Royal Bank of Scotland

THE ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND

Founded in 1727 and headquartered in Edinburgh, the Royal Bank of Scotland, with a market value of 9.2 billion GBP is one of the world's leading financial services groups, owning Direct Line Insurance, Coutts bank, The Ulster bank and Citizens Financial Groups.

MANAGING OPERATIONS:-

To maintain its status and improve ranking, RBS continually drives itself to enhance material management within the company and to extract greater value out of its human resources.

RBS works in a highly volatile and customer oriented soft system. Its manufacturing division is its primary means of transformation of resources into output. The Manufacturing Division of RBS dealing with routine banking functions like opening accounts, clearing cheques, and other paper works and is the engine room of the company, providing technology and high volume processing to the customer facing divisions. Due to the mechanistic nature of the production process and predictable output in high quantities, Manufacturing yields the best results with consummate employees possessing a limited set of skills. In case of managing office consumables the Pareto Analysis is used to prioritize and to minimize cost.

The Wealth Management Division is one of the seven customer facing divisions of RBS and offers specialized banking, investment options, securities brokerage, financial advisory services to wealthy clients (RBS acquired the control of Coutts Bank with the Natwest takeover) . Private banking is a highly specialized area and requires uniquely personal attention to meet the expectations of clients with specific needs. With one-of-a-kind, personalized service, the operating system in practice here belongs to the Job Shop category. The human resource base is proficient and able to view each situation in the light of its own requirements.

Manufacturing and Wealth Management are just two of a diverse range of functions that RBS as a financial group performs, each with its own standards to meet and capacity to maximize. Customer expectation of quality and standards enable capacity to be approximated and planned. Capacity planning is necessary to minimize cost and to maximize quality levels, reliability and flexibility.

Having estimated the needed capacity, RBS has on several occasions, applied quantitative theories of capacity management like Optimization and Forecasting. Optimization is a technique of meeting objectives subject to limitations of requisite or existing resources. RBS maximized the potential of its already existing staff by segmenting them in Manufacturing Division or in branches based on aptitude tests drawn on them. Also the potentiality of branch tellers has been optimized by turning the previously mechanistic nature of their job into a more open task.

Forecasting in the context of operations management in a bank mainly relates to labor efficiency and requirement, output, process efficiency and material utilization. Efficient forecasting is dependent on market research and expert advice. RBS was one of the earliest banks to anticipate the power of technology and its growing popularity, driving it to launch its online and telephone banking service,

RBS plans its capacity to execute total quality management which in turn fuels its continuous search for better resource strategy and system design.

MANAGING MARKETING:-

"Putting customer needs first" is an often heard clichй, but RBS chief executive Fred Goodwin insists that the bank's success has been achieved by doing just that. RBS's customer oriented marketing strategy can indeed be credited for the bank's increasing popularity.

The technique used by RBS to understand the diverse nature of the market and to fulfill its needs has been market segmentation. Between 1992 and 1999 during what was called Project Columbus, RBS management segmented its customers into three streams- retail, commercial and corporate. The objective was to identify groups of customers with similar needs so that they can be served efficiently. Based on this segmentation RBS created its eight 'customer facing' divisions. This segmentation strategy has not only elevated the customer satisfaction level, it has also helped RBS to determine the right marketing mix, to understand its competitors in each sector and provided guidelines for future marketing strategy and resource allocation.

Choice, in RBS' case, extends to brands too. It has used brand loyalty to target customers. When RBS makes an acquisition, almost always the original brand's identity is maintained (e.g.: Natwest). Along with making itself globally recognizable through mergers and takeovers, RBS's marketing strategy has also extended to the virtual, making the internet an alternative to real world banking (www.rbsdigital.com). Innovation has also been a part of RBS's marketing design resulting into the bank offering financial services by telephone (Direct Line). RBS's foray into network marketing in the form of joint ventures with Tesco and Virgin Group has made it noticeable in a larger socio economic section.

RBS's extensive marketing strategy brings along a message of change in the way the company manages itself. The bank converted itself from a mechanistic structure into an organic, customer friendly organization with customer relationship managers trying to improve service quality and branch tellers trying to interest customers in other products. The change to an aggressive marketing orientation and integration with other financial institutions necessitated open communication between the staff and the management. What followed was greater coordination among the different areas within the organization and a commitment to achieve goals by continually meeting the needs of the customer. The "new force in banking" catch line not only demonstrated the bank's capability to the consumers but also mirrored its internal strength and goals.

RBS stresses on marketing as their organizational orientation and views customer satisfaction as the most effective way of achieving organizational objectives. Product development and sales target is consumer oriented and determined by the market needs. This consumer oriented approach benefits RBS by way of building a long term mutually satisfying