The Company and Organizational Issue to be Solved
Bluevine is a California-grounded fintech entity that offers online banking and monetary solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises. The company was established in 2013 by Eyal Lifshitz and continues to operate in California, Utah, and New Jersey (Wewege et al., 2). Bluevine is a private-owned firm with approximately $10 billion market capitalization (Wewege et al., 2). In addition, the venture has almost 487 employees and is ranked position 10 in providing fast working capital to businesses (Wewege et al., 2). The core competitors of Bluevine include MarketFinance, Novo, Funding societies, Instant Factoring, and Capital Float.
Bluevine has been dealing with an international issue associated with poor financial strategy services to retain its clients, which has reduced productivity and needs to be resolved. The company has no feasible structure concerning loan repayment by the defaulters, rendering it incapable of providing credits to the new customer base, resulting in extensive dissatisfaction (Otto et al., 2). In addition, the firm has a weak relationship with its clients as it has no effective internal processes regarding how loans could be applied and issued.
Analysis of Bluevine Organizational Culture
Notably, the corporate culture of Bluevine has contributed extensively to the fintech’s adversities regarding customer service due to the lack of a strategy to retrieve the defaulted credits. The increased client dissatisfaction has resulted in the deterioration of Bluevine shares in the stock market. The company has failed to adhere to its mission statement of empowering small ventures with innovative banking to make modern financial services accessible. In addition, the company management does not incorporate their vision statement of being a trusted brand offering tailored banking services, whereby people spend less time worrying about cash flow and archaic services. Therefore, from Bluevine’s actions, it is clear that the organizational culture concentrates on operational excellence instead of delivering high-quality customer services (Wewege et al., 2). Bleuvine executives must change corporate culture to address customer satisfaction and draft proper financial strategies to retain customers for increased company productivity.
Areas of Weakness
Significantly, the business entity faces internal weaknesses associated with Bluevine’s leadership. The management has fostered a culture focusing on operational excellence rather than customer-oriented, whereby the workers adhere to the company’s vision and mission statement to improve client contentment. The company’s management does not devise motivation strategies and teamwork to resolve the issue regarding customer engagement and satisfaction. The company leaders have not taken action to improve defaulters’ financial strategies for loan repayment to increase adequate credit flow in the facility.
Secondly, Bluevine has limitations on its credit schedule technology, which does not determine the time for repaying a certain loan by a given client (Otto et al., 2). Therefore, it becomes a challenge to process and issue loans to customers. Lastly, the workers lack sufficient customer skills to help them deal with the difficult situation of not acquiring new loans to expand their businesses.
Recommendation for Management to Solve Identified Weaknesses and Issues
As a consultant, there are various management recommendations or proposed solutions I suggest to solve the identified problems and weaknesses. Firstly, there is a need to revise Bluevine’s financial strategy by adjusting and extending loan reimbursement terms to curb the loan repayment issue. The clients will have ample time to consolidate cash and compensate Bluevine during an economic recession instead of defaulting (Wewege et al., 2).
Secondly, the management must adopt a customer-centric corporate culture to improve their satisfaction and embed teamwork spirit and motivation strategies towards increased productivity. Thirdly, Bluevine executives must implement policies, including annual training of workers, to equip them with customer service skills to handle clients effectively during difficult situations (Otto et al., 1). The company leadership must establish marketing policies to ensure the firm acquires new and retains old clients. Finally, the company management must develop and design an improved technology that monitors the repaid loan and credit score of customers who might be defaulters.
Sources
Otto, A. S., Szymanski, D. M., & Varadarajan, R. (2020). Customer Satisfaction and Firm Performance: Insights from Over a Quarter Century of Empirical Research. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(3), 543-564. Web.
Wewege, L., Lee, J., & Thomsett, M. C. (2020). Disruptions and Digital Banking Trends. Journal of Applied Finance and Banking, 10(6), 15-56. Web.