Strategic Management – Public Bank Group

1.0 Introduction to Strategy Management

Strategy management is defined as the organization is analyze, make decisions and take actions in creating and sustaining competitive advantages in the market. In making a new strategy or maintain old strategy to achieve the missions or goals in order to survive at competitive and globalize world, the organization or the manager need to access and collect micro and macro environments information for analyze it. After analyzed the business environments, the organization or the manager will make decisions or establish new planning or new strategy based on the outcome of analysis then take actions to achieve the missions or goals.

Business environment is important to the organization in analyze and access for research purpose in the competition rival firms. Aswathappa (2009, p. 6) indicates competition benefits rival firms will build new capability, new customer satisfaction standards and make the leaders in the organization become proactive in planning and achieving the mission or target.

At this time, the assignment’s questions will be covered Public Bank Group’s mission, strategy, structure and its competition with compared other two banks’ competition. The Public Bank Group is founded by Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Dr. Teh Hong Piow at 1996. Over 47 years, now it is become the third largest banking group in Malaysia and listed on the Main Board of the Bursa Malaysia Securities with the market capitalization of RM68.67 billion at the end of 2013. Also, The Public Bank Group is ranked as second among all public listed companies on the Bursa Malaysia Securities. The businesses of The Public Bank Group is focusing on the retail consumer banking business with leading market shares in financing for residential properties, commercial properties and passenger vehicles in term of selling the unit trust funds. (Annual Report Public Bank, 2013, p. 17)

In Section 1 is to analyze the linkage between mission and strategy of the Public Bank Group implemented. In Section 2 is to access the organizational structure of The Public Bank Group’s branch at Jalan Yang Kolsam in how effective of the structure to deliver the structure and service to customers. In Section is to access, analyze and classify the competition arise between Public Bank, Maybank and RHB. In Section 4 is present detailed conclusion and recommendations to the Public Bank Group for improvement on their strategy and planning in order to achieve the corporate mission.

2.0 Mission and Strategy of Public Bank Group

Entrepreneur in its website states that mission is a sentence or a short written statement to describe the company’s competitive advantage, business goals and philosophies. (2014, pp. 1) A good mission can ensure and help employees to understand the philosophy, goals and objectives of the organization they are worked at and this lead good performance of employees in the present and future. Meanwhile, the strategy that established by the organization will help the employee to enhance their planning in achieving the mission. As stated by D. Flouris and L. Oswald (2006, p. 1), before the strategy is established, it is influenced by outside forces as well as internal values, the company’s culture and also its capabilities.

2.1 Mission of Public Bank Group

As stated in Annual Report of The Public Bank Group (2013, p. 5), the mission of Public Bank Group is ‘To sustain the position of being the most efficient, profitable and respected premier financial institution in Malaysia’.

2.2 Strategy used by The Public Bank Group

The strategy of The Public Bank Group used is growth strategy which is corporate strategy. In Public Bank Homepage stated in page of Corporate Profile (2014, pp. 10) described that The Public Bank Group’s growth strategy is aim to drive business growth and increase its market share in retail banking by delivered consistent service to meet the needs of its customers with well-established customer service infrastructure. Brinkman et al. (2010, p. 48) defined the growth strategy is the aim to increase the amount of business by expanding the market it serves.

To meet customer needs, the Public Bank Group has been used internal development as their way of deliver strategy to their staffs by providing training in order to achieve mission of the Public Bank Group. In fact, the bank has been organized the special trainings to over 90% of customer service representatives at the front office. (Public Bank 2007 Annual Report, 2007, p. 11)

The non-executive chairman of the Public Bank Group, Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Dr. The Hong Piow stated that (cited in Public Bank 2013 Annual Report, 2013, p. 77) the front office staffs are specially trained, the customers are only need to wait the counter responds to them for 2 minutes which the standard set by the Public Bank Group to deliver services. In fact, the Public Bank Group is awarded and certified financial institution under ISO 9001:2008 for the “Provision of Customer Service in Loan Delivery” and “Provision of Customer Service at Front Office”. The ISO 9001:2008 which is customer service delivery standards that awarded to the Public Bank Group is demonstrating the ability of the bank itself is serving their customers with consistently and high service quality. Consequently, the Public Bank Group and its entire branches wherever there are located also providing a good assurance to their customer who expecting high consistently of customer experience while they are entering the branches to get service. Continuous training and staff development programs provided by the bank will keeps the achievement to be uphold in the competitive edge.

