ING Direct Case Study

ING CASE STUDY MODULE NAME: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND TRADE MODULE CODE: MGTMIM002-200809 MODULE TUTORS: JIM STOCKTON ERIC GOWLING LIHONG ZHANG JEEVAN MATHEW384608 MURALI KRISHNAN THAYYIL GOPAKUMAR393608 NOUFAL POOLAKKAL KARATTUCHALI381879 SREERAG THAZHISSERY GANGADHARAN393609 CONTENTS TitlePage Number 1.1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY3 2.1 INTRODUCTION3 2.2 BUSINESS OBJECTIVES3 2.3 SWOT ANALYSIS4 3.1 FINANCE4 3.2 FINANCIAL DATA EVALUATION4 3.3 FUTURE IMPLICATIONS6 4.1 MARKETING7 4.2 IMPORTANCE OF MARKETING IN ING DIRECT7 4.3 MARKETING MIX7 4.4 ING DIRECT’S MARKETING STRATEGY7 4.5 STRATEGY ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS8 5.1 OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT 9 5.2 OPERATIONAL STRATEGY9 5.3 ANALYSIS WITH SERVICE-PROFIT CHAIN MODEL10 5.4 CRITICAL ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS11 6.1 INTERDEPENDENCIES OF MARKETING AND OPERATIONS 11 7.1 CONCLUSION12 8.1 REFERENCE13 8.2 APPENDIX15 1.1) EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ING Direct is an online banking service provider. It offers a narrow range of products such as savings account, home mortgages, home equity lines and mutual funds. The bank is one of the six business lines of ING Group and was established in 1997 and it celebrated its tenth anniversary as world’s leading direct bank. The report is based on the research on ING Direct. It covers three functional units of the business which are Finance, Marketing and Operations. We discuss the current situations of these functional units and their implications to the future. The report concludes with recommendations to capitalise on the market and to achieve its long-term goals. 2.1) INTRODUCTION ,[object Object]

Ever since its establishment there has been a sharp growth in the company performance. Starting at a loss of Euro 70 million it reported a profit of EURO 691 million in 2006. Definitely those records were the results of a revolutionary approach in the banking sector and aggressive marketing strategy. Unlike other banks ING Direct is keen on encouraging its customers to save. Presently, ING Direct is the world’s leading direct savings bank, active in 9 countries with 22.2million customers worldwide. It sells a limited number of banking products with a simple slogan: “Great rates, no fees, no minimums”. ING Direct has a unique approach in marketing and follows tightly controlled operational methods. 2.2) BUSINESS OBJECTIVES “Our purpose is to be a servant of the average person. Rather than getting people to spend more - which is what most banks do - our approach is to get the Americans save more-to return to the values of thrift, self-reliance, and building a nest egg.” ---Arkadi Kuhlmann, President and CEO, ING Direct ING Direct’s business objectives can be summarised as follows: ,[object Object]

