Ob10 Case Study Solution

1.0 Introduction
OB10 is a Business-to-business (B2B) electronic invoice delivery service provider based in the UK. Its operation in Malaysia started in July 2006. Despite the substantial growth in annual revenue, the high labour cost has caused a consecutive two-year operating loss of the company. Hence, there is an urgent need for OB10 to reduce its operating cost and to strengthen its operation in Malaysia.

2.0 Issue prioritisation
The main issues to be considered during the course of cost reduction and operation revamp are prioritised as follow:
Human resource
Organisational structure and culture
Operation improvements
Financial aspects
Long-term business sustainability

2.1 Human resource
This issue is considered to be the top priority

A well-designed organisation structure provides an appropriate platform for company growth in long term. Productivity will be improved as employees can focus their time and attention on productive tasks. Positive workplace culture encourages more new workers to join the company and helps in retaining talents.

2.3 Operation improvements
The inputs, conversion processes and outputs at OB10 are inefficient and need improvement. By having proper human resource planning and organisational structure as the foundation, OB10 can proceed with its operation improvement plan. The process design is a vital operation management decisions to provide competitive advantages to OB10.

2.4 Financial aspects
After deciding suitable improvement plans, the feasibility of the plan should be assessed on the financial perspective. Financial decisions are important to ensure OB10 does not run out of business due to operating losses and subsequently cash flow shortage. The management should ensure every cent spent on the improvements brings a greater benefit to the company. Furthermore, capital investment decisions to provide additional values to the service helps to increase the profit margin of the

Then, OB10 should introduce an employee remuneration plan which comprises of a fixed base salary and a variable component such as bonuses for extraordinary accomplishments compared to the target of respective departments. For example, the mappers are given bonuses when they are able to map certain targeted number of invoices correctly.

3.1.2 Language team
OB10 has to deal with suppliers and buyers from different parts of the world. These stakeholders speak different native languages causing communication barriers between them and staff members of OB10 who are unable to converse multi languages. In order to provide accurate and responsive customer support services, OB10 can hire a language team who is responsible to communicate with these stakeholders who speak foreign languages. The language team must be able to speak and to write in multi-languages. Whenever the staff faces clients who communicate in foreign languages, he can seek the team for assistance.

3.1.3 Job