Client Background
The client is a leading commercial bank in Oman with a substantial retail banking franchise spanning segment, product, channel, and branch functions. Its existing performance management approach relied on job descriptions and legacy scorecards that were not consistently anchored to the bank's strategic priorities, leaving individual accountability loosely connected to enterprise objectives across the retail organization. As competitive and digital pressures intensified across the Gulf, leadership sought a rigorous, role-specific way to translate strategy into measurable individual performance. Cedar was engaged to design a best-in-class set of individual performance measures (IPMs) for the bank's key retail roles, together with the guidelines needed to set and cascade targets.
Cedar’s Approach
Diagnostic Review and Stakeholder Interviews – Cedar opened the engagement with a review of the bank's current performance systems and job descriptions, then conducted eighteen one-on-one interviews across management and functional heads to capture role mandates, objectives, and expected outcomes. This established a fact base for measures that would reflect how each role actually contributes to performance rather than generic job titles.
IPM Design Framework – Cedar structured every measure around the four Balanced Scorecard perspectives — Financial, Customer, Process, and Organization & Technology — mapping objectives and key result areas to specific measures, units, and weightages. Weight distribution was calibrated to each role's seniority and function so that the balance of accountability shifted appropriately from frontline execution to management stewardship.
Role-Based Measure Design – To keep the framework coherent across a large and varied organization, Cedar grouped positions into distinct role families and designed tailored scorecards for each:
- Segment roles (priority, privilege, private, and SME banking)
- Product roles (cards, bancassurance, retail wealth, merchant acquiring)
- Channel roles (mobile, internet, contact centre, telesales, direct sales)
- Management and branch roles (regional, branch, and operations leadership)
In total, Cedar designed individual performance measures for thirty-three key roles, delivering draft IPMs for twenty-eight positions across the retail organization.
Target-Setting Guidelines – Cedar complemented the measures with a structured target-setting methodology, defining target types (from realistic to breakthrough), the approaches available for deriving them (business plan, historical data, benchmarking, and policy decisions), and a target-window process to align every individual target with the bank's overall strategy before securing ownership and commitment.
Strategic Outcome and Way Forward
Cedar delivered a coherent, strategy-linked library of draft individual performance measures spanning the bank's key retail roles, giving the organization a consistent Balanced Scorecard vocabulary for translating enterprise strategy into individual accountability. Each scorecard tied objectives and key result areas to weighted, measurable outcomes across the four strategic perspectives, backed by clear guidelines for setting and calibrating targets.
The design established a ready foundation for the bank to finalize measures and weightages, set targets, and communicate and roll out the new IPMs as an internally owned next phase, embedding a performance-driven culture across its retail banking teams.