Delivering high value to customers and encourage them to save more

Simplicity in operation2.3) SWOT ANALYSIS SWOT analysis reflects the organisations existing position and viewpoint. This inquires into the strength, weakness, opportunity and threats in an organisation (Valentin, 2001). A SWOT analysis of ING Direct is given in Appendix 1. 3.1) FINANACE Finance is concerned with the ways in which funds for a business are raised and invested. This lies at the very heart of what business is about(Atrill and McLaney,2006). ING Direct has a very strong financial background which was initially supported by the parent company, ING Group. ING Direct is the world’s leading direct savings bank. ING Direct offer great value for their products along with making it as straight forward as possible. Further they aim to keep their rates consistently competitive. This is done by minimising cost, branchless operations and no hidden catches. 3.2) FINANCIAL DATA EVALUATION Being a service based company, ING Direct’s central objective is to grow and strengthen market share in the online banking industry. Appendix 2 shows the global profit progression of ING Direct. The profit and loss account of ING Direct is shown in Appendix 3. Total income decreased by 1.7%, or EUR 93million, to EUR 2,196million in 2007 from 2,289million in 2006. It further decreased by 60% to EUR 878million in 2008. The interest margin narrowed to 0.75% in 2007 from 0.89% in 2006 as a result of higher central bank rates in the euro, British pound and Australian currency zones and the intensified competition for retail funds. The client retail balance in 2007 grew EUR 27.7billion or 9.8%, to EUR 310.1billion at year-end. Operating expenses rose by 3.9%, or EUR 60million, to EUR 1,598million in 2007 from EUR 1,538million in 2006. And in 2008 it is EUR 1,750million recording a further 9.5% increase. According to the annual report of ING Group, the number of full-time staff in ING Direct is increased to 9,980 in 2008 from 8,883 a year earlier. The number of full-time staff in 2006 was 7,565. Financial ratios can be used to assess the financial health of a business(Atrill,2006). Ratios can be used to compare the company’s performance overtime, with competitors and with industry trends; can point towards the necessary improvements and possible dangers; and can also reveal profit and growth potential. Profitability ratio provides an insight to the degree of success in creating wealth for the owners. They express the profits made in relation to other key figures in the financial statement. Net profit margin ratio relates the profit for the period to the sales revenue. ,[object Object], Sales revenue NPM(2006) = 31.21 NPM(2007) = 24.13 The decrease in NPM shows the rise in competition and the economic imbalances which the company had to face during the period 2006-07. ,[object Object], Capital employed Sales to Capital employed(2006) = 0.66 Sales to Capital employed(2007) = 0.79 The sales to capital employed ratio increased in 2007 as compared to that of 2006 and it implies the effective utilization of capital employed in generating sales revenue. Return on Capital employed is a fundamental measure of business performance which is concerned with returns achieved from all long term capital invested. ,[object Object]

Net profit before interest and taxation X Sales

Sales Long term Capital employed

ROCE= Net profit Margin x Sales to Capital employed

The current ratio compares the liquid assets with the current liabilities and is a measure of short-term solvency. The higher the ratio, the more liquid the business is considered to be (Brockington,1993). Appendix 4 shows the assets and liabilities of ING Direct. From that the current ratio can be calculated as follows:

