1.

0 Company Profile

Pan Asia Banking Corporation PLC is a public limited liability company incorporated in Sri
Lanka on 6th March 1995 under the company’s act of No.17 of 1982 and reregistered under the
companies act No.07 of 2007. A licensed commercial bank and listed in the Colombo stock
exchange.

Despite the challenging economic conditions Pan Asia Bank has shown positive signs towards
growth, its major strengths are its Human capital and Liquidity management which in turn have
contributed towards reaching many milestones.

Company’s unique mission is to create the largest satisfied customer base by providing
professional, personalized, secure, quality banking and financial services, using modern
technology and innovative products. With excellent service quality standards and personalized
services to its customers has allowed them to widen the customer portfolio.

Key Highlights

 Record earnings: Gross Income grew by 19% to reach Ts. 3862 Mn and Operating
profit up by 69% to Rs. 874 Mn.
 Strong Balance Sheet : Total Assets grew by 14% to Rs. 21,559 Mn
 Customer Deposits grew by 13% to Rs. 16,329 Mn
 Recognition Award: Ranaviru Harasara project was awarded with a “Merit” from
the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce.
 A year of change with several key changes in personnel, processes and
improvement in controls.

Today Pan Asia’s branch network has widen to 37 online branches and is embarking on an
ambitious branch expansion programme by expanding the services across the country specially
in the North and East and has plans for significant growth for the next two years.
1.1 Market Orientation analysis at Pan Asia Banking Corporation PLC
Catering to the ever changing wimps and fancies of the customers is a strenuous task. Businesses
which involves in mostly services have to differentiate among themselves by means of
developing innovative products, excellent quality, and effective service to its customers.
Marketing is not all about selling and selling is one of the crucial aspects of marketing, today
companies tend to focus more on selling, failing to look at other important areas of marketing.

In any organizational context it is vital to understand the orientation of the business i.e. whether
the company is focused on mass marketing ideally known as Production Oriented, or
concentrating on a particular product that offer the most quality, performance and innovative
features i.e. Product Oriented.

Aggressive selling and promotional efforts to sell its product to the customers is identified as a
Selling Oriented organization. However orientations such as production concept are disappearing
due to the dynamic changes in tastes and fashions, customers now prefer varieties of goods and
services in the market rather not opting for a standardized product.

Nowadays organizations are more focused on “sense and respond” philosophy rather “make and
sell” oriented, simply is not to find the right customers for the products but the right products for
the customers.

With reference to the above analysis it can be noted that Banking as a service can be classified
more towards a selling concept and Pan Asia Bank can be recognized as a company that bases its
operations on selling that speaks about promoting the existing products using aggressive sales,
promotional campaigns. The idea behind a selling concept is to ensure there are more sales to
more people more often to make more money in order to make more profit.
However a selling concept has its own share of limitations, Since the concept assumes that the
customers are not conscious and that they will buy what the advertisements and promotions tell
them to buy but in reality it is not so the case. It does not take into account the customer needs, it
just focuses on what the firm produces and ways to sell that product. Marketing that is based on
hard selling would face risks means that customers who are interested into buying the
product/service would anyway like it and buy it and if they do not they would not return.

Hence in order to overcome such issues it is advisable to adopt a more marketing related/oriented
concept in the organization this would ensure a smooth operation. The marketing concept is the
key to achieving organizational objectives being more effective than its rivals in the industry in
delivering, creating and communicating an added value to its customers.

Building a Marketing oriented atmosphere at Pan Asia Banking Corporation (PABC)

The major feature of the marketing oriented organization is that they are aimed to stay closer to
the customers and ahead of their competitors. The reason is that the basic aim of these
organizations is to attract the customers.

