Background to the firm- Vodafone

The following report provides an analysis of quality management system set up in Vodafone in UK. Quality management practice helps to maintain a superior quality products and services. Certainly, quality remains as the significant parameter, which distinguishes a firm from its competitors. No organization can proceed successfully without supervising the quality of the service; as quality is mandatory for customer satisfaction, which ultimately leads to customer loyalty. Establishment of Quality Management System is crucial because Quality Management System helps to ensure increased revenue and higher productivity for the organization. Thus, the following report provides a complete view of how Vodafone implements its quality management system to ensure quality and effective organizational performance. The report discusses how quality management system can be developed in Vodafone by embedding management responsibilities, resources and processes. The report also discusses the challenges experienced during the implementation of QMS and discusses how they are mitigated.

Background to the firm- Vodafone

Vodafone is one such leading mobile communication providers, which has operation in more than 26 nations and it has partnership with more than 55 networks around the world. Vodafone has almost 444 million customers around almost 19.5 million in UK (Al-Zoubi 2013). The organization makes large investment to improve the quality of service and customer experience. Vodafone has a story of using its networks and resources to positively impact people’s lives, which brings about a revolution in access to education, healthcare and financial services. Moreover, the firm in UK works on the initiatives of helping its customers and location communities to navigate the challenges and opportunities of the dynamic digital world.

TQM is a quality enhancement body of the techniques that are customer-based and service-oriented. According to Webb (2013), TQM could refer to a set of customer based practices that aims to enhance quality and promote process improvement. According to Deming’s theory of TQM (1983), quality is the outcome of work efforts over the overall cost (Fisher, Elrod and Mehta 2011). For example, if Vodafone focuses on cost, the issue appears when the cost increases but the quality goes down. Following are some of the significant points of Deming’s theory:

System Appreciation: This provides an understanding of the ways that the organization’s processes and system works. For example, Vodafone complies with ISO20000  and this way was developed to comply with the Service Management Framework as well as the broader level of processes (Kraus and Strömsten 2016). Particularly, all programmes developed under TQM claims ISO20000 certification are the subjected to regular auditing to check and meet the required standards of services (Fox et al. 2013). Hence, ISO 20000 is a global standard that explains the requirements for an informational technology service management.

TQM and Deming’s theory

Variation knowledge- This point provides an understanding of the variation and the reasons of the variation. Hence, the variation stands for knowledge management practices implemented at Vodafone to improve the quality. This is required because each department should know the progress of quality improvement.

Knowledge theory- This refers to the understanding about what can be identified. Vodafone in 2009 conducted an analysis collecting feedback from its customers and reports of the competitors about the quality of service and areas to be improved (Guerrier and Wilson 2011). This point is crucial to identify the weaknesses in service and enhance quality.

Psychology knowledge- This step provides an understanding of the human nature. Psychology knowledge is one of the elements of Deming’s theory, which was developed in 1983. Theory helps to ensure quality of service or products.  For example, Vodafone’s customer survey to enhance quality was an effective initiative, where the service quality was determined based on the demand of customers (Boateng 2016).

Many organizations like Vodafone, with the help of ISO 9001:2000 developed an effective “Quality Management System” which helps them to achieve the business objectives such as customer satisfaction as well as the network quality. Hence, ISO 9001: 2000 specifies the requirements for a quality management system where a company needs to show its ability to persistently provide the products that meet customers as well as regulatory requirements. “British Standards Institution (BSI) and Vodafone helped to accomplish this commendable certification, which means the firm has a clear commitment to quality through the firm (Eckle and de Albuquerque 2015).  The following are some of the service management policies that ensure effective quality management at Vodafone.

