Business Strategy Assignment: How Bank Of Queensland Gains Competitive Advantage?

Question

Task:
Assuming the role of an organizational consultant, you are to write a report on business strategy assignment that clearly articulates the organization’s strategy and business model and outlines a detailed approach to Competition Strategy, how the chosen organization’s performance is/can be measured against their strategies. You will also be required to prepare a Balanced Scorecard for their chosen organization.

Answer

Executive Summary
The current business strategy assignment talks about the different strategies taken by Bank of Queensland for managing their competitive threats in the market. In the section of the introduction, the purpose of the study will be highlighted. The porter’s generic strategy used by the company will be defined. The approach and the performance measurement indicators will also defined within the report. The business canvas model and the balanced scorecard will be presented. The recommendations will be presented that identifies the area of focus and opportunity for improving the organization’s performance in future.

Introduction
The report appears to provide a better understanding of the business operations as well as the strategies implemented by the firm to counter competition in the market. The report focuses upon the strategies that are being taken by BOQ for gaining a competitive advantage. The report includesa summary of the organizational strategy ofthe Bank of Queensland whichthey use within their operations in the market. Apart from this, the report consists of the approach that the company is taking regarding the competitive strategy and performance improvement in order to compete with their competitors in the market.

The strategy of the organization
Presently the bank of Queensland is undergoing a transition to fulfill the present needs of the market especially the consumers as well as to compete with their competitors. The firm is focusing upon the digitalization of the bank because the existing structure of the bank creates some challenges for the firm.The firm usually focusses upon the needs or demand of consumers. The organization also looks for improvingitsoverall efficiency in terms of operations and wants to implement digitization with its operation.Digitization of operations is preferable for the organization because it leads to provide efficiency within their services and operations. The automation of the manual procedures was done by the firm by understanding the changing expectations from the consumers (Donnet et al., 2018).

In terms of the porters generic strategy that is used by company in the sector of differentiation strategy is being used by BOQ.The different servicesprovided by the bank in a digital manner differentiates them, from their competitors. The increment in growth volumes is the target and it provides better flexibility for the firm to meet their requirements of the business. The commitment of BOQ is to build a long-lastingrelationship with theircustomers. Differentiation strategy also helps the company in achieving success and building a better perspective within the competitors. Keeping the competitors in mind the company is required to properly develop their digital services. Such as the organization aims in providing a single platform in a digital format that will provide more easy access to the customers regarding the management of their bank accounts. Integration with third parties also provides a better opportunity for the organization and appears to be beneficial for the organization(Bandara et al., 2018).

Other implementations such as the solution enterprise service bus (ESB) and service-oriented service (SOA) provides seamless integration with the various peripheral systems (Conroy et al., 2019). The concerned is also termed as the biggest IT implementation that the company did in its years of existence. Thus it provides company digital processing systems within the lending process, enhancing the time of turnovers and also decreases the overall cost of loan origination. Thecentralized policy regarding credit reduces the loops of rework and improves the decisions that are taken for credit with the help of an automated bureau check of credit. The automation in the operations also improves employee retention and efficiency. Thus the generic porters differentiation strategy of the company is consider to be define that the overall achievements that the company is attaining.

Business canvas model
Key activities – the company is engaged with the baking services within the Australia. The company provides loans, personal banking to customers, all aspects of personal finance such as savings and investments, credit or debit cards, all kinds of loans, management of wealth, international service and everyday banking. The critical success factors were employee empowerment, human relations, values, ethics, benchmarking and better service culture and satisfaction of consumers.

Key resources – the key resources for the bank are financial investments and the technological databases. The critical success factors are to bring in more customers towards the services provided by the company.

Unique selling propositions – the digital services and faster approval of loans and turnovers are the main selling propositions in a proper way. Here the company have to digitalize their services fully.

Customer relationships – the company is focusing more upon the building of positive customer relationship by providing faster and hassle free services. The critical success factors of the company is to reduce the number of complaints receive by banks in a positive manner.