There are four major characteristics which define the marketing oriented organizations including
shared values, organization, strategy and stakeholders.
 Firstly, all decisions of these companies consider the customers first and they share the
common value of superior quality of products.
 Secondly, their organizational structure has very few layers and their policies are not very
difficult.
 Thirdly, the strategy of a market oriented organization is long term, flexible and
participative.
 Finally, they consider the expectations of the stakeholders before making any important
decision
 Figure 1.1 Leasing Advertisement

1 % Leasing Promotion was a recently launched product at Pan Asia Bank and it is becoming a
successful venture.
Introduction to such new Proactive Marketing Orientated thinking are signals indicating that the
bank is making inroads in becoming a more marketing oriented firm.
1.2 Managing brands and Building Brand Loyalty

Targeting the mind sets of the customer the tag line being “Think Service Think Pan Asia
Bank”.

Perhaps the most distinctive skill of a marketer is to create, enhance, maintain and protect
brands. In today’s world customers do not buy the product but they ask for the “brand” itself, this
shows the significance and the importance of building and managing a brand, a strong brand
name provides a distinct competitive advantage, helps strengthen the customer base by attracting
potential customers and retain the existing ones, ultimately leads to customer and brand loyalty.

A successful brand would fit into the strategic management process, involves the design and
implementation of marketing activities and programs to build, measure, and manage brands to
maximize their value. The strategic brand management process covers

1. Identifying and establishing brand positioning.

2. Planning and implementation brand marketing.
3. Measuring and interpreting brand performance.
4. Growth and sustaining brand value.
The main focus should be to position Pan Asia Bank’s tag line which is “Think Service Think
Pan Asia Bank” into the minds of the customers. By doing so it helps the company to become
more marketing oriented rather not being sales oriented.

Brand Positioning is a key factor in ensuring loyalty relationships. Since the brand itself has
shown positive signs in the recent past adopting the aforesaid strategic brand management
process would further enlighten the company’s marketing operations and the brand itself.

Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) projects are essential in order to develop brand equity
Pan Asia Bank as a brand should work on more towards addressing the needs of its customers to
build their brand image as whole.

Ranaviru Product has been one of the corner stone’s in building the companies brand name “Pan
Aisa Bank” The product has managed to capture the market who were mainly the three armed
forces and the police. Customers feel convenient banking at Pan Asia since they provide a more
customized service.

However brand focus has to made in building the brand as a whole, more attention has to be
made in towards a integrated approach.

1.3 Approaches to Market Dynamics

Gaining a sustainable competitive advantage is essential in today’s organizational context in

doing so, would help the firm hold on to what is called the “Brand Loyalty”. Mostly innovation
and creativity play a vital role in gaining competitive advantage.

This competitive advantage can only be achieved by identifying the dynamics in the market. The
first mover in identifying the dynamics would have a bigger say in the market Understanding the
business, opportunities available in the market and how the products and services pile up against
the competition is vital.
The market dynamics can be analyzed using the concept of 4ps’ namely Product, Price, Place
and Promotion.

Product – due to dynamic changes in tastes and fashions it’s essential that the organization
develops new product and services on a regular basis or differentiate the existing product.
moreover retaining the existing customer is much more important than attracting new customers.
Retaining customers is a challenging task since competition for banking is booming and products
are in wide range of varieties it’s very much easy for a customer to switch. However in such
situations Pan Asia Bank differentiates itself by providing a personalized customer service. This
would enhance the relationship between the customer and the bank leading to customer loyalty.

Price – since banking is a service oriented firm and products offered are similar to other banks
more concern is placed on differentiation rather pricing.

Place – Location and convenience is an essential tool in customers and the business perspective
surface meaning of place would be the distributional channel however for a service oriented firm
“place” would be the mindset of the customers. Pan Asia sets in high service quality standards in
handling customers. The unique mix of services offered to the customers truly positions Pan
Asia’s tag line “Think Service, Think Pan Asia Bank” into the customers mind.

Promotion – Using the right mix of the promotional tool is a key. Uniqueness of Pan Asia’s
Promotional tools is such that it targets various age groups in various ways which is in line with
the core products of the bank.

E.g. Lahiru – children’s account

Hence the above analysis indicates the precise market dynamics that the bank has adapted
throughout the years.

