Improving Driver Efficiency in Cab Companies

This assignment examines the need for innovation in the cab industry, focusing on how training can improve driver efficiency. It emphasizes the importance of analyzing training needs and providing drivers with skills like online order management and customer service excellence to boost revenue and customer satisfaction.

Running head: DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION IN SINGAPOREAN TAXI INDUSTRY
Disruptive Innovation in Singaporean Taxi Industry
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION IN SINGAPOREAN TAXI INDUSTRY
Table of Contents
1. Introduction:...........................................................................................................................1
Information about ComfortDelgro:........................................................................................1
Information about the cab industry:.......................................................................................1
2. Identification of business goals:.............................................................................................1
3. Organisational training needs:................................................................................................2
4. Task(functional) analysis:......................................................................................................3
5. Individual training needs analysis:.........................................................................................4
6. Identification of intended learning outcomes:........................................................................4
7. Conclusion:............................................................................................................................5
References:.................................................................................................................................6

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1. Introduction:
Information about ComfortDelgro:
ComfortDelgro Corporation is a public limited company, which has its head office in
Singapore and listed on the Singapore Exchange. The products of the company are facilities
like bus, cab, insurance and outdoor advertising. ComfortDelgro has expanded its business
into China, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia. Comfort Transport Limited is the
subsidiary of ComfortDelgro and led by its CEO and directors. The vision of the company is
to emerge as the leading provider of land transport services. The mission of the company is to
provide round the clock service to passengers accompanied by skilful and dedicated drivers
(comfortdelgro.com.sg, 2017).
Information about the cab industry:
The cab industry is an international industry providing round the clock pickup and
drop facilities to passengers. The size of the market of this public transport facility is worth
billions of dollars and employ millions of drivers all over the world. The service is
particularly popular in markets like Singapore. The taxi market in Singapore consists of both
taxis available on road, which do not require prior booking, and the ones operated by
companies like Uber, which require prior booking. The drivers operating in the taxi markets
need to acquire government license. The taxi market in Singapore is currently under the
domination of Uber and Grab which is giving the Singaporean companies like
ComfortDelgro tough competition (todayonline.com, 2017).
2. Identification of business goals:
The business goals of ComfortDelgro Corporation are to provide high quality taxi
hiring services to the customers at their convenience and to maximise the capital the

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shareholders. The multinational vehicles hire leasing company seeks to foster an environment
of sustainability by operating in more sustainable ways to ensure benefit of the entire
community. It also keeps on conducting continuous study to gain knowledge about the
growing needs of the consumers. Fulfilling of this business goal would help the company to
offer more customer oriented products, which would in turn help the company to achieve its
first business goal, providing better services to customers. Provision of excellent hire cab
services would allow the cab company to achieve its second goal, causing capital
maximisation for its shareholders (Farahani, et al., 2014).
An analysis of the aim of ComfortDelgro shows that its aim is to analyse the training needs of
its cab drivers and provide them with training. The aim is specific and the managers can
analyse the training needs using methods like survey and interview. The training needs can be
measured by monitoring the number of customer complaints and through methods like
surveys and interviews. The responsibility of monitoring the cab drivers’ performances to
recognise their training needs can be assigned to specific managers. Thus, the responsibility
of assessing training needs can be assigned and is hence assignable. The aim of the company
to analyse the training needs of the employee drivers is realistic. This aim can be achieved
within a fixed time period. This discussion of the training need analysis of the drivers of
ComfortDelgro shows that its aim is specific, measurable, assignable, realistic and time
specific.
3. Organisational training needs and SMART objectives:
An analysis of the case study given shows that the emergence of personalised cab hire
services have brought about fall in the demand for the public cab hire service providers. The
multinational online can hire services like Uber provide personalised pickup and drop
services. Their drivers are trained to operate new technology like general packet radio

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services (GPRS) to receive orders from the passengers and are well groomed. As a result
they customer friendly conduct help in maximising customer satisfaction and earn these
companies repeat business and high revenue. They should have detailed knowledge about the
GPRS systems and roads and streets. The above discussion clearly point that the taxi
companies who provide taxi services need to train their drivers to develop necessary skills
like communication skills and technical skills to maximise customer satisfaction and profit,
the first two business goals of the company. This situation calls for analysis of the training
needs of the drivers (Goetsch & Davis, 2014).
ComfortDelgro should analyse the training needs of the employees like drivers to
ensure that they are aligned to the business goals of the company. The senior managers of
ComfortDelgro can recognise the training needs of the drivers using the several analysis
methods. The first method, which the management can use to recognise the training needs, is
survey (Landy & Conte, 2016). The management can conduct surveys among the drivers to
know about the degree of the technological knowledge and expertise. The managers would be
able to recognise the areas where the drivers would require training like improvements in the
expertise to operate GPRS. The second method the managers can use to recognise the
training needs of the subordinates is observation. They can observe the employees work and
point out their faults and defects in work. This would allow them to point out the areas where
the drivers are weak and develop training plans to train in those areas. The third training
need analysing method, which ComfortDelgro management can use, is interview. The
managers and the HR can interview the drivers to know about their career goal and areas
where they need training. The customer feedbacks would function as the fourth method.
These methods would enable the management of ComfortDelgro to plan training sessions to
improve the competencies and skills of the drivers to serve customers better. This would
enable the taxi company to maximise customer satisfaction and earn huge revenue, two of its

