Holloway Consulting Services

1. Holloway Consulting Services Balance Authenticity Service Over Self Interest Empowerment Diversity Kristian Murphy Mark Logue

2. Overview • Founded in 1993 by Sharon Holloway, an experienced IT manager. • HCS aims to provide large manufacturers with system support services. • HCS has four strategic objectives at this time: 1. To grow the company 2. To thoroughly understand customer needs 3. To encourage and promote knowledge sharing 4. To maintain an open an open culture for employees • HCS has found itself experiencing high demand for its services in the last 12 to 18 months. • Recently, HCS has been experimenting with the idea of a balanced scorecard to help address performance measurement and performance criteria.

3. Primary Issues

4. The lack of management infrastructure is a primary issue • As a result of this, HCS has been forced to slow down growth recently because growth may be damaging to the organization in its current state. • With the lack of management infrastructure presence, Sharon is struggling to figure out a way to maintain intimacy with customers but also to reach a capacity where the organization can comfortably grow with an effective employee performance measurement system. • In the past when the organization was in its early stages, Sharon was able to effectively monitor employee performance on her own. However, in order to meet the potential of growth, a more formal and ‘larger scale’ performance measurement system must be implemented. Solution • A balanced scorecard could act as the solution to this problem. The scorecard could rate employee performance based on categories such as the firms financial-related objectives, customer relationship management objectives, company growth objectives or business process objectives. • This constant evaluation process will be the first step in providing the proper infrastructure system for HCS and will facilitate tasks such as considering future performance or demand questions.

5. HCS does not presently have sufficient human capital to meet demand. • They are unable to meet peak demand and with future aspirations of growth, obviously some form of additional human capital will be required. • In acquiring additional human capital, HCS does not want to sacrifice their superior level of customer intimacy and customer relationship management. Therefore, perhaps an option such as outsourcing systems operation is not a realistic choice. • There are 3 possible solutions to this problem: • Call on temporary service • Outsourcing the entire systems operations. • Hire additional staff Solution • The most logical choice here is to rely on internal resources and hire additional staff. If HCS relies on outsourcing or third party agencies, they will be forced to put at risk their superb customer relationship management as well as open-floor employee work environment. • Resorting to third party agencies will also cause uncertainties for the future when questions arise on the topic of growth and capacity.

6. Due to the fact that the quality of staff is a significant part of the organization’s competitive edge, an issue will arise if an effective performance measuring system is not established to ensure that objectives are met. • “To grow the company, to know and understand customer needs, to encourage and promote knowledge sharing and to maintain an open culture in order to attract and retain employees” • To ensure that these goals are met, we have broken down the criteria that should be included in the balanced scorecard. • Growth – growth can be measured in terms of both financial objectives, such as meeting sales targets and initiatives or customer based objectives, such as measuring the size of the customer base using sales transaction information. • Customer Needs – in setting customer related goals such as contact targets or CRM database entry requirements, HSC can continue to practice timely, honest and accurate communication and be sure to meet customer needs. Measurement could be based on a variety of customer related initiatives or targets. Perhaps an opportunity for consumer feedback will provide additional insight into the customer needs. • Knowledge Sharing – an internal business process category would be included in the scorecard to ensure the effective and efficient sharing of information amongst employees. This will allow for maintenance of CRM and could be measured using initiatives relating to overall customer intimacy and employee/customer relationships. • Open Culture – a ‘learning’ category could be included in the balanced scorecard to measure the open culture within employees. A performance measure for the learning objectives should be included in order to give Sharon and upper management a better sense of how the ‘open-culture’ is actually holding up.