1.4 Analyzing the New Product Development Process at Pan Asia Bank

The New Product Development process at PABC was analyzed by taking into consideration of
the recently launched product on 1% leasing. Before the introduction, the Leasing was more or
less traditionally based merely following the other players in the market thanks to some excellent
screening and test run procedures have created a competitive edge over rival firms.

In order to clearly understand the whole process certain literature was used in explaining the
concept behind the new product development.

Figure 1.2 New Product Development Process

Idea Generation
The Idea Generation for the product/service of 1 % leasing at PABC was carried out by spending
resources on to SWOT, Research and Development and by interviewing sales executives. A
Detailed SWOT proved the team to be more positive in making the product a success.
Brainstorming sessions were also carried out by the corporate management the results of the
SOWT were identified at the Cooperate Management Meeting and a summary was presented
with an opportunity analysis.

Idea Screening
The cause of carrying out an idea screening is to leave out the “not so good” ideas and thereby
not allocating resources to achieve them. Usually the screening process will be based on
covering areas such as target market, growth forecasts, competition and the feasibility.

Concept Development and Testing

Concept development is an essential stage in the new product development process this usually
takes place at Pan Asia Bank once selecting the best idea from the screening process. This speaks
about mostly the product engineering
E.g. Features in the product that has to be incorporated, benefits of the product to its customers
and will the customer get to know about the product and more importantly the reaction of the
customers.
This testing is based on few samples within certain geographical locations and covering certain
types of income earners.

Business Analysis
Once the Concept and the testing is carried out, estimations of the customer feedback and the
predicted volumes of sales are identified. Apart from setting up the feedbacks the team analyses
the profitability and breakeven point.
Market Testing

This is the stage where the product/service is developed and placed on “test run” crucial stage of
the product development where careful considerations should be placed in ensuring the product
is being tested to the intended target market or else it would be a failure if it is not focused
properly.

This helps the bank in understanding the acceptance level of the product/service and would help
the organization by doing the necessary adjustments prior to the launch this would in turn
prevent failure.

Pan Asia though since it’s a service oriented firm the test marketing takes the form of focus
groups and customer interviews and importantly trade shows are the ways and means of carrying
out market testing.

Commercialization

This is when the final product is launched done with advertisements and with some promotional
tools to grasp the eye of the customer. After sales services are equally important since it is the
ways and means of retaining the customers.

The above identified processes are the step that is carried out at Pan Asia when it comes to new
product development. However it does not come to a standstill the banks critically evaluates the
impact it creates on the other wide range of product portfolio furthermore a value analysis is
carried out both internally and externally.

In addition the New Product Development Process is a more traditional and theory based.
Company does not necessarily follow the exact steps in it, depending on the type of
organizations certain areas in the process can be ignored in order to reduce the process time.
1.5 Recommendations on Improving the New Product Development Process at Pan
Asia Bank

The development of new and improved products is of utmost important in order to succeed in
today’s competitive environment. The questions raise is that whether the companies are
successful and profitable enough with the new product efforts and whether the process connects
with success and profitability.

Research tells that best performing companies turn their new products in to money making
portfolios. But fail to monitor and don’t measure the performance and are unaware on how well
the product is progressing.

Companies tend to not focus in measuring the new product development process

1. Organizations fail to measure the product success rate in methodical way or find it
difficult to adhere to the budgets and schedules for single projects for the company as
a whole.
2. Post Launch Review is a key area that the Bank should focus on since this is an area
where many companies fail to look at.
3. Since new product development team does not whole responsible for the performance
results of their projects hence accountability should be passed on to them.
4. New Product development goals have to be part and partial of the Management
personal objectives that has to be achieved. E.g. introducing it into the Balance Score
Card of the Management.
5. The process itself has to be measured in determining how well the process is
accountable and successful.

Careful consideration has to be placed on the above areas by the management and the suggested
recommendations can be adopted to avoid failures in the New Product Development process.