• ICT services would be aligned to the business requirement instead of technical requirements
• The standards processes and implementation develops a baseline for and conform to ISO 20000 requirements
• All contracts will include a standard set of processes as well as the tools that have been developed
• The overall service improvement and service delivery of services for this desk should align to governance framework described within this policy

The Vodafone Group Security ISMS (Information Security Management System) has been approved to ISO27001: 2005 particularly for the activities associated with Vodafone’s security and resilience (Chami and Davies 2016).  The quality department of Vodafone carries out an intensive assessment of suppliers, which is identified as high and medium risk. The firm is also having an ongoing program of on-site assessment for a particular number of high-risk suppliers. Such assessment helps the firm to address the areas for improvement in the service and QMS department at Vodafone implements a collaborative approach and work with the suppliers to solve issues observed at the time of assessment (Kushwah and Bhargav 2014). As the initiative of improving quality, Vodafone in 2013 started requesting suppliers to fill out the questionnaire pre-contact to help the firm further to integrate CSR into its procurement decision.

ISO 9001:2000 and Quality Management System at Vodafone

ISO9001: 2000

ISO 9001: 2000 specifies the requirements for a quality management system where a company focuses on improving customer satisfaction with the help of an effective application system and shows its ability to provide products that satisfies consumer and regulatory needs. At the initial stage, the quality management system at Vodafone was completely paperless few years ago, however, to resolve the challenges QMS department of the Vodafone developed a quality manual document that helps to summarize the quality management within the organization. The department has identified some significant building blocks to enable effective deployment of “Quality Policy”, which is entirely independent and it implants a “PLAN-DO-CHECK-ACT” approach to uninterrupted improvement (Rocha-Lona, Garza-Reyes and Kumar 2013). The four significant key steps to this approach are as follows

Internal Audit Approach: This step helps to ensure the management system of the firm is functioning effectively.

Agree what we will do: This approach helps to focus on the energies of employees

Managing activities: This step helps to manage, monitor and enhance its processes

Celebration of success: In this step, the firm needs to recognize, celebrate and encourage the role model behavior

To some certain extent, Vodafone improved its efficiency and enhanced the level of local customer satisfaction after the application of process analysis method to quality improvement departments. While the processes to different department can be incomparable, the application of local flowchart approach and intensive analysis helped to enhance the local effectiveness. Moreover, at the top management level Vodafone sought for new opportunities that are yet not used by the competitors in the communication industry. Furthermore, the search of these opportunities as well as the existing competition has been illustrated with the help of the Ishikawa diagram and a cause-effect analysis method. Vodafone has also used DMAIC technology to develop clear business goals (Ping et al. 2013). Furthermore, in order to transform the strategy into detail steps, the firm used a balanced scorecard. The following are the crucial steps used for TQM Vodafone.

Organization model approach: To implement this approach, Vodafone conducted a survey by sending teams to the agencies that have taken a leadership role in TQM to determine the process and reasons for success. Deriving result from the survey, the organization collaborate these ideas with their own ideas to develop an individual organizational model where the performance of each department can separately be assessed. However, Santouridis and Veraki (2017) mentioned that this approach did not provide any suitable outcome and the model was first used in 1980s ad demonstrated by the initial recipients of Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.  

Steps used for TQM at Vodafone

Award criteria approach: Vodafone used the criteria of quality award, where the brand identifies the areas for improvement and under this approach, the focus of TQM implementation was to meet the specific award criteria. However, Paulrajan and Rajkumar (2011) argued that this is not an appropriate use of award criteria. Nonetheless, some large brands such as British Telecommunication used this approach to enhance quality.

It is necessary to understand the factor that probably impedes the implementation of TQM allows leaders to develop more effective strategies for enhancing the chances of successfully deploying TQM.  Here, some of the steps that prevent the application of quality management at Vodafone have been discussed.

Poor Planning:  Planning is certainly required to implement TQM and accomplish the goals. However, even though the organization Vodafone developed the long-term planning to enhance the quality of service but planning for departments has not been effective (Kwenin, Muathe and Nzulwa 2013). For example, even though, Vodafone met the goals of satisfying the needs of the customers, employee needs have not been taken into the consideration, which has affected customer services.