Current ratio = Current assets Current liabilities Current ratio(2006) = 1.013 Current ratio(2007) = 1.011 As liquidity is vital to the survival of a business, a higher current ratio might be thought to be preferable. The recent downturn implicates that in future ING Direct has to be more careful as the credit market is very weak at the moment and the liquidity in the market is at its lowest. The year 2007 witnessed the beginning of the credit crunch which in turn reflected in the annual result. Even though ING insisted its declining profits were a result of loss of shares and not related to US sub-prime mortgages, it has clearly been hit by the general loss of confidence. That is why they applied for aid from Netherlands government and received a capital injection of EUR 10billion (The Guardian). Increase in operating expenses and the repositioning of UK market also accounted for the decrease in profit. Fluctuating exchange rates is another reason. Yield curves remained flat or inverted in all currency zones, while competition for deposits intensified as many banks faced tighter liquidity and increased funding costs on the wholesale markets. Competition with regard to other banking giants like HSBC, MetLife etc, focused on online banking making it tough for ING Direct in 2007. Moreover, non-banks have begun to integrate financial functions into their online offerings, and the competition has intensified because of increased reach and transparency of online offerings. (Dewan and Seidmann,2001). ING Direct also incurred a start up cost of 22million in Japan which also added to the expenditure. 3.3) FUTURE IMPLICATIONS The sales to capital employed ratio shows ING Direct’s capability of using its capital to the maximum for generating revenue from it. The bank already took measures to stabilise the financial conditions. They scrapped its dividend payments to the share-holders and senior executives have agreed to forfeit their annual bonuses. According to Brockington(1993), a current ratio of around 2 is generally considered to be about right and so in the future bank should try to bring that up so that it can give confidence to short term creditors. For preserving its position in the worsening economic condition, ING Direct need to strictly manage its risks, capital and expense base. In line with these priorities, it was decided early 2009 not to launch its operations in Japan. ING Direct has to capitalise on its ‘simple’, ‘safe’ and ‘savings’ bank reputation as not any of the competitors are as half strong as they were used to be. A source of growth could be the expansion of product range. They have got a secured financial support from the parent company, ING Group. But it will be a challenge to overcome the inherent problems in expanding the product range along with keeping the ‘simplicity’ of the company. 4.1) MARKETING ‘Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create, exchange and satisfy individual and organizational objectives’ (AMA, 1985). 4.2) importance of marketing in ING Direct Unlike the traditional banks, ING Direct used innovative marketing approaches which differentiated themselves from their competitors. One-third of its budget was allocated to marketing and it was possible because it had adequate financial support from its parent company. ING Direct sells its product with the simple slogan ‘great rates, no fees, no minimums’. Their marketing tactics was the key factor to attract many customers and make them aware of the combination of rates and its hip brand. 4.3) Marketing Mix Marketing mix is a set of controllable, tactical marketing tools that the firm blends to produce the response it wants in the target market. The marketing mix consists of everything the firm can do to influence the demand for its products, (Kotler and Armstrong, 2001). Product, price, place and promotion are the set of controllable marketing tools that an organization use to achieve its objective in the market; moreover, physical evidence, people and promotion are the extended tools which are used in the marketing mix to make further analysis. ING Direct’s marketing mix is illustrated in Appendix 5. 4.4) ING DIRECT’s Marketing Strategy Marketing strategy is concerned with looking into the future and developing and implementing the plans that will drive the organisation in the desired direction (Brassington and Pettitt, 2000). ING Direct had a strategic marketing thinking in which they focused on their customer’s needs by making them save more through their products rather than to make them spent more. They had a clear focus on their customers and were not suffering from marketing myopia (Levitt, 1960). ING Direct’s marketing strategy was the combination of ‘aggressiveness’ and ‘simplicity’ by consistently offering high rates and excellent service quality. Cost leadership, differentiation, and focus are the three generic strategies that any business should pursue to attain competitive advantage (Porter and Millar, 1985). ING Direct achieved competitive edge and competitive advantage by differentiating themselves from their rivals in the overall marketing strategies they used and focused on the customers that they can handle easily. Some of the marketing tactics that they used are: a) Sales Promotions and Advertisements: Sales promotion is a range of tactical marketing techniques designed within a strategic marketing framework to add value to a product or service in order to achieve specific sales and marketing objectives (Davies, 1992). ING Direct continuously organized innovative promotion campaigns like free movie tickets, free gas, etc, which attracted new customers. b) Branding: Branding is a way to distinguish the goods of one producer from those of another. It is a name, logo, symbol, package design, or other attribute that identifies a product and distinguishes it from others (Keller, 1998). ING Direct invested one third of its budget in marketing programs to build the ING Direct brand. Many customers were attracted by the combination of rates and its cool image. They had a simple branding strategy with clear message and feature the bright colour orange (orange colour indicates cheap and reliable products according to the vision experts), capturing customer’s attention by communicating in a humorous, anti-establishment tone. Furthermore, they had a strong support from their parent company in establishing the ING Direct brand. c) Cafes: Another unique feature of the marketing strategy is ING Direct’s cafes. The cafes are the medium which introduced the customers to the brand. The cafes offer the customers a place to speak and receive some financial advice with an ING cafe member who in turn is a trained banker. d) Guerrilla: “People are sleeping. You have to shock people a little bit to get them to think differently about how they manage their money. So we wake them up with one of our marketing campaigns. They switch their money and go back to sleep” ---Arkadi Kuhlmann, President and CEO ING Direct Arkadi Kuhlmann introduced this unique and successful marketing tactics to make people think differently about how to manage their money and to make them save. Appendix 6 shows some of the guerrilla marketing campaigns of ING Direct. e) Greenfields: They used green fields like Canada to grow their business because there was small number of competitors and it was the ultimate place for them to grow. 4.5) STRATEGY ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS According to (Brassington and Pettitt, 2000), the various factors that may influence an organizations marketing strategy are the objectives and resources of the organization, competitor’s strategies, attitude to change and risk, market structure and opportunities (Appendix 7). ING Direct had strong objectives that has been already mentioned and had strong resources to support their marketing strategy from the ING group. They have intensely analysed their competitor’s strategy that was to make people spend more, here, they used a different strategy to make people save more. They reengineered the banking industry by replacing branches with cafes which made more customers attracted towards them and finally their marketing strategy improved their opportunities to grow. ING Direct’s brand has been strongly established in the past and is a well recognized brand in the banking industry. It has already done a huge investment in marketing in the recent years so in this present financial condition they should concentrate more on cutting down cost in each and every functional area. Most of the banks have been stuck by these economic conditions and ING Direct is not an exception, so in future less investments should be made in marketing and key concentration should be given to retain their existing customers .Another main problem is the queuing method of customers when they frequently contact the call centre, but in this scenario it is not fair to do so, as there are many options for the customers to switch. 