2.3 Summary of the linkage between mission of and strategy of the Public Bank Group

As a result, the Public Bank Group has been achieved ISO certification for their high quality of customer service which the strategy established for customer wait for 2 minutes standard for the service from the front office staffs where this is efficient and the high customer satisfactions lead them to achieve another award as Most Profitable Company in the Finance Sector 2013 and 2011 (Public Bank 2013 Annual Report, 2013, p. 47) where this is one of the Public Bank Group’s mission as ‘to sustain the position of being the most efficient, profitable and respected premier financial institution in Malaysia’.

3.0 Organizational structure design of The Public Bank Group

Creating an organizational structure is an important part on delivering the strategy or communication with effectively. Hull in Forbes websites state that it’s important for entrepreneurs or the businesses to create a defined structure at the early, even if the business is just one man shop. (2013, pp. 3)

In fact, organizational structure will helps we all to understand various job descriptions no matter there is only one man shop or many employees in an organization. Also, it helps the decision maker won’t design an organizational structure where the position title or job descriptions clash together. Defined and clearly organizational structure is to ensure all employees can see the picture as a whole and do back their own roles and responsibilities.

An effective organizational structure will facilitates intrapreneurship between employees and employers. Also, the effective organizational structure also helps elaborate effective strategy for the departments or units to achieve the mission or goals with expected result. (Varbanova, 2013) The design of organizational structure also affecting the line of authority and communication between administration officers and officers. (Sekhar, 2010, p. 72)

Organizational structure design consist of six elements which are specialization, departmentalization, chain of command, span of control, degree of centralization and formalization.

3.1 Customer Structure of Public Bank Branch Jalan Yang Kalsom

Organizational structure that used by Public Bank branch at Jalan Yang Kalsom, Ipoh, Perak is customer structure chart. According to Brinkman et al. (2010, p. 80), they indicate a customer structure is designed and organized based on the customer. This customer structure also called as market structure, it allows the managers responsive to the needs or requirements of customers and give authority to allow managers make decision in response to customers’ changing needs. (Chapter 10 Managing Organizational Structure and Culture, n.d.)

Figure 1: Customer structure of Public Bank Branch at Jalan Yang Kalsom (Own Adaptation, 2014)

As illustrated on above, branch manager is ranked highest position in the Public Bank Branch Jalan Yang Kalsom. The branch manager will in-charge the final decision for the direction and planning for the particular branch. Next, will be the business manager and assistant branch manager. Business Manager is in-charge on the loan and mortgage unit. In the other hand, Assistant Branch Manager is in-charge on the customer service unit, investment unit, operation unit and credit card unit. For an example, a customer will apply loan for his house so the customer will be served by officer at loan and mortgage unit. This will lead the high satisfaction of customer which stimulated firms to search for more creative ways to serve customer better.

The advantages of customer structure chart are helps the organization to develop a better understanding of the customers and the types of customer that serving and this enable the organization to have better meeting the needs of customers. In order to meet the needs of customer, the employee of Public Bank is focusing on their own department where will bring more effective and efficient of servicer delivery.

Also, the customer structure chart enables the organization to respond the questions or queries from customer with faster speed. With the faster respond to the queries from customer will bring high customer satisfaction with high expectation, so that this also meeting the objectives and mission that practiced by The Public Bank Group.

This type of structure, customer structure chart is suitable to be used in branches with various customers where they can only focus on their customers with high speed of responding. This also enables employee empowerment to line staff or front office staff to make decision in responding on the changing of customer needs and preference of customers.

