Environmental Issues

Quality is the continuing practice of building and supporting relationships by reviewing, expecting, and fulfilling stated and implied needs. It is otherwise defined as the clients perception of the value of your product or service.In simple terms, a product or process that is reliable, and that performs its intended function is a quality product. These definitions make it clear that quality is a perception that exists or is created in the customers mind. Quality is therefore of paramount importance to get and retain customers and to benchmark the standards of quality against the best in the industry. Quality is both important to internal and external customers of any organization and so is the case for Commercial Bank of Qatar. As mentioned above quality is a perception hence we need to understand our external customers and their priorities. Factors such as level of service ways of communicating and the importance we show towards our external customers develops a level of trust and establishes a standard of quality. A standard for quality to our external customer could be the facts that how close are our products and our services to their expected products and services. In the same way quality towards internal customers establishes long term commitment, employee retention and level of quality that our employees provide to the external customers. One of the major factors for maintaining high quality for internal customer is how well your human resource department understands your employees. The work environment, your organizational policies, work place ethics, pay scales and benefits to your employees sets the tone of quality for the internal customers. 

Total Quality Management
Total Quality Management (TQM) is an idea that incorporates all organizational functions such as, finance, engineering, production, customer service, marketing, design etcetera to center on meeting organizational objectives and customer needs. TQM sanctions the Total organization, from the tactical manager to the CEO, with the duty of ensuring certain Quality in their respective products and services, and management of their processes through the suitable process improvement controls. TQM aims to go beyond Meeting customer requirements and their usual understanding of it serves the needs with respect to products, processes or services that are instrumental to the organization. TQM should operate throughout the whole organization.

The difference between design quality and process quality standards
Design quality refers to the effectiveness of the design of product in fulfilling the actual need that can be transformed into a finished good in a production process. Design quality standards are therefore based on technical and business requirements of the product itself. Process quality standards are based on a different approach not related to product technicalities. Process quality standards result from a designed policy that makes certain all resources will be able to produce defect free work3. These processes encompass all the systems in the organization and are closely interlinked with Total Quality Management discussed earlier.

Quality Systems at Commercial Bank of Qatar (My Organization)
Created in 1975, The Commercial Bank of Qatar is the first wholly owned private commercial bank in Qatar. It has been profitable in every year since its establishment. Such a feat is only possible if there are stringent quality maintenance systems in place. Commercial Bank of Qatar (CBQ) attempts to implement the philosophy of TQM. In this regard, every procedure is standardized to as much depth as possible. Standard Operating Procedures are constantly reviewed and improved by dedicated staff. Banking industry is in a state of rapid change and therefore reliance on standards brings forth the need to efficiently and effectively revise those standards to make them flexible to adapt to whatever directions macroeconomic conditions and competitive environment takes. One example of cost of quality identified at the Commercial Bank of Qatar or any other organization is the reworking of a balance sheet of a customer. Here cost of quality means the cost of not creating a balance sheet appropriately. This includes an unsatisfied customer which leads to a bad repo of the bank and the cost of reworking the balance sheet all over again. This single mistake can prove very costly as it can lead to several external customers shifting to some other bank. The two major quality standards set for the organization are the automated checking of a balance sheet for errors after it is completed by an employee. The second quality standard set in the bank is of an efficient procedure of processing a loan. This is enabled through a decision support system which provides the manager approving the loan on spot information required for granting a loan to the customer. This information includes data like the credit rating of the customer, the current account balance of the customer and etc. As mentioned in the two examples discussed above how the bank maintains its quality standards, Decision Support System and a Customer Relationship Management System is implemented in the organization. Both of these provide efficiency in operations of the bank which establishes a high quality standard through efficient and error less service. A central data base is connected to all the systems in the bank which stores data of all the operations from a single transaction to a loan approved every single operation is recorded through the Decision Support System and Customer Relationship Management System. All the regular operations that are conducted through out the month are recorded and stored in the central data base which is designed to match them to the standard procedures of the Bank and notify of any error spontaneously in real time. This helps the Bank in realizing any error on the spot which not only saves time but also makes sure the customer gets the correct result of their query.

Practical steps to improve Quality
My role at CBQ is to manage the retail branch, driving branch sales targets, ensuring high quality of customer service by monitoring the efficiency and accuracy of internal processes, owning the sales process, and developing branch staff capabilities, while providing quality in service efficiently that comply with Islamic Sharia requirements, where risks are well controlled. Management of manpower in an efficient manner is also my responsibility.

As a branch manager, I believe that CBQ can improve the efficiency of decision making quality by empowering the branch managers. This can be achieved by letting them offer flexibility of products and services tailored to each customers needs. Branch managers develop a relationship with the clients and therefore quality of service can be improved by greater participation of managers in products development.

Secondly, quality of service can be improved by focusing more on Key Performance Indicators (KPI). KPIs inform about which areas need more resource investment and attention. Increase in deposits may not necessarily translate into increase in customer satisfaction and thus profitability. KPIs reveal the blockades in resource mobilization. A focus by the strategic management in this area will ultimately translate in improved quality