Challenges and Opportunities of Managing Productivity and Performance to Increase the Profit while focusing on the Sustainability of People and Planet

In any profit-oriented organization, the prime objective is to maximize the profitability such that the business is able to continue their operations without any hindrances while having a consistent growth. In a competitive business environment, ensuring the continuous profitability of the business is not an easy task (Ahmad, 2017). In addition to this challenge, the current global business setting enables customers with a high bargaining power and hence, organizations are required to focus on customer concern areas such as social and environmental well-being in addition to the focus required on the quality of the product or the service offered (Eccles, et al., 2014). As a result, businesses are required to focus on the triple-bottom-line sustainability to ensure the sustainable growth of the business.

Operations Management

For an organization to achieve high profits, the organization needs to focus on cutting down their costs while ensuring the increase of their sales and income. The process followed in efficiently and effectively managing the achievement of profits is known as Operations Management (OM) (Ahmad, 2017). Heizer et al. (2020) has defined OM as a set of cumulative tasks that generate value for the company by converting inputs into desired outputs by means of successfully managing the stakeholders involved, processes and standardizations followed. Over the time, with the changes in the business world the approach and the focus of OM has changed from a cost focused approach to a quality focused approach to a customization approach and to a globalization approach. In the globalization era of OM i.e. since 2005 up to now, apart from the focus on productivity and profits, OM is also focused on green supply chains, transnational organizations, sustainability in the value chain, corporate ethics etc. (Heizer , et al., 2020).

Triple Bottom Line Sustainability

The concept of Sustainability came into play with the Brundtland Report (1987) and continued as a topic of importance due to the increased awareness and pressure build-up by the world community as an issue of concern (The World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). Ever since the term ‘Sustainability’ has been given different definitions. Hart and Milsten (2003) has defined sustainability as the requirement of utilizing the existing social and environmental resources to satisfy the requirements of the current generation without compromising the availability of the said resources for the use of future generations.

The Triple-Bottom-Line (TBL) concept was first coined in 1997 by Elkington (1997) as a concept that expands sustainability beyond the original environmental considerations into a concept which encompasses profit, people and planet considerations.

Relationship between Operations Management, TBL Sustainability, Productivity and Performance Evaluation

With the increased awareness on the TBL sustainability concept, businesses are facing an emerging pressure to ensure the TBL sustainability within their value chains (Ambec & Lanoie, 2008; Seuring & Müller, 2008). Hence, sustainable operations management came into play by incorporating TBL concepts in to the existing business processes to ensure the sustainability of the business (Kleindorfer, et al., 2004).

To achieve sustainability, organizations need to identify the current performance status measured in terms of productivity of the business processes. Productivity can simply be defined as the ratio between the outputs and inputs and needs to be evaluated periodically to identify lagging bottlenecks and to implement corrective measures (Krugman, 1994). For organization focused on achieving the TBL sustainability, the performance needs to be evaluated based on the TBL considerations (Goel, 2010). The balance scorecard is a strategic performance measurement tool which focuses on learning and growth, business process, customer perspective and financial information and provides feedbacks based on historical performance data to assist in better decision making (Kaplan & David, 1996).

With the globalization of businesses the complexity of the value chains has increased hindering the traceability and thus questioning the process of monitoring value chain’s conformity with sustainability indices and performance parameters (Project Provenance Ltd, 2015). Technology comes into play at this point by enabling organizations to measure the performance with reliable data inputted in means of IoT and traceability enabled through technologies such as Blockchain and data analysis enabled with big data tools (Schoenherr & Speier-Pero, 2015; Arunachalam, et al., 2018)

Challenges and Opportunities of Managing TBL Sustainability

Businesses have ventured out of their home country to capitalize on the low cost and high quality sourcing options available outside. This has enabled them the opportunity of getting high quality products at lower prices thereby getting a cost advantage and a high bargaining power over suppliers (Kotabe & Murray, 2004). However, this also resulted in a certain set of challenges such as high lead times, delays in deliveries due to external factors like weather conditions, logistical considerations etc. (Ballou, et al., 2000) When sustainability is linked in to this scenario, the challenges escalates as the cost of sustainable raw materials are considerably higher due to high production costs, quality and research costs etc. Also, sustainability requires different certifications that conforms the organic nature, social and environmental well-being of the product which are additional costs and without proof of which today’s customers are not willing to pay the premium price for the sustainable product. To overcome such issues technologies such as Blockchain which enables traceability within end-to-end value chain and creative marketing concepts which emphasize on the sustainable nature of the product can be utilized (Seuring & Müller, 2008).

