Strategic Marketing of Vodafone Hutchison Australia and the SBU as the Vodafone Per-Pai-Au - Case Study Example

STRATEGIC MARKETING 3. CORPORATION & SBU BACKGROUND 3.1: Corporation Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) was formed in 2009 when Vodafone Australia Limited merged with Hutchison 3G Australia. Currently, the company has more than six million customers and is the third biggest Australia telecommunication company. Marketing of company’s products are both undertaken by Vodafone and ‘3’ brands. 50% of the company is owned by Vodafone Group plc and the other 50% by Hutchison Telecommunications (Australia) Pty Limited. The company is company’s structure is comprised of Board of Directors and its Committee, Companies Chief Executive Officer and the senior management team. The Company’s board approves and monitors the execution of HATL performance and strategy and its subsidiaries protect the interests as well as the rights of shareholders and it does oversee the overall corporate governance (Foster &Timothy). Day to day management operations of the company are facilitated with the help of the Chief Executive Officer and the senior management team. The company board is comprised of eight directors who are appointed to represent the company’s shareholding and their main duty is to represent the interest of company shareholders. Non – executive’s members includes the chairman and all the directors. The company’s board is responsible for defining the independence and the recommendations of best practice as outlined by the Australian Securities Exchange. Following the guidelines and independence on this definition the company, directors are not considered as substantial shareholders of officers do not substitute the company’s executive and they are not linked with any substantial supplier, customers as well as professional advisors of Hutchison. Additionally, an independent director is not allowed to have any contractual relationship with the company or indulge on any relationship pertaining to Hutchison business which may undermine his ability to act in the company’s best interest (Ronald). Currently, VHA has over 4,000 employees who offer mobile services to a tune of 7 million Australian customers. It provides a wide coverage of 3G of up to 94% of Australians, providing its customers with as well as businesses with affordable accessibility to mobile voice and data products. The company has Computershare Communication services that provides it with paperless and inbound paper processing, archiving, and outbound print, mail as well as email services. There has been an ongoing contract since year 2011 and Computershare has combined with VHA for a jointly beneficial partnership. Based on this engagement, Computershare sourced outbound distribution as well as image archiving targeting customer invoices for Vodafone and Crazy John’s- a joint business that exists up to date. Following the reorganization of its vendors and adopting the services of paperless ingestion VHA’s contractual processing cost has reduced by 45%. On the other hand paperless ingestion has also decreased the time taken for application of customer approval. Customer’s approval is responded to within five minutes they are lodged and they are immediately advised further on its success (Waters). 3.2: SBU The SBU is the Vodafone Per-pai-au which is a subsidiary company of Vodafone Hutchison. The SBU own and manage over 2,100 stores that deal with sales of its services as well as providing customer support. Further, the company has approximately 7,600 branded stores in its controlled market that sell its services and products through franchise as well as exclusive arrangements by the dealers. Being one of the largest subsidiary mobile telecommunication companies, the company has its major operations in Europe, Asia Pacific, the United States, Africa and the Middle East. The company’s strategy to cover the selling patterns of a range of products such as mobile band, data, content services and smart phones in these geographic scopes by its subsidiaries in these regions. In the recent past customers demands for quality telecommunications have become sophisticated as technological advancements continue to change. Recently, there has been increasing demand in the use of smart phones since launch of Apple iPhone back in year 2008. Since then there has increased of smart phones across all geographic regions and this has been to the advantage of the SBU as demand for 3G services and data usage has increased across all regions where the company services are enjoyed. Evolution of iPhone has played a key role as the consumers become more aware of benefits of using smart phones and the consumption of data. The data accessibility, content as well as broadband services can be accessed by the same gadget used for receiving voice bundles. There has been an increase in demand for data uptake as demand for smart phones increase in these regions. Subsequently, there has been an increase of data uptake as well as content services across all VHA geographical regions. For instance, half yearly financial statements prepared on 30th June 2010 indicated over 1.535 million customers per each region subscribed to VHA’s 3G services (Foster &Timothy). The period between year 2000 and 2005 had shown a rapid increase in demand for services of mobile telephony that included mobile voice as well as basic data services. However, across all geographic regions the voice and data services has significantly matured in the subsequent years. Experiences in decline of slowing voice services, mobile providers across all the geographic regions have developed a strategy based on competition aimed at luring voice customers from other service providers and engage them as new users. Further, to retain the existing customers and remain competitive the company is developing new services to its customers. Globally, the company’s strategy aims at reducing average revenue per user in relation to voice services. As forecasted by Ovum voice revenues in Australia are expected to reduce this year, while it’s projected that between year 2014 and 2020 there will be annual escalation of 14.1%. However, there has been an increase in growth of content services as well as data that have been witnessed by improved technology in mobile telephony that aims at meeting sophisticated customer demands. Prior to the advancement of network technologies from 2G to 3G and later to 3.5 G implies that the subscribers have a variety of services to choose from. The use of 3G technology evolved in Australia back in year 2003 and the strategic business unit targets to improve its efficiency in other geographic regions thus will make it more accessible (Robert). 4.1: CORPORATE APPRAISAL Senior Management The SBU senior management is responsible for establishing both the company’s long term goals as well as the short term goals in order to ensure that company’s resources are well utilized to meet its strategic goals and objectives are met. Its goals and objectives are; Ensuring that business risks facing its operation are identified, reviewed, minimized and controlled as well as maintaining internal control and compliance with legal aspects of the business. Assessing the performance of management of the business and examining whether they are in line with its goals and objectives so that the company may continue to grow and meet the customers’ needs. Making sure that there are sufficient internal controls as well of maintaining standards on ethical behaviour which are generally acceptable and are in line with Vodafone Hutchison Australia Corporation. Approving and reviewing financial plan yearly as well as monitoring the business performance in order to accomplish their long term as well as short term plans (Jean). Corporate culture The company has encouraged and promoted diversity as well as skills in its board membership in order to attain its goals and which is in line with gender equality promotion as its employs female directors to carry on with its business. The company has compensation committee that oversees the employees’ compensation in case of misfortunes. In year 2010 the company was recognized for its efforts to build new and dynamic culture. In the recent past it’s dedicated to providing a good working environment for its employees where they can realize their aspirations. The SBU recognizes its success and achievements through its employee. In the same year a survey carried out by the corporation to measure the level of engagement of its employees, motivation as well employees’ loyalty to the company, 90% of employees responded. The company acquired an engagement score of 75 that is an indication that it has maintained a good working environment with its staff members. The corporation has also enhanced communication within its scope of operation. Its customers as well as the staff members can readily access information about the company via intranet. The CEO of the corporation holds regular meeting and communicates directly with the employees (Michael). Corporate stakeholders The corporate stakeholders include investors who fund some of company’s operations. The management of the corporate often meets with them on sustainability risks and future prospects of the company. The company also provides the investors with the relevant information related to its operations. Another group of company’s stake holders are the NGOs who are relevant to the company. The company organizes meeting with NGOs at sustainability events where they discuss on specific issues that are relevant to the company’s operations. Another group of company’s stakeholders are the enterprise customers who work together with the company so as to enable them attain their sustainability needs. Similarly, the company partners with them so as to facilitate its delivery of transformational products as well as services to the customers. Consumers are a part of company’s stakeholders where the company tries to reach its consumers through retail outlets, customer research as well as company’s contact centres. The company seeks to understand the consumers’ attitudes towards its products and sustainability issues. Government and regulators also constitute a part of company’s stakeholders. The company links with regulators and the government to discuss various issues which are of importance to the company. Other stakeholders include employees, suppliers, community, opinion formers and experts (Jobber et al). The corporate resources Since the SBU is a subsidiary of VHA its products are new on the market and this will, require the marketing department to incur extra costs in advertising and promoting the products of the company in order to create awareness to the consumers. This will put a constraint on the limited resources of the company limiting its growth and expansion. The company will need to keep ion changing the handsets to accommodate the needs of the consumers which have become more sophisticated. This may have an impact of company resources as the company may lose some of its investments due production strain and the cost of technology. This may have an impact of company’s limited resources. Due to advancement in technology the Human Resource Department need to employ quality labour who are conversant with the use of 3G P products. Further, this constraint on the company’s resources as they need to pay much more salaries to the employees which may affect the company’s growth strategy (Waters). Review of past performance In particular