Competitive strategy of the organization
The BOQ focuses upon providing a unique experience to its consumers every time. The firm rolls out a model that consists bank’s owner-managed branch (OMB) (McCaffrey et al., 2015).For a better competitive strategy the company is using the porter’s generic differentiation strategy in order to provide unique and valuable services to their consumers. The company uses differentiation strategies in order to compete with their competitors. Thus BOQ also promotes their unique franchise as their core to the business that also helps them to create better and stronger ties with their consumers. As a result, the unique model helps the business to gain a competitive advantage sustainably. The concerned model is used to provide a mixture of the motivated sales culture along with a culture focused upon compliance. The bank can also expand as well through the help of the model in a cost-effective manner. The models used to provide Excellency in the section of service. Superior experience also appears to be provided to the customers adequately. The model also helps the organization to achieve success as well as profitability because of the alignment of the branch revenue drivers. It also helps the company to transform its branch network into a very powerful channel of sales. Better flexibility and understanding of the local markets as well as better usage of the social networking sites for enhanced marketing.

The approach of the bank is to bring a better sustainable advantage in terms of competition within the bank industry. Through sustainability the company also tends to define their differentiation strategy. Innovation is the prime approach that the BOQ used to do that also helps them to attain competition within the market (Jazayeri and Dadi, 2017). The lowering of the pricing strategy, providing of new value proposition and reducing the charges that were from the consumers. Those are considered to remain to bring new advantages to the business in the competitive perspective. The supply of new services or products to the customers reduces the chance of any deflection of them towards other banks. The approach of the bank is to build a sustainable differentiation as well as the building of a better scale that provides a better opportunity for the business to compete better. The organization is also required to look for various new service options and easing the experience of customers on a prior basis.

Porter’s generic strategies such as differentiation strategyis applied for a better understanding of the competitive environment. And using the porter’s five forces the issues those were being identified such as lack of technology implemented as well as lack of communication with their customers. Partnerships are required for the company to capture better market and enhance their reach to the people.

Performance measurement of BOQ
From the past analysis of the financial statements or results, it can be observed that the financial profits areshowing some sort of advancement. Performance management strategy is used within the organization that helps in provide a better understanding of performance measures. The company also builds up a client satisfaction index that helps in provide real time progress of the company. The financial benefits come during the difficult environment of operation externally. The credit losses were also faced by the company and for its compensation material provision is provided. The reported loss is reported due to the advent of the pandemic of COVID 19. The digital strategy that the organization is taking for the achievement of better outcomes in comparison to the loss that the company faces. But the transition towards the digital business fails to reflect the success within the financial performance of BOQ (Bebawi et al., 2015). Better signs are shown in profitability but the main goal is to regain the profitable growth for the company as well as to improve the long-term value of the shareholders.

For measuring and identifying the performance various measure were required to be taken by the company. The financial statements of the company are required to focus upon their financial statements by using the Altman’s Z score that will define a better report in terms of financial statement of the firm. The performance of the employees is the strategic priority for the firm and the ensuing safety of employees requires to be done. The cash conversion cycle is also consider to define various factors specially the operations within the organization. The analysis is required of the overall financial statement of the firm that clearly states picture the annual financial track properly. The employees are the main functionaries who also provide their dedicated services to the people. The interest rates in the owner occupier’sprinciples were slashed to 3.39% per annum. In the financial year of 2018, the company records a statutory profit of $336 million which signifies the company that their digital implementation is successful and provide them the potential to make a huge profit (Tran et al., 2016).

