Citibank Case Analysis

The strategic objective for the Scorecard is to broaden the awareness of management beyond just the financial performance. Citibank want the managers to be aware of all aspects of operating the business. Citibank wants to ensure that it can sustain growth in the long run and retain its customer base. For Citibank to succeed in California, where they have high competition, they will need to ensure that their managers are capable of increasing the finances, having a good internal system for to ensure things move smoothly, have exceptional customer satisfaction and have a team with shared goals and values. The factors chosen to be reviewed on the Scorecards are necessary for the organi ation to attain its long term goals. The customer satisfaction is a must since Citibank has a very small foothold in the California market. The new Scorecard helps the banks to have a broader view on what is needed to help Citibank succeed. The evaluation methods for the Financial, Strategy and Control !easures sections of the Scorecard are pretty straight forward ways to measure these objectives. They seem fair and are pretty black and white. The evaluation method for "eople and Standards are evaluated based off of judgment and analysis from the branch manager#s boss. This could be unfair if the district manager did not like a particular branch manager. $ feel that internal surveys should be taken by employees under the branch manager in addition to the district manager#s opinion. For the evaluation of customer satisfaction there is ambiguity in the way that this objective is measured. The biggest issue is that the evaluation is based off a %uestions asked over telephone interviews for customers who visited a specific branch within the past month, and these %uestions included services that may have taken place outside of the branch. To be fare the %uestions in the interview should put separate categories for satisfaction specific to the bank branch, for services online, &T! services and an additional section for anything else that falls outside of these categories. They also need to take into account what type of customer they are, business or individual and also whether or not the branch in %uestion is the customers primary branch, the one they regularly go to. Tying the scorecard to a bonus structure can have positive results because it creates a real incentive for the branch managers to try to meet the re%uirements so they can receive a raise. !oney is often a great motivator. The bad side to this type of bonus structure is that it can be unfair to someone if they excel in all but one of the objectives on the Scorecard. For example 'ames !c(aran did exceptional and above par for five out of six of the objectives. The current method will prevent him from receiving the raise he deserves) this could cause him to leave Citibank. *e is a great asset to the bank and losing him would be very bad. *aving three categories for the results creates a Forced distribution of performance but this is not bad because all of these objectives are necessary for Citibank to succeed. The need for evaluating these objectives is there and the method for evaluating them is sufficient with the exception of needing to modify the customer satisfaction objective into more detailed section. The structure of the bonus should be modified however. There should be some form of incentive that also takes into consideration the si e of the branch being managed. For example since

'ames !c(aran manages the toughest and largest branch in California he should automatically get an additional +, raise as long as he stays on -par. over all. /isa#s role in evaluating 'ames may be less subjective because she knows him and knows his value to the company because of this it is both a pro and a con. $t is a con because she is not being more lenient on him and the objective of customer satisfaction to Citibank is very important and needs to be at the same level as all other objectives. &t the same time, because /isa knows how dedicated 'ames is she knows that he has made an honest effort and that he deserves -above par. ratings. To improve the process of the "erformance 0valuation we will need to make some modification. The first step will be to reanaly e the data from the customer satisfaction interviews and put them into internal and external categories. 1nce they have been separated Frits and /isa can re2evaluate the score based off of the customer satisfaction for what 'ames has control over. $f the numbers should show higher and then 'ames will be eligible for the raise he deserves as well as some other bank managers most likely being bump into the higher bracket as well. This should fix the discrepancy in the Scorecard evaluation. $f 'ames still scores below -par. there is a risk of losing him. $n order to prevent this a private meeting should be made with him to let him know that to keep the other branches from being angry it will be necessary to give him a -par. rating but that he will still be given recognition for managing the largest and most difficult branch and will be given a bonus for his exceptional work. Then it will be necessary to work closely with him to make sure his customer satisfaction ratings continue to increase.