3.2 Summary of Customer Structure Chart of Public Bank

As presented by Public Bank Group, they are using customer structure chart in their branch at Jalan Yang Kalsom. One of the advantages of customer structure chart can enables managers or front office staffs to respond the changing needs of customers and this let Public Bank Group achieved its corporate philosophy where Public Bank Group are cares their customer by providing courteous and efficient customer service in every aspects of their businesses. By empowering front office staffs to make decision in responding the needs of customer also brings creative and innovative solutions to solve problems or queries.

4.0 Competition arise between Public Bank Group, Maybank and RHB Bank

In this section, I will use Michael Porter’s Five Forces model to access and analyze the competition arise between Public Bank, Maybank and RHB Bank with five elements. Brinkman et al. (2010, p. 185) argues the five elements of Michael Porter’s Five Forces model are rivalry among existing competitors, threats of new entrants, bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers and threat of substitute products or services. The explanation of each element is described as follows:

• Threats of new entrants: New entrants of an industry will bring new capacity and a desire to gain market share which will puts pressure on the current market to put more efforts in investment to reduce the market share being shared by new entrants and bring competition to the market.
• Bargaining power of suppliers: The powerful supplier able to capture their own values to the company by charging higher prices on the raw materials and shifting costs to the particular industry or company. Powerful supplier also can squeeze profitability out of industry which is unable to increase its own prices freely. The suppliers for banks are credit market or depositors which save their money in the bank saving accounts.
• Bargaining power of buyers: Powerful customers are opposite of powerful supplier which able to capture more their own values to the company by forcing down the prices of the products or services and able to demand higher quality or services. Buyers are powerful when they have the negotiating leverage which related to the industry because buyers are the one who sensitive with the prices. The buyers for banks are loaner, creditors and public which borrow money from banks and return money to the banks by installment with interest charged.
• Threats of substitute products or services: A substitute products or services are performing the same or similar function as industry product but with different means. For example, e-mail is a substitute for express mail. WeChat voice message is a substitute for call service provided by telecommunication company.
• Rivalry among existing competitors: Advertising campaigns, price discounting, service improvement and launching or promotion of new products is familiar forms in rivalry among existing competitors. Slow growth of industry is precipitating the competition for the markt share and the profitability of a company is depending on intensity of compete and the basis of direction or goals to compete.

Table 1: Michael Porter’s Five Forces Model for Public Bank, Maybank and RHB Bank (Own Adaptation 2014)

4.1 Summary of competition arise between Public Bank, Maybank and RHB Bank

As illustrated on Table 1, Public Bank has the core competencies with ISO certification of customer service standard and most profitable bank in Malaysia at 2013. I’m assume the strategy used by Public Bank is better than Maybank and RHB Bank as Public has a lot of awards for its achievement in banking industry by serving customer within their expectation and high customer satisfaction also.

5.0 Conclusion and Recommendations for Public Bank Group

Galavan, Murray and Markides argues that business environment in which rapid changes in globalization of markets are creating communities of customers. (2008, p. 131) In fact, it is same as The Public Bank Group where the top management will access all the micro and macro environments to analyze in order to establish a new and good strategy for achieve the mission.

In Section 1, the growth strategy used by The Public Bank Group is aim to meet their customer needs and satisfaction and there is an achievement to the corporate mission which is ‘To sustain the position of being the most efficient, profitable and respected premier financial institution in Malaysia’. The award of most profitable bank in Malaysia at 2013 and ISO 9001:2008 which is customer service standard is the outcome after they have offered special training to over 90% front office staff in responding queries from customer within 2-minute.

In Section 2, the customer structure chart brings a lot of advantages to the Public Bank Group where it is empowering their staff to solve and directly to respond to the changing requirement of customer needs with creatively and innovatively. By doing so, the structure also able to deliver their strategy which to meet customer needs with courteous and efficient.

In Section 3, there is low competition arise between Public Bank, Maybank and RHB Bank where Public Bank is achieved so many awards by comparing to Maybank and RHB Bank.

Lastly, the recommendation for The Public Bank Group is to keep investing on their research and development on their service in order to maintain and sustain the best customer service in achieving the mission.