When implementing sustainability within a business, it requires initial investments for revamping business processes to include sustainability considerations, for procuring high quality sustainable raw materials, for technologies such as Blockchain, IoT etc. for tracing and evaluating sustainable performance. These results in higher costs in comparison to non-sustainability oriented business and also requires longer lead times to get desired outcomes from such implementations. Hence, clashes occur between short-term financial objectives and long-term financial objectives since short-term objectives need to be compromised for such implementation (George , 2019). Also, it should be noted that in organization’s where the employee performance evaluations are linked with short-term goals the tendency is higher for the employees to focus on the short-term goals such that their performance ratings are higher instead of focusing on the long term goals of sustainability (George , 2019). Hence, it should be noted that to encourage the employees towards sustainability their performance evaluations need to be linked with the sustainability measures in concern (Sajjad, et al., 2015).

When considering the environmental sustainability aspects, organizations are faced with the challenges of minimizing their carbon footprint, water usage, product wastage and energy output measures in means of electricity usage, heat generation etc. (Kleindorfer , et al., 2005). To overcome these challenges organizations like Unilever, Nestle etc. have implemented strategies such as green energy generation using factory bi-products, usage of recyclable and organic packaging materials, usage of plant based biodegradable raw materials in production, establishing carbon neutral operational sites etc. (Unilever, 2021; Nestle, 2021). Though global giants like the said companies have the capacity to implement such measures within their values chains, many of the other organizations have financial, technological, knowledge and skills limitations in implementing eco-friendly operations and requires partnering with the government or other sustainable institutions (Sebastian, et al., 2014).

In the aspect of people, organizations are required to focus on both internal and external stakeholders. With the increased customer pressure organizations are required to ensure social sustainability up to the supplier level to ensure the conformity of the suppliers for child labour laws, human rights violations, fair and safe work conditions (Saberi, et al., 2019). Due to the globalized network of suppliers, organization are facing the challenge of lack of traceability and the difficulty in conducting such supplier audits and communicating the same to the customer base. Hence, high cost technologies like Blockchain needs to be implemented which points back to the clash of short-term and long-term financial targets (Seuring & Müller, 2008). In the rapidly changing business environment, employees are required to upskill and reskill to become sustainable in their careers and organizations are required to provide employee with learning and growth opportunities to retain the employees with the firm (Smith, 2012). Also, while auditing the social aspects of the suppliers, organizations also needs to implement and strictly follow fair work policies that prevent gender discrimination and work places harassments. Corporates can gain a competitive advantage in recruitment by marketing the sustainability concerns of the organization and thereby attracting talented and like-minded individuals to the organization for sustainable work relationships (SHRM Foundation, 2012).

Many of the cutting edge technologies such as IoT, Big data analytics, Blockchain etc. can be utilized in achieving sustainability by means of accurate forecasting of customer demands to minimize wastages, enabling traceability within the value chain, in identifying energy and resource wastage bottlenecks, in implementing reusable technologies etc. (Schoenherr & Speier-Pero, 2015; Arunachalam, et al., 2018) However, many of the organization face issues in such implementations due to high initial investment required, unavailability of technological know-how, unavailability of skilled-human resources etc. (Arunachalam, et al., 2018).

Despite the availability of concepts and tools for ensuring the TBL sustainability, it should be noted that the commitment from the top leadership and linking performance evaluations to sustainability are mandatory for driving stakeholders towards TBL sustainability (Robinson & Malhotra, 2005; Sajjad, et al., 2015). The availability of government laws and regulations on sustainability also drives the business towards sustainable implementations (Brewer & Speh , 2001). However, it needs to be noted that these laws and regulations needs to be reachable to organizations of any capacity such that they are motivated towards sustainability (Wittstruck & Teuteberg, 2012).

Conclusion

It can be concluded that achieving TBL sustainability is a challenge for a business of any caliber but with right leadership and commitment from the employee base the task is not as draining as it seems.

References

Ahmad, Z., 2017. Profit Maximisation as an objective of a firm-A Robust Perspective. International Journal of Research in Finance and Marketing (IJRFM), 7(6), p. 217~219.

