Irwing Promise

Delivering the Irving Promise

Background

Irving Oil Limited started out as a small service station in 1924 and was known for its exemplary customer service. Over the years it expanded to a large refinery with a production capacity of 330,000 barrels a day. In 2002 it won the Clean Air Excellence award as a result of its low sulfur fuels. The company was comprised of 3 business units – Processing and Transport, Business to Business and Business to Consumer. The Convenience Retail (CR) group, part of the Business to Consumer unit was responsible for 210 company-owned retail convenience stores. The traditional evaluation system was not adequate to measure its performance. The goal was to select appropriate measures that would influence the behaviour of convenience retail workers in an effort to create superior customer experience. The challenge for Irving Oil was implementing its differentiation strategy. The organization adopted the dynamic scorecard process to help focus on the key performance drivers at individual stores.

Why is the scorecard tool a good device for the CR business? Are the linkages between strategy and key success factors strong?

The scorecard is a good tool to measure for CR business as it helps management with the evaluation of the key performance measures. Through assessment of the effectiveness of the financial and non financial measures it would enable CR to achieve a breakthrough performance with customers. The tool provides measurement indicators that are simple and easy to understand by store managers. The Irving Oil value map was used for Convenience Retail to indicate how the performance system was linked to the overall goal of economic profit. Linkages between people, processes and products and services that create customer experiences were developed that guided customer behaviour and produced the desired business results.

Looking at Exhibit 6, mark each goal as “actionable or measurable” and see if there are better...