical perspectives (Bischoff, 2011);

Customer perspective- how do customers see the company?

Internal perspective- what must the company excel at?

Innovation and learning perspective- can the company continue to improve and create value?

Financial perspective- how do the company look at stakeholders?

The balanced scorecard helps to minimize overload of information by limiting the number of measures adopted by the company (Keyes, 2016). Citibank’s adoption of the balanced scorecard would enable the company to meet several management needs in an effort to measure operational performance. It would use the balanced scorecard to bring together many of the critical elements that form Citibank’s competitive agenda, in a single management report. Such agendas include shortening response time, becoming customer oriented, and emphasizing teamwork, improving quality of services, minimizing launch times for new services and products and managing for the long term. To track the company’s specific goal of providing banking products and services, the management should measure the percent of sales from new services and products as one of its innovation and improvement measures. Therefore, the information could be obtained internally by looking at the company’s sales data within a defined period of time.

External and Internal Benefits

Citibank’s Balanced Business Scorecard

Customer evaluation is also necessary in order to define some of the company’s performance objectives such as speed and flexibility (Applegate, 2013). It would help Citibank to view its performance through the customers’ eyes. The customer surveys contribute to a report that is customer driven. Citibank could also adopt benchmarking procedures to compare its performance against the best price of their competitor’s in the banking industry. Citibank’s major financial objectives would be growth, profitability and value of stakeholder. Therefore, stating the company’s financial goal in a precise statement such as; to survive, to succeed and to excel (Novak, 2012). In this case, the aspect of survival would be measured by cash flow, success by operating income in terms of division and quarterly sales growth. Prosperity would be measured by segment and equity returns through increase in market share in the banking industry. Citibank’s ability to improve, innovate and learn is directly tied to the company’s value in terms of creating more value for customers, launching new services and products and improving operations’ efficiencies on a continuous basis. The objective would be to penetrate new markets and raise the margin of revenues hence enhance shareholder value.

Conclusion

The discussion on operations’ management presents a wide scope in business which vary according to the needs and nature of an organization. The importance of increasing competitiveness through the adoption of viable operations’ performance objectives should not be under estimated. This is because an organization stands the best chance to thrive in their respective industries by designing operations’ performance objectives which suit them.

• Citibank should harmonize their performance objectives to ensure balanced performance in its core operations’ areas.
• A technical team should be formed to engage in mainly tracking the operations objectives and achievements, quarterly every year.

References

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