The use of contingency theory is required for better analyzing the external and internal factors those are affecting the organization. Thus the firm can then act in such a way and can also measure the opportunities for their future development positively.The aspects are required to be identifying those are supporting the organization in terms of defining profitability.Quality leadership is the prime source of improvement, as well as the management capability of the leaders,is huge. They tend to drive the performance approach within the situation of the pandemic in a positive way (Geddes et al., 2018). The material transformation that the organization is looking to define the experience and talent regarding the leadership team and they incline to take the governance and culture within the workplace. It also enhances the value creation within the business. The firm also have to monitors there day to day operations, transactions, turnovers, and loan approvals in a proper way that provides information regarding the market trend. The measurement is defined to properly monitor the progress towards various strategic goals or targets that is being set by the firm. The company is looking in their financial statements, satisfaction level of their customers in order maintain or have an idea regarding their performance. The company also takes up performance reviews in regular intervals that will help the company to properly define the performance properly. The measurement opf the above indicators were done on a quarterly basis.

Table 1: balanced scorecard
(Source: created by learner)

Recommendations
The bank of Queensland is very friendly in terms of providing services to their consumers but still, the bank remains short of various things that require to be managed and advanced. As per the theory of porter’s five forces and the issues those were identify the recommendations will be provided that will also match the balanced scorecard –

• Enhance the capabilities of firm in the sector of data analytics as well as reduce their overall costs related to operations.
• More cloud-based technology is required to be implemented by the organization. Withintheir core platform of banking. Thus it will help the company to provide a better positioning of their operations as well as effective competition is also present there.
• The company needs to remain both product-oriented and service-oriented. Because it will ultimately provide far better opportunities to the firm.
• Partnerships or collaboration with competitors can increase the market size gradually as well as better profit gaining is also predicted.

Conclusion
In the present report the competitive strategies such as cost leadership, cost differentiation were discussed and along with that theory of porter’s five forces will be taken for defining the competitive issues those present. A balanced scorecard is provided along with the measures that the company is taking for analyzing their performance. As per the theories recommendations is being provided that will help the company to match their scorecard.

References
Bandara, W., Abbott, C., Mathiesen, P., Meyers, L. and Nagra, M., 2018. Developing enterprise-wide business process management capability: a teaching case from the financial sector. Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases, 8(2), pp.192-208.

Bebawi, F.F., Campbell, S.D. and Mayer, R.J., 2015. Seed bank longevity and age to reproductive maturity of Calotropisprocera (Aiton) WT Aiton in the dry tropics of northern Queensland. The Rangeland Journal, 37(3), pp.239-247.

Bereznoi, A., 2015. Business model innovation in corporate competitive strategy. Problems of Economic Transition, 57(8), pp.14-33.

Conroy, M., Sellors, J., Effingham, M., Littlejohns, T.J., Boultwood, C., Gillions, L., Sudlow, C.L.M., Collins, R. and Allen, N.E., 2019. The advantages of UK Biobank's open?access strategy for health research. Journal of Internal Medicine, 286(4), pp.389-397.

Donnet, T., Ryley, T., Lohmann, G. and Spasojevic, B., 2018. Developing a Queensland (Australia) aviation network strategy: Lessons from three international contexts. Journal of Air Transport Management, 73, pp.1-14.

Geddes, A., Schmidt, T.S. and Steffen, B., 2018. The multiple roles of state investment banks in low-carbon energy finance: An analysis of Australia, the UK and Germany. Energy Policy, 115, pp.158-170.

Jazayeri, E. and Dadi, G.B., 2017. Construction safety management systems and methods of safety performance measurement: A review. Journal of Safety Engineering, 6(2), pp.15-28.

Lees, G., Winchester, M. and De Silva, S., 2016. Demographic product segmentation in financial services products in Australia and New Zealand. Journal of Financial Services Marketing, 21(3), pp.240-250.

McCaffrey, N., Fletcher, A., Erskine, P., Mulligan, D. and Giddens, M., 2015. Democratisation of biological collections: developing an online image herbarium for mine rehabilitation sites in Queensland. Australasian Plant Conservation: Journal of the Australian Network for Plant Conservation, 24(1), p.9.

Tran, T., Roswinanto, W., Yunus, E. and Kurnia, P., 2016. Compensatory Solution: Can it Save a Company from a Service Failure?. Services Marketing Quarterly, 37(2), pp.80-97.