Lack of managerial commitment:  Vodafone has a hierarchical managerial structure, which sometimes appears as the barrier in front quality management. For example, customer service improvement in all nations was the major initiative in 2015 but due to absence of leadership activities, implementation of TQM model took plenty of time. Consequently, employee turnover rate increased to 21.3% 2016 from 17.4% in 2014 (Al-Zoubi 2013). More specifically, the employees were given individual target for analyzing the customer profile but due to large customer base, employees had to put additional hours on work. Due to lack of motivation from the leaders, workers developed a laidback attitude towards their job responsibilities. This situation eventually delayed the project, as workforce was reassigned to the respective department.

Lack of appropriate training:  As discussed above, inadequate attention of leaders in TQM implementation caused the delay in the project. Due to hierarchical management structure, the approval for training and development programs from the top management was the matter of time. Employees needed appropriate training for the new process of services. The employees were told and instructed to play their roles but in the middle of the implementation process got back to old practice of work. This was one of major reason behind the unexpected outcome from the quality improvement system. Here, Ping et al. (2013) also mentioned that before turning into a new practice of running operation, the employees should be properly instructed by their leaders about the things to do, areas to focus and techniques to resolve issues. If employees are not trained in that particular aspect of work, the goals become difficult to achieve.

Factors impeding the implementation of TQM at Vodafone

Insufficiency of resource: During the implementation process, Vodafone faced a significant crisis of fund. Due to constant entry of competitor in the Asian market, Vodafone did not receive its expected return (Agyapong 2011).  The quality improvement initiative is certainly a large one, which requires adequate amount of funds. However, in the middle of the process implementation, it had to lay-off the workforce to adjust the cost of implementation.

The above-mentioned discussion indicates two major challenges such as inappropriate training and development program and lack of quality planning. These two challenges delayed the implementation process and to resolve the issue, Vodafone had to make a hierarchical change in the management structure. The problem was the delay in upward and downward communication, which caused the disapproval of additional employee training. However, senior quality executives of Vodafone have been replaced with more skilled candidates who developed quality plan with periodical employee training programs (Kwenin, Muathe and Nzulwa 2013). Even though the employee resource was adjusted by cutting out the workforces but the quality plan program and employee periodical training helped to resolve the issue of delay in the implementation process. For 6 months from the delay, the employees were provided with regular training on the quality improvement process.

Moreover, the executives played a crucial role in encouraging employees about their job and duties. In the training program, apart from functional activities, the employees were informed about the value of improving the quality of service. Likewise, in order to resolve the issue of managerial commitment, newly assigned managers were given individual goals to achieve for their respective department. The managers of each branch in UK were told to provide a detail customer feedback about the services. Each supervisor was assigned with certain number of employees who worked in their respective department. Moreover, the managers and supervisors of each department were asked to provide quarterly feedback report about performance improvement, which would cover employee performance, organizational overall performance, objectives achieved, issues occurred and other significant variables. Now the senior supervisors of quality improvement department compare the performance improvement report with historical data. This means that each quarterly report has been compared with the performance achieved in previous quarter. Now based on the growth rate, next initiatives were implemented. Nonetheless, the firm did not further face crisis in funds, as the lay-off in the workforce initially created additional pressure on the employees but the organized performance in the new hierarchical management did not create necessity of funds. TQM program was implemented within the previously developed schedule.

Conclusion 

The discussion presented above implies that, as Vodafone is a large organization with respect to resource and capability it has become easy for the firm to identify and resolve the issue within developed schedule. The implementation of TQM often creates difficulties such as lack of planning, fund crisis and internal issue such as lack of technological resource, improper leadership. However, in this context, the telecommunication brand Vodafone is a step ahead as it has the highest number of employees with the large market share. Thereby, any internal issue does not create much impact on major initiative. Nevertheless, in most of the cases, the major barriers are observed to be the lack of benchmarking as well as employee resistance to change. Thus, organization in any industry needs to think that benchmarking is an important tool to find out strength and weaknesses.

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