Ambec, S. & Lanoie, P., 2008. Does it pay to be green? A systematic overview. Academy of Management Perspectives, 22(4), pp. 45-62.

Arunachalam, D., Kumar, N. & Kawalek, J., 2018. Understanding big data analytics capabilities in supply chain management: Unravelling the issues, challenges and implications for practice. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Volume 114, pp. 416-436.

Ballou, R. H., Gilbert, S. M. & Mukherjee, A., 2000. New Managerial Challenges from Supply Chain Opportunities. ndustrial Marketing Management, Volume 29, pp. 7-18.

Brewer, P. & Speh , T., 2001. Adapting the balanced scorecard to supply chain management. Supply Chain Management Review , 5(2), p. 48–56.

Eccles, R. G., Ioannou, I. & Serafeim, G., 2014. The Impact of Corporate Sustainability on Organizational Processes and Performance. Management Science, , 60(11), pp. 2835-2857.

George , J., 2019. Evaluating Sustainability: Controversies,Challenges, and Opportunities. Evaluating Sustainability: Evaluative Support for Managing Processes in the Public Interest, Issue 162, p. 13–28.

Goel, P., 2010. Triple bottom line reporting: An analytical approach for corporate sustainability. ,. Journal of Finance, Accounting, and Management, 1(1), pp. 27-42.

Heizer , J., Render , B. & Munson , C., 2020. OPERATIONS MANAMGEMENT. 13th ed. Boston : Pearson.

Kaplan, R. S. & David, N. P., 1996. The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy into Action. 18th ed.. 18 ed. s.l.:Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Kleindorfer , P. R., Singhal, K. & Wassenhove, L. N. V., 2005. Sustainable Operations Management. Production and Operations Management Society, 14(4), p. 482–492.

Kleindorfer, P., Singhal, K. & Wassenhove, L., 2004. Sustainable Operations Management. Production and Operations Management., 14(4), pp. 482-492.

Kotabe, M. & Murray, J., 2004. Global sourcing strategy and sustainable competitive advantage. Industrial Marketing Management, 33(1), pp. 7-14.

Krugman, P., 1994. The Age of Diminished Expectations. 3rd ed. Cambridge: MIT.

Nestle, 2021. Environment : Nestle. [Online]
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Project Provenance Ltd, 2015. Blockchain: the solution for transparency in product supply chains. [Online]
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Robinson, C. & Malhotra, M., 2005. Defining the concept of supply chain quality management and its relevance to academic and industrial practice. International Journal of Production Economics, 96(3), pp. 315-337.

Saberi, S., Kouhizadeh, M., Sarkis , J. & Shen, L., 2019. Blockchain technology and its relationships to sustainable supply chain management. International Journal of Production Research, 57(7), pp. 2117-2135.

Sajjad, A., Eweje, G. & Tappin, D., 2015. Sustainable Supply Chain Management: Motivatorsand Barriers. Business Strategy and the Environment, Volume 24, p. 643–655.

Schoenherr, T. & Speier-Pero, C., 2015. Data Science, Predictive Analytics, and Big Data in Supply Chain Management: Current State and Future Potential. Journal of Business Logistics, 36(1), pp. 120-132.

Sebastian, T., Stefan, S. & Arnd, H., 2014. Reducing The Carbon Footprint Within Fast Moving Consumer Goods Supply Chains through Collaboration: The Manufacturers’ perspective. Journal of Supply chain Management, 50(4), pp. 44-61.

Seuring, S. & Müller, M., 2008. From a Literature Review to a Conceptual Framework for Sustainable Supply Chain Management. Journal of Cleaner Production, 16(15), pp. 1699-1710.

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Smith, D., 2012. How Employers Can Help Solve the Skills Gap. Harvard Business Review, 09 February.

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PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE

Target-Niche-Facebook

How Facebook helps to target a niche audience with Facebook Advertising

Facebook is the most famous social media network in the planet. It’s only second to Google from web ranking. If we consider facebook as a country it will be the 3^rd largest country in the world. With all these factors facebook has become a most attractive online advertising platform.

From following image we can understand power of face book advertising.

To carry out a facebook advertising campaign we just have to follow 03 simple steps,

Step 1: Create Facebook Page

Step 2: Connect with people

Step 3: Engage with quality content 

Creating the facebook page is a really simple task. Without any payment we can create facebook pages for our product / business or anything we want to promote.

