Problem Solution - Intersect Investment Services

Problem Solution: Intersect Investment Services

Intersect Investment Services experienced financial difficulties after September 11, 2001, and have struggled over the years to the meet company goals and keep up with the demands of their customers. Even with the evidence of their financial difficulties, Intersect Investment Services has taken very little step to correcting this problem. In addition, Intersect Investment is losing employees because they no longer feel the company is going in the right direction. Intersect Investment must ensure that everyone understands the goals of the organization, where they hope to be in the future and what each and everyone roles and responsibilities are moving forward.

Situation Background (Step 1)

Intersect Investment is looking to take the organization to the next level to be competitive in the financial industry. Intersect as many issues that they need to address before they can move forward. The CEO Frank Jeffers created a new vision focusing on its customers and has started to strategize how to implement a new customer intimacy model to accomplish those goals. In order for this to work, buy-in from everyone is needed because support will be needed across all departments. Unfortunately, not all employees starting from top management fully agrees with this new process and does not want to participate in it. Employees are leaving the organization because they feel they are getting mixed directions and they don’t have a true sense of confidence in the organization anymore.

Issue Identification

Intersect Investment is looking to build a better relationship with its current customers and also attract new customers The CEO is having a hard time getting his management team and employees to support this new initiative. Employees and management does not believe that the organization can pull off this new initiative because they are already not getting enough information to perform their jobs. They are not been given clear direction on what is expected of them. Employees are also concerned with layoffs and wondering whether or not they are going to have a job when this is all over. In order to be successful at this, Intersect Investment must address all these issues and get everyone on board for this to work to their advantage.

Opportunity Identification

A good leader is one with proven reputation of making the right decision for the betterment of the company. Intersect Investment has the capability to obtain its goals but must work on making all understand the importance of this new initiative. Implementing the new customer model will allow Intersect to increase customer satisfaction, increase sales and broaden its customer base. Intersect Investment as an employee that came from an organization that implemented this model which was very successful. This individual can help employees to have some confidence and believe that the model will work by sharing her experience.

Intersect Investment needs loyal customers and so they must conduct surveys or collect information that will allow them to understand what customers are looking for and what their needs are. This will allow Intersect Investment to identify areas that are not meeting customer needs and focus on addressing them. Intersect Investment should look at benchmarking to see what has worked for other companies, what didn’t work and why. By addressing these issues, customers will grow to trust the organization which is what Intersect Investment is aiming towards.

Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas

Stakeholders play an important role in the decision making process of any organization because of their investment in the company. When organizations are not doing well, then investors are not going to be happy and might contemplate withdrawing from the organization. For those employees including management that is not onboard, a decision must be made as to whether to keep those individuals or replace them. This will be a very hard decision, because most of them have many years invested in the company. Careful planning is required and proper steps taken to ensure that the decisions are just.

Problem Definition (Step 2)

Intersect Investment will fully implemented a customer intimacy model which will enable the organization to build a strong relationship with it customers. With that comes trust and loyalty to the organization from its customer which will in turn increase sales. Intersect Investment will then become competitive and financially strong and increase growth.

End-State Goals (Step 3)

Within a year Intersect Investment will fully implement the customer intimacy model focusing on customers needs and maintaining a strong place in the financial industry. By doing so, Intersect Investment will come full circle in providing exceptional service to its customer and becomes trusted advisors.

Alternative Solutions and Benchmarking Validation (Step 4)

Intersect Investment is implementing a model that they are not familiar with. Benchmarking other companies that have used this model will allow them view what approach they took in implementing this model, what worked, what didn’t work, how did they address them and what was the outcomes. Intersect Investment can then decide what would best work for the base on analysis of this information.

Since this is new for Intersect Investment they should look at implementing this model one department at time. This will allow for easy transition throughout the organization. By doing so, they will have the opportunity to improve on what did not work before moving to the next area. A second alternative is to implement this model in areas that customer satisfaction is very low and also areas that need the most improvement.

Analysis of Alternative Solutions (Step 5)

Implementing one department at a time will prove to be more effective because the impact to customers will be very minimal. By implementing the new model this way, Intersect Investment will be able to address any issues or problems that may have developed during implementation in that department. Implementing that process in areas that needs improvement can be big and thus having a big impact on customers. Trying to address issues as they arise can be