5.1) OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT Operations management is concerned with creating, operating and controlling a transformation system which takes input of variety resources and produces outputs of goods and services which are needed by the customers (Naylor, 1996). Operations managers are responsible for producing the supply of goods and services in organisations (Schroeder, 1993). 5.2) OPERATIONAL STRATEGY Operational strategy is the total pattern of decisions which shape term capabilities of an operation and their contribution ( Slack et al, 1995). ING Direct operates under the broad head of virtual banking system. ING Direct’s operational strategy is to cut down the cost to the bore with the support of strong investment in technology. They bought IT hardware centrally and made it available to various country organizations. Their strategy is to “reuse before buy and, buy before build”. This helped to save enormous amount of money, higher level of service, and control their accounts which are rapidly increasing. They introduced a unique strategy ‘online or internet banking’ and produced a massive impact with a minimum time span. The operational flow chart is illustrated in Appendix 8. ING Direct is a flat organization with few management layers. Without an efficient and effective operational strategy no organisation can hope to retain market leadership, since it will fail on delivery, price or quality or more probably on all three (Galloway, 1993). Every operations in ING Direct is integrated to its ultimate objective ie minimising cost. They reengineered the industry to cut cost in three different ways, i.e. they are not paper based, efficient use of call centre and they eliminated costly customers. Product development in ING Direct involves cross coordination with marketing and IT. The various stages involved in product development are, developing a business plan which includes the forecast of demand and marketing expenditures, evaluating the operational, financial and logical risks, which demonstrates the importance of IT and operational requirements. Performance measurement is another important factor in its operations. “Performance measurement enables informed decisions to be made and actions to be taken as it qualifies the efficiency and effectiveness of the past actions through acquisitions, collation, sorting, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of appropriate data” (Neely.1998). Every operation is closely and tightly controlled everybody in ING Direct measures and is being measured. Again performance measurement system is used to increase customer acquisition and to reduce costs. Arkadi kuhlmann introduced a unique system called ‘Orange code’ which indicates that all the employees have the same goal and removing all the titles and offices. They recruits people who are willing to do things differently, people with right attitude, and those who can be easily trained and introduced to a competitive selling culture, but above all they choose people whose personal values fit with the values of ING Direct. According to Kelly (2009), human capital is a source of sustainable competitive advantage as it is rare and difficult to imitate. Most of the employees consider ING Direct as an attractive employer for the strength of its business model, and its non banking culture. 5.3) ANALYSIS WITH SERVICE-PROFIT CHAIN MODEL Heskett et al. (1994) This model establishes a strong relationship between profitability, customer loyalty, and productivity in ING Direct. Profit and growth of the firm are boosted by customer loyalty, which has a direct impact on customer satisfaction, that is influenced by the value of services to the customers and value is created by satisfied, loyal and productive employees in ING Direct. Employee satisfaction eventually results in high quality support services and policies that enable employees to deliver results to customers. ING Direct establishes a good and strong relationship with both these forces which in turn helps in smooth running of the firm. The most exciting fact is that more than 90 percent of the customers of the company believe that they are getting a much better service than the competitors and 99 percent of the employees are proud about their employer. 5.4) CRITICAL ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Some of the challenges ING Direct may face in future is regarding with their cost control in operation, since their business is growing day by day, controlling their operations is a critical task. Moreover the IT structure has to be updated regularly to the increasing demands In order to satisfy their execution strategy in future i.e. to reduce cost of operation, deliver better value to the customer, enable closed loop tracking and selling, efficiency improvement, increase revenues , generate superior return, and higher cross selling rates, they have to improve their operational performance (Refer Appendix 9). Business Process Management (BPM) model is used to improve the company’s operational strategy which in turn may help to achieve their business objectives. BPM is an approach dependent upon strategic and operational elements, use of modern tools and techniques, people involvement and on a horizontal focus to best suit and deliver customer requirements in an optimum and satisfactory way (Kelly, 2009). As ING Direct is a flat organisation depending heavily on its technology for delivering high quality to its customers, we suggest BPM for further improvement in ING Direct’s operational strategy. 6.1) INTERDEPENDENCIES OF MARKETING AND OPERATIONS Marketing and operation in ING Direct cannot be considered as separate entities, they depend on each other dramatically. Some of the key challenges that ING Direct may face in future is regarding the inter dependency of each other’s functional units and cutting down their operational costs. They emphasise on low product range and simplicity in their operational procedures, but in today’s world customers are looking for wide range of products with quality service, moreover the customer inflow may reduce because the customers want more face to face interaction rather than depending on the internet. Again, the employees concentrate more on reducing costs in operations which may, make them unable to identify the customer’s needs and ultimately reduce customer satisfaction. Handling the technology efficiently is also an important concern that ING Direct may face in future due to the increased amount of customers and their needs. Earlier they were successful in managing their employees, customers and the operational policies, but many new comers have made their job tough and the economic condition is effecting each and every financial organization day by day. ,[object Object]