After creating the page with all information including photos, we can invite the right audience to like your page. This is where facebook helps to target a niche audience. Using facebook advertisements’ options we can filter the total facebook users and identify right target audience.

This targeting process we can do base on several basics.

        1.General targeting

In here we can target smaller but specific audience or larger but more general audience.

         2. Location targeting

In this we can target our audience base on geographical location. So ads can publish targeting people who are living in specific country or a city.

         3. Age and birthday targeting

Here we can target exact audience with right age groups. Because product to product, brand to brand target age groups are different.

         4. Interest targeting

In this option we can identify people according to their likes and interest. It is major advantage for us. Because of this we can target exact consumers who are interesting/ like to similar types of products.

        5.Connection targeting

Under connection targeting we can target our existing consumers. Using this option we can keep good relationship with them.

so with all this facilities facebook advertising is the best way to catch and make relationship with target audience.because relative to other other advertising methods this is so specific and cost per rech is very low.

so just try this out for your product/event/brand promotion.

cheers!!

Usability analysis of MUSIC.LK.

Web development is an art which  is linking to science. When developing a web site the designer should have to look at on marketing view point also. Hove ever ultimately the web site should be a user friendly one.

Based on 25point website usability check list we can analyze user friendliness of any website. So based on that today I’m going to analyses one of famous entertainment website, “music.lk”.

Music.lk sri lanka’s number one online music provider gives the opportunity to surf millions of songs, thousands of artists. They mainly provide Sinhala/Tamil mp3 and Music Videos  Free Download facility for PC or Mobile. 

Their vision is to “increase the profile of Sri Lankan music world wide and to see that the benefits from the increased profile go back to artists and professionals in the music industry”

Now you have some idea about music.lk. So now it’s time to apply 25-point website usability checklist to  Music.lk. The 25 point checklist is divided into 4 roughly equal sections, namely Accessibility, Identity, Navigation, and Content.

Accessibility

Music.lk takes around 6 seconds to load its full home page. The loading time is fairly reasonable. Because the home page is contain with many videos and pictures. The main text color is white in the ash color background which visible and adequate. Font size and pattern is eye catching.

 

background color changes

When you move the cursor on top of each song/ main topic you could see the background color of that particular song is changing. And cursor mark also changes.

not‐found/404 page

The main drawback of this site is the “not‐found/404 page”. In that page does not have a link to home page or music.lk logo.

Identity

The logo

As you can see, company logo is placed on the upper left corner of the page. But its dose not has a tag line. From all the menus and pages it is possible to come back to the home page without any problem and the total home page is visible around 7 seconds. 

Music.lk is a well arranged web site. But to find details about music.lk there does not has clear direct path “information or about us “. You can find those details under “contact” tab. So I think music.lk should develop direct tab for “info”.

As I mentioned above, under “contact” tab we can see both info & contact details. Under contact details, telephone numbers, email address n office address r available.

  

Navigation

Main navigation is so easy as the main tabs namely, Home, Music videos, Audio songs, DJ & remixes, Tamil, Artist, Blogger and Contact are placed visibly on the top strip of the page. Apart to that main navigations in right end of the strip have direct links to their facebook page, youtube channel and Google plus.

top strip

All song titles are with the particular picture of the music video. So its easy to identify the songs.

Music.lk logo has link to home page as when we click on the logo it'll automatically take us to the homepage. Search bar is available at the top ribbon in the right corner because of that users can find any song by name/artist.

Music.lk has many sponsors. So that it has many advertisements. But music.lk team has nicely positioned those ads with minimum disturbance to users. But its better if they can keep their logo top of the site, rather than under the advertisements.

Content

As I mentioned earlier meager headings are clear and descriptive. In the home page under the heading, have 9 new top rated songs tumble. Behind that tumbles we can see changing images which related to those top rated songs.

Home page

When you click on a song you’re going to download page. In there have all detail about the song such as artist, Music, Lyrics writer, Video Director, number of downloads n views. In latter part of that page visitors can leave comments about the particular song.  

There are no pop-ups in music.lk. But can see number of advertisements.

The URL is so mining full. It’s describes the content as it is.

 Finally according to my knowledge Music.lk can be known as one of best websites in Sri Lanka even though it has fewer number of problems.