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important business goals. Thus, the training needs should enable to drivers to achieve
higher level of perform which would enable the company to realise its business goals. The
managers and the human resource department must monitor the performances of the drivers
to recognise any new training needs (Sung & Choi, 2014).
4. Task(functional) analysis:
The managers and the human resource department should apply the four methods to
analyse the training needs of the employees namely, survey, interview, customer feedback
and observation. These four methods should be employed on regular basis to recognise any
new area that may require training of the drivers. For example, if a new technology to book
cabs or drive cars emerges in the taxi industry, the company should provide training to the
drivers in these new ways. This will ensure that the drivers keep on providing services to the
customers and maximise customer satisfaction. They would be able to create a pool of loyal
customers who would use the services of ComfortDelgro and generate high revenue for the
company, thus achieving its business goals (Neuendorf, 2016).
5. Individual training needs analysis:
The functional area recognised in the study would be drivers and the task would be
providing cab services to the employees. The management on regular basis must analyse the
tasks allocated to employees according to their functional areas. For example, the managers
should check the feedback the passengers give regarding the quality of service and riding
experience on the official website. Positive feedbacks would indicate increasing efficiency of
the drivers. Several low rating feedbacks would show that the driver needs to be trained. The
managers on continuous basis analyse these feedbacks and combine them with other training
need analysis methods like interview and surveys. This would allow them to recognise newly

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emerging training needs of the drivers and keep their efficiency level at par with the business
needs of the company (Sumner et al., 2014).
6. Identification of intended learning outcomes:
The managers must identify the outcome of the training need analysis and the training
session the company would provide the drivers. They must observe the performance of the
drivers from the customer feedbacks like ratings on the official websites. The managers can
interview the drivers to know about the problems they are facing while providing services to
the customers to point out the areas where these drivers require developing. Then, based on
the findings of these training needs analysis, the managers can plan the training schedule. The
appropriate training sessions to improve the efficiency of the drivers would be the outcome of
the training need analysis of the managers (Qu et al., 2014).
7. Conclusion:
The in-depth discussion conducted above point out that the cab companies require to
undergo great deal of innovation like they should capable of taking online orders. The
companies like Comfort should analyse the training needs of their drivers and provide them
training to improve their technical knowledge like ability to respond to online orders from
passengers. They should be groomed to satisfy the needs of the passengers. This would allow
them to serve the passengers better to ensure high customer satisfaction and earn high
revenue. Thus, finally it can be concluded that training the drivers would help them enable
the company realise its business goals (Porter, 2014).

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References:
ComfortDelGro Corporation Limited. (2017). Comfortdelgro.com.sg. Retrieved 9 November
2017, from http://www.comfortdelgro.com.sg/board-and-management.aspx?id=80
Coping with technological disruption in the taxi industry. (2017). TODAYonline. Retrieved 9
November 2017, from http://www.todayonline.com/singapore/coping-technological-
disruption-taxi-industry
Farahani, R. Z., Rezapour, S., Drezner, T., & Fallah, S. (2014). Competitive supply chain
network design: An overview of classifications, models, solution techniques and
applications. Omega, 45, 92-118.
Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Landy, F. J., & Conte, J. M. (2016). Work in the 21st Century, Binder Ready Version: An
Introduction to Industrial and Organizational Psychology. John Wiley & Sons.
Neuendorf, K. A. (2016). The content analysis guidebook. Sage.
Porter, G. (2014). Transport services and their impact on poverty and growth in rural sub-
Saharan Africa: A review of recent research and future research needs. Transport
reviews, 34(1), 25-45.
Qu, M., Zhu, H., Liu, J., Liu, G., & Xiong, H. (2014, August). A cost-effective recommender
system for taxi drivers. In Proceedings of the 20th ACM SIGKDD international
conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining (pp. 45-54). ACM.
Sumner, S. A., Pallangyo, A. J., Reddy, E. A., Maro, V., Pence, B. W., Lynch, C., ... &
Thielman, N. M. (2014). Effect of free distribution of safety equipment on usage

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DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION IN SINGAPOREAN TAXI INDUSTRY
among motorcycle–taxi drivers in Tanzania—A cluster randomised controlled
trial. Injury, 45(11), 1681-1686.
Sung, S. Y., & Choi, J. N. (2014). Do organizations spend wisely on employees? Effects of
training and development investments on learning and innovation in
organizations. Journal of organizational behavior, 35(3), 393-412.

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