Case Discussion

Senior executives at the Ritz Carlton strive to balance efficiency and quality with the goal of maintaining the hotel's reputation for creating an aura and experience of old-world elegance and legendary grandeur in locations ranging from the United States To Bahrain to China. If executives were to focus on quality, what precisely would this mean and how might they measure it?

Ritz Carlton's strategy is to create an outstanding experience for its guests. One way to create this experience is to build hotels with stunning lobbies and spacious and elegant rooms and to hire and train a staff that provides excellent customer service. Project teams build each hotel with the usual "Ritz-Carlton" splendor, and maintenance teams ensure that the hotel preserves this decor and high level of service.

A second way to create an outstanding customer experience is to improve the efficiency of operations such as room service, guest reservation and registration, message delivery, and breakfast service. Ritz Carlton could do the statistical measurement of process workflows and cycle times for areas such as room service delivery, reservations, valet parking, and housekeeping. Managers could use the results to develop benchmarks against which they could measure future performance. With specific, quantifiable targets in place, they could focus on the continuous improvement and monitoring of quality and take actions to prevent problems from arising. Managers could review these performances at daily and weekly management meetings and communicate results back to their employees.Directions

Answer the following question:

1. How would the Standards for the Professional Practice of Internal AuditingLinks to an external site. support Internal Audit checks on the performance metrics for managers at Ritz Carlton?