Streamlining
Administration
Business plan administration
Over the past five months, What's NewS has produced detailed reports on our plans
to implement the customer focus strategy in the Food and Agribusiness, Health
Care, Investment Banking, Private Banking and Corporate Finance sectors. Each of
these general plans has far-reaching administrative implications and they will have
to be implemented by specific, rapid, and streamlined operational means.
'We are confronted with a wide range of
simultaneous challenges,' explains
operations chief Henk van der Stelt. 'We
need to efficiently administer our limited
human and financial resources in order to
address them all.' For one thing, general
managers need to leap over a number of
immediate hurdles associated with the
introduction of a common European
currency, plus those tied to the so-called
"millennium" computer bomb. Then there
are pressing regulatory requirements - such
as CAD II - to contend with. Throughout,
the world will continue to spin on, and
innovative technologies as well as rapidly-
evolving markets will be opening new
avenues for business growth. These, too,
must be captured in an optimally efficiënt
way.
GMA's organization scheme
GMA
Henk van der Stelt
RACE
all European
offices
RACA
Beijing
Taiwan
India
Malaysia
Thailand
Vietnam
New Zealand
COO's
Len Steffen
lan Armour
William Padula
Cindy Kwong
Cheng Miang Song
Davbid Owen
K.M.Lee (Shanghai)
Victor den Hoedt
(Indonesia)
Hans van derWeerd
(NDS)
Head Office Utrecht
Bert Bruggink (Control)
Erny Kahle (Global IT)
Victor Cuyckens (Global OPS)
Robert Wolthuis (Secretary)
Barbera Carroll (GAO-IB)
Adrian Whiteman (GAO-IPB)
George Heinrich (Cura^ao)
Andrew Courtney (Guemsy)
Philippe Legrand (Hong Kong)
Thierry Collet (Luxembourg)
MarcTomchek (Singapore)
Hans Peter Weust (Zurich)
Bob Westhoff repr.Global IT)
ACI
ACI: Administration Committee IPB
GMA: Global Management Team Administration
IPB: International Private Banking
RACA: Regional Administration Committee Asia
RACE: Regional Administration Committee Europe
DELIVERING QUALITY
The many administrative consequences of
our ambitious strategie policy - and
additional issues including Euro,
millennium, regulation and new technology
- are directly addressed in a new
Administration Strategy Paper. It aims to
translate general objectives into concrete
and efficiënt operational modes. 'This has
to be seen as a major, business-driven
initiative,' says Van der Stelt. 'If we fail to
adopt intelligent administrative procedures,
then we might as well put on our hats and
coats to go home; we need to be able to
consistently deliver the high quality
products and services our clients have come
to expect.'
GREATEST ASSETS
Although Van der Stelt is a realist and
acknowledges the magnitude of the
challenges that we face in trying to keep
pace and set trends in the fast-moving arena
of contemporary banking, he also draws
confidence from the way we have already
transformed ourselves to date. 'Previously
we had a very local approach to
administrative and operational challenges:
our organization was like a federation of
islands. Why? Two years ago, those of us in
Utrecht couldn't even e-mail our colleagues
in New York!' This has changed - thanks in
no small part to a superlative network of
staff. Human resources remain our greatest
asset, he points out; and as Rabobankers
are progressively armed with the latest
technological tools, enormous opportunities
beckon on the horizon ahead.
WIDENING POWERS
Specifically, the newly-approved strategy
plan establishes a Global Management
Team Administration (CïMA) with
widened powers to lead and manage the
crucial process of operational and IT-
related change within Rabobank
International, lts members include Henk
van der Stelt and the Chief Operations
Officers (COO's) of the six largest offices,
as well as their counterparts within
Henk van der Stelt.
Investment Banking, from Private
Banking, and from the Global IT, Control
and Operations sectors. It meets every six
weeks in different offices throughout the
network, and its members are committed
to devoting at least one-quarter of their
time to GMA-related administrative issues
of 'office exceeding' global concern.
SHARPENING RESPONSIBILITIES
One notable feature of the new setup is the
way it redefines the old, hierarchical
management style, where the COO of any
given office in the network reported directly
(and exclusively) to the general manager of
the office concerned. Henceforth, COO's
will be responsible not only to their general
managers but also (simultaneously) to the
chairman of the GMA as well. The t
philosophy underlying this shift is simple: in'
order to provide our customers with
superlative service in complex and fast
rnoving global markets, pressing
administrative issues have to be thrust to the
top of the agenda as soon as they are
identified. Then they must be rapidly and
economically addressed. We need to
accelerate time-to-market, organizational
flexibility, adaptiveness, and efficiënt
networking. The aim is to align business
and administrative procedures and to strike
an optimum balance so that strategie issues
are dealt with globally by the GMA, while
operational challenges are addressed by the
offices at local level. The composition of the
GMA has been redesigned to include
members of the regional administrative
committees for Asia and Europe (RACA
and RACE respectively) and for private
banking (ACI). This is illustrated in the
organization scheme printed below. One
advantage of this structure, says Robert
Wolthuis, secretary of the GMA, is that it
enables a rich cross-fertilization of ideas.