As credit crunch prevails in the current economy, ING need to capitalise on its ‘simple’, ‘safe’ and ‘savings’ bank image. The financial, marketing and operational aspects of ING Direct was analysed in the report and few recommendations are suggested. As all these aspects are strongly inter-related, a change in strategy of any of these aspects will reflect on other. In ING Direct, marketing and finance acts as supportive functions to operations management. In order to maintain its image in the current business scenario, ING Direct need to be extremely careful in its future plans. The level of success achieved by ING Direct holds some important lessons and offers, some much-needed inspiration to a business world; that could use a little of both right now.

AMA (1985),’AMA Board Approves New Marketing Definition’, Marketing News, 1 March 1985, pp-1.

Atrill, P. (2006), ‘Financial Management for Decision Making’ (4th edition), Prentice Hall, United Kingdom.

Atrill, P. and McLaney, E. (2006), ‘Accounting and Finance for Non-Specialists’ (5th edition), Prentice Hall, United Kingdom.

Brassington, F. And Pettitt, S. (2000), ‘Principles Of Marketing’ (Second Edition), Prentice Hall, UK.

Brockington, R.B. (1993), ‘Financial Management’ (6th edition), DP publications, United Kingdom.

Davies, M. (1992), ‘Sales Promotion as a Competitive Strategy’, Management Decision, 30(7), pp.5-10.

Dewan, R. and Seidmann, A. (2001), ‘Current Issues in E-Banking’, Communications of the ACM, June 2001, 44(6), pp 31-32.

Galloway, R.L. (1993), ‘Principles of Operations Management’, Routledge, United Kingdom.

Heskett, J., Jones, T.O., Loveman, G.W., Sasser Jr., W.E. and Schlesinger, L. A. (1994), ‘Putting the Service-Profit Chain to Work’, Harvard Business Review, 72(2), pp 164-170.

ING Direct Case Study

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (9)

Similar to ING Direct Case Study

Similar to ING Direct Case Study (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

ING Direct Case Study