Quick Trip Case Study

Quick Trip Case Study

Quick Trip (QT) Corporation is a series of over 500 stores founded in 1958 by Chester Cadieux and Burt Holmes. The company operates mainly in Tulsa, but it has offices in the Southern United States. In 2011, the company had planned to open 33 new stores in the existing markets and North Carolina, which was perceived to be a new market. Each year, the company earns approximately $9.16 billion. This number has made Forbes rank it as the top-earning private company in the United States. Quick Trip aims at providing convenience to its customers and be on the highest level through opening up more locations in high volume.

Quick Trip Operation Strategy

To actively gain a competitive advantage in terms of sustainability, the company focuses on making sure its customers receive the best services. It does this by using customer-driven strategies such as providing the customers with the best possible gasoline products and other things the customers might require as they travel. Likewise, they are opening up new stores around the country to maintain the convenience factor while improving their sales to appear on top of the competition. Furthermore, QT has training packages for their employees to make sure that they offer excellent service to their customers. On top of training, they include grooming of employees to ensure they learn about behavior, something that most customers love. They operate on values such as “be the best” “never be satisfied” and “do the right thing” to ensure they successfully operate their stores by making minor operations better when compared to their competitors.

Operationalizing these strategies makes the company retain its competitive advantage when it comes to value, focus and cost, enabling it to maintain its importance within the market. QT provides customers with the best services in the industry and affordable rates when compared to their competitors. By doing so, the company is in a position to maintain customer loyalty that ensures its competitive advantage is sustained.

Furthermore, their employee appearance and cleanliness also promotes the company’s competitive advantage. With a proper uniform with a visible tag, the employees appear neat, and customers can identify who served them. They are, further, not allowed to use cell phones to make sure their attention is only at customer service. In terms of cleanliness, they ensure that their restrooms, parking lot, sidewalks, and floors are clean. The high-quality services they offer to customers are what boost their sales to be higher than that of their competitors; hence, increasing their market value within the convenience stores market.

Operation management activities and customer experience

There are several operations management at Quick Trip that helps improve customer experience. They offer speedy and immediate delivery of service in a neat and tidy environment. With such a situation, customers feel comfortable and safe without a feeling of inconvenience. In all their stores, the inventory is similarly arranged with the same layout design to enable the fast and immediate delivery of service. Customers can access whatever they want quickly. All workers at QT are allowed to access the cash register of the company and share it. Several companies tried to copy what QT was doing with their inventory. Still, the store manager concluded in a statement that the competitor was not in a position to beat their level of stability.

The stability was maintained by the company using two systems, namely, Daily Activities Worksheet (DAW) and Daily Shoppers Program (DSP). DAW plays the role of assisting managers in making sure all their activities are completed. It is comprised of three parts; namely, the timing of register, work is done, and the work related to cleaning stores and throwing away trash. The employee then records the task completed in a worksheet that can be viewed with everyone. DAW makes sure that work is completed in a proper sequence. To make sure that the appropriate course is maintained, QT hires hidden shoppers who are given the task of checking the order routine specification at least once every week. Their identity is not revealed to any employee working in their stores to make sure the mission is achieved. Without such laid out plans, the company is bound to perform poorly when it comes to customer experience.

Operation Management Challenges and the Solutions

QT’s operation manager faces several challenges. One of the most challenging ones is fall of inventory. In every three months, the auditor’s record is supposed to be filled with stock and the most selling inventory filled after forty-five days. Every manager, during their shift, is supposed to record inventory. Sometimes, the level of sales might contradict with what is recorded in the stock. This is attributed to the negligence of managers while recording the inventory; hence, many stockpiles go to waste as a result of this mistake.

However, the issue can be solved by maintaining an online entry system of inventory (Kleindorfer et al. 2015). The system will indicate all the entries submitted by the managers. The quantity of sold stock and volume of what is restocked form part of the entries. All the managers are required to enter the content in the system during their shifts. Whoever goes against the policy or enters wrong details will suffer heavy penalties

The other operation management challenge that faces QT’s operation manager is organizing every employee’s activities within the stores. Due to the company’s higher demand, employees are faced with a lot of pressure. They are supposed to complete assigned duties within the stipulated timeframe. For that reason, they feel overwhelmed and burdened; hence, an employee might opt to quit because of a stressful workspace.

This challenge can be solved by providing the manager with some sort of flexibility during their shifts. Flexibility allows them to mingle with the workers encouraging them orally (Kleindorfer et al. 2015). Furthermore, the company should offer benefits to the employees that would motivate them to perform better and retain their services.

Quick Trip Value Chain

QT pays much attention to its supply chain by making sure that their consumers are treated right by providing the right services alongside convenience. They also make sure that the quality of their products, especially gasoline, is high compared to that of their competitors. To ensure they attract returning customers, the company makes sure their network of stores are highly maintained, offering a cleaner and attractive environment for the consumers.

Effects of the value chain on quality

The effective supply chain management of the company has affected the quality of their products positively. Customers are happy with the products and services that they offer, which gives them a better position within the market. The value chain of the company consists of materials collected from their collaborative partners, save everything in their inventory which is then transferred to their stores and later on made available to the consumers.

Effects on value creation

The value creation of the company is affected positively by the supply chain. A strong image of the company is displayed in the market when their employees work potentially. Furthermore, their increase in sales shows how much the company is enjoying a competitive advantage within the market. Likewise, the company offers customers with excellent services hence impacting the market value of QT because more people are participating in their deals which increase their sales.

Effects on customer satisfaction

The ratio of customer satisfaction is very high in Quick Trip. This is attributed to the quality of services they have together with effective employee performance. The value chain of the company gives room for consumer satisfaction. They aim to provide the best to their customers, something that is being enabled by the perfect supply chain of the firm. Quick Trip offers some benefits to its customers, such as discount offers and coupons that will make them come back again in the future.

Performance Measurements

Quick Trip makes use of various tools to measure the performance of their workers and the company at large. These performance measurement tools make sure that the company gets a sense of how it is performing and highlight any problems that might hinder the operations of the company. One of them is the evaluation technique used to assess employee performance. To accomplish the evaluation, they make use of tools such as daily worksheets used by managers to assign employees tasks and evaluate their routine during working hours. Using this tool helps the manager to assess the workforce of an employee together with how they relate with the customers in the day.

360-degree feedback tool is another tool QT uses to evaluate the performance of their workforce. The tool is used to confirm the performance of the employees in a specific time frame allocated differently for each employee, depending on the position one holds. To make sure that the evaluations are fair and accurate, employees are evaluated by those directly above or below them. The evaluation information is stored in an internal network of a store and employees are in a position to log in and find out how their store is performing against the other stores. In case an employee performance drops, the management team of the company holds a conversation with the employee to help them improve their service. Serious measures are then taken if the employee does not show any signs of improvement.

Performance Measurements that can be used by QT

Even though the company has laid out other techniques to check performance, they can add up other techniques that can help ensure the exceptional performance of the employees. One of the techniques is management by objectives. The technique is used by managers to give goals to the employees (Franceschini et al. 2013). Putting it to practice will make the employees complete tasks within the stipulated time. When the tasks are well done then, the management can give rewards and benefits after a certain period. Including rewards and benefits will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the workforce in any given working environment.

Another technique is the use of Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS) method. This is a method that is used to define the rating of an employee’s performance. In other words, it indicates an employee performance behavior wise (Franceschini et al. 2013). It will help the company to rank their workers concerning their performance and abilities hence creating a situation where the employee knows their roles and the skills required to complete specific tasks.

Technologies applied by Quick Trip in Service Operations and their role in Value Chain

In the current technological world, many defrauders emerge amongst the population. Quick Trip has suffered fraudulent activities where defrauders take essential details of customers using credit cards for purposes of stealing cash from them. The company has introduced a system called “Pump Shield” to safeguard customers from fraudsters. When an unaccredited person makes use of a credit card, the pump shield produces a beeping sound and the pump instantly stops. This prevents the fraudster from performing any further fraudulent activities at the gas pump of Quick Trip stores.

Another technology is the automated system that records the performance of employees. It helps the company check the status of the employees at work. When employees realize that there is a system that is checking on their performances, a sense of responsibility is created as well as a sense of being answerable to any act committed.