A company that desires to realize sustainable growth as a globally competitive company needs to set clear goals and conduct fair performance indicator management. In line with this, we interviewed the Business Management Team, which is solidifying the foundations for becoming a Great Global Brand Company by implementing their management tasks. Let's see the stories of those who are contributing to improving the quality of management through objective and transparent supervision.

For a company run by various organizations, setting clear goals and efficiently managing short- and long-term indicators for those goals works as an essential growth driver. Launched last year, the Business Management Team has contributed to the reduction of unnecessary investments and the improvement of profitability and business quality through business management for the holding company and its subsidiaries.

The team's responsibilities are largely divided into performance management and management of the group's domestic and international subsidiaries. In the past, the team focused on group business target management, performance management (PM) and strategic task operation. Recently, with the growing share of global business, the team has expanded its role by establishing standards for business management of subsidiaries and monitoring their performance. In addition, this expansion is being extended to more areas of the operation of subsidiaries, including the management of their performance and profits/budgets, inventory and receivables.

"The Business Management Team does not have many members but this small number of team members sets the standards for performance management and also do their best to establish infrastructure to elevate the quality of business management. Our team regards it important to perform our duties through active communication based on the maximum possible respect for autonomy."

The Business Management Team always gives priority to securing the appropriateness, clarity and objectivity of the indicators based on which various management tasks are performed. In the process of setting indicators for this, they collect the main activities by organization, have meetings with the representatives of relevant teams, and strive to reflect the on-site situations as much as possible. In particular, with the growing number and importance of international subsidiaries, the team will continuously implement the process of improving an understanding of the sites by visiting them in preparation for a variety of site situations that are difficult to grasp in Korea.

Nevertheless, those indicators may not reflect all the opinions of the on-site workers who actually perform tasks. As it is impossible to establish a standard that satisfies everyone, the team is committed to strengthening fairness to satisfy more people. They strive to establish performance indicators and targets based on the most possible objective grounds and continuously manage the process of reaching such targets in sound ways, thus obtaining confidence in business.

It is true that some areas of business are measurable in terms of prices, but there are also many areas that cannot be measured in such a way. For example, while the performance of a sales team can be quantified, that of a support team cannot. This is because many of the indicators for a support team are qualitative in nature. In evaluating how much the activities of a team contribute to sales and profits, which is the final result for the team's company, it is often difficult to select indicators depending on the characteristics of the activity. Even if such a contribution is measurable, spending too much on the costs and resources to do so will give no benefit. As seen above, it is very challenging to conduct assessment and management throughout the group based on consistent standards. A good example is the performance management of support teams, as mentioned earlier. As to support teams, therefore, external assessment rather than internal assessment is conducted in order to secure the objectivity of quality assessment based on qualitative indicators. By doing so, the objectivity of assessment according to the business characteristics of the target team can be raised.

The performance assessment method of the group is divided into four combinations in terms of short-term and long-term, and result and process. Currently the Business Management Team conducts performance management activities based on a few items: performance management for measuring short-term results, strategic tasks to check short-term processes, and Must-Do Initiatives to check long-term processes. Of them, the importance of the Must-Do Initiatives, which refers to the group-wide tasks to be performed in order to grow bigger, is continuously growing. Must-Do Initiatives are the result of an in-depth contemplation in 2013 inspired by the saying "Greatness depends on consistent small acts" by Jim Collins, author of Great by Choice. The eleven Must-Do Initiatives are the business principles all of us must follow to become a Great Global Brand Company.

"For the past three years, these Must-Do Initiatives have seen some changes, including improvement of indicators, re-establishment of operating processes and standards, and expansion of operating range. With the growing share of our global business, the management scope for innovative products, new products, inventory and stores recording deficits has expanded to the global market, with a project for establishing and improving global demand and supply systems under way. As its importance grew further this year, the scope of share and assessment targets also expanded accordingly."

Jung Sejin, leader of the Business Management Team emphasizes that Must-Do Initiatives are our obligation not a recommendation. These items contain the basic elements which the entirety of the group must follow in order to improve the quality of business management, and solidifying the basics by complying with them will lead to the healthy growth of the company.

In the past, Must-Do Initiatives were assessed in terms of the rate of achievement. From this year, however, the pass/fail criteria have been applied to each item. In the existing assessment based on overall achievement rate, the overall average rate is increased by only a few items having a high achievement rate. Thus, it is impossible to check the compliance with specific requirements. As such, the team plans to improve on this weakness. This is based on the idea that every item of the Must-Do Initiatives must be followed as they are all important. This is because Must-Do Initiatives are not simply for assessment, but are actually the core elements required to maintain and evolve the company.

Another important role of the Business Management Team is to re-establish regulations on empowerment and arbitrary decision for domestic and international subsidiaries in order to improve the group's business management system. This is aimed to strengthen responsible management and create working environments for efficient business by ensuring proper empowerment. Through this, we can clarify the responsibilities and authorities for business, and strengthen the transparency of decision making processes.

"As the operating characteristics or size of each organization vary, it is always challenging to establish unified regulations that harmonize such differences, so is the process of promoting awareness of the importance of empowerment and arbitrary decision. Nevertheless, we overcame such difficulties through active communication. As a result of collecting and exchanging opinions through many discussions, we could establish regulations on empowerment and arbitrary decision that properly reflect the variety of interests."

To enable more efficient and accurate performance management, in November, the Business Management Team will open a new system through which it can collect targets and results systematically while simultaneously acquiring incentives. The project for developing a performance management system has been running for quite a long time, and now the team is about to finally produce the outcome. Once deployed, the new system is expected to improve the speed, objectivity and accuracy of performance management by organization.

"In the past, we calculated performance-based bonus and incentives based on manually-prepared documentation, so it was difficult to respond quickly on schedule unless with a high possibility of error. The new system has been developed to focus on the convenience of on-site employees. In November, the basic features of the system will be released first, and after updates and patches, you will be able to see the final version early next year."

Striving to perform management activities to improve the quality of business management in more fair and objective ways, the Business Management Team puts the values "Openness" and "Integrity" first. To put them into practice, the team plans to gradually implement and strengthen a number of various tasks, including improvement of KPI (Key Performance Indicator) of support teams, in terms of performance management, and the establishment of regulations on empowerment and arbitrary decision for international subsidiaries and global feasibility studies based on the establishment of standards for export prices, in terms of subsidiary management.

"There is a saying 'a house of cards'. The basic purpose of Qualitative Business Practices is to create profitability. However, it is more important to go through the proper process until you achieve such profits. Without this, even a huge growth will collapse easily. I am assured that only when the external growth of a company is based on robust 'Qualitative Business Management,' the company can survive for a long time."

Aiming to establish more fair and elaborate principles for business management, the Business Management Team is carrying out the necessary contemplations and attempts right at this moment. Their efforts will provide reliable guidelines for us to build our strength to become a competitive global company, laying the foundations for sustainable growth.