Causal Chain and Strategy - TRADCO or US Army Training and Doctrine Command - Essay Example

?Integration – Causal Chain and Strategy Introduction TRADCO or US Army Training and Doctrine Command, is the United s’ army training center. Headquarter of TRADCO is situated in Virginia at Fort Eustis. The training center started its operations on 1 July 1973. The training center is aimed at providing the training to the armed forces of United States, conducts development of trainees, giving the specialized guidelines regarding the acquisition and growth of the new weapons. Nearly 33 schools are performing their duties in 15 training centers under the direct supervision of TRADCO. More than 2700 courses are being taught in the training centers of TRADCO all over United States in which some of them directly assist mobilization. TRADCO not only provides training only in respect of directly armed force related subjects but also the language courses which are nearly 350 in number. The training centers have more than 503,000 seats among which nearly 435,000 seats are reserved for the armed forces personnel i.e. soldiers, around 34,000 are reserved for service personnel, 8,000 for the soldier who do not belong to United States and the rest of 26,000 seats are reserved for civilians of United States (TRADCO, 2012). Vision and Mission Statement of TRADCO The Commanding General of TRADCO has set the vision statement of the training center which states that ‘Strengthen America’s Force of Decisive Action and provides the Nation an adaptable Army for an uncertain future’ (TRADOC, 2012). Similarly, the mission statement states that ‘Training and Doctrine Command develops, educates and trains Soldiers, civilians, and leaders; supports unit training; and designs, builds and integrates a versatile mix of capabilities, formations, and equipment to strengthen the U.S. Army as America’s Force of Decisive Action” (TRADOC, 2012). From these vision and mission statements, it can be noted that the foremost purpose of TRADCO is to strengthen the abilities of US armed forces such that they should be trained to develop leaders who can lead the arms forces especially in quite uncertain situations. The training should be specifically aimed at even developing their rest of the life as well. The training and education of the soldiers is also highlighted in the vision statement of TRADCO. Apart from that TRADCO has opened up its training centers especially for the highly qualified and trained instructors no matter from which part of the world they belong to as long as they can add value to the training provided by TRADCO. Strategy of TRADCO The major aim of TRADCO is to develop such training programs which are aimed at the future training of the US armed forces. In order to create a competitive training center, TRADCO has established institutional training, design and implementation process. The training center has also developed a knowledge management center in order to pursue its strategic plans designed for its soldiers and civilian personnel. The major purpose achieved through knowledge management system in the horizontal and vertical integration followed by TRADCO (DePuy and Swain, 2000). With this, the management of TRADCO can integrate the objectives of the organization through assessment, coordination, analysis and recommendations. Among various other departments, TRADCO has a marketing research department as well. With the marketing research, TRADCO is benefitted with the prevailing marketing trends of the armed forces training industry and develops its strategies in the light of the results of the marketing research. The likelihood of attracting qualified faculty for training center can be enhanced through marketing research (King and Demsey, 2008). TRADCO has also implemented a program named as acquisition management insight (Cameron, 2003). This program is used in providing the more focused picture of the requirements of various contracts for training centers. The program is friendly and it ensures that the leaders are involved in the acquisition activities of the training centers. The financial performance of TRADCO is quite better than expected and the other training institutes. For controlling the finances of the training centers, TRADCO has implemented government’ travel card charge system. The specialized department working under financial domain conducts financial controls, reconciliations and other certifications. Various policies and procedures have been developed in order to utilize the available resources efficiently so that the wastes can be minimized. The following is the summary of the objectives, measures, targets and initiatives for TRADCO as per my own thinking and understanding: Objective Measure Target Action Achieving increased market share  Growth in revenues Increase by 10% Providing discounts to the new trainees Increased efficiency with profitability Net Profit Margin, Return on Equity, Asset Utilization Increase Net Profit Margin by 20%, ROE by 10% and Asset Utilization by 5% Increase revenues, Decrease Cost of Goods Sold and Operating Expenses Attracting New Customers, Retaining Old Customers Customer Surveys to Identify how many new customers are being attracted, how many old customers are retained. Increase New Customers by 10% Maintain at least 90% of old customers Offering better services with reasonable price Offer discounts to the new customers. If the above table is considered closely, it can be noted that there are three major objectives of TRADCO i.e. Market Share, Efficiency and Profitability, and Customers. For market share, TRADCO is recommended to increase it by making more growth in its revenues so that the overall size of the organization can be increased along with its size in the industry. The other objective is regarding the efficiency and profitability. Efficiency can be increased by generating more sales with the same level of assets. This will ultimately lead to increased profitability for TRADCO. The last objective identified is the customer acquisition and retention of old customers. Higher quality training should be provided to the existing customers whereas more discounts and packages should be offered to the new customers. Conclusion This report mainly highlights the integrative approach of Balanced Scorecard of TRADCO, the training center designed for US armed forces. The three major objectives in respect of BSC have been identified which should be accounted for by TRADCO. Overall, it can concluded that TRADCO is not using Balanced Scorecard approach at the moment to integrate its business activities and thus requires substantial efforts in implementing better coordination among different areas of TRADCO as highlighted above. References About TRADOC. (n.d.). U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) -- Victory Starts Here!. Retrieved January 23, 2013, from http://www.tradoc.army.mil/About.asp Cameron, R. H. (2003). Training to fly: military flight training, 1907-1945. Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Programs :. DePuy, W. E., Swain, R. M., Gilmore, D. L., & Conway, C. D. (2000). Selected papers of General William E. DePuy first commander, U.S. Army, Training and Doctrine Command, 1 July 1973. Fort Leavenworth, Kan.: Combat Studies Institute, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. King, B., & Demsey, M. E. (2008). Victory starts here: a 35-year history of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command. Fort Leavenworth, Kan.: Combat Studies Institute Press, US Army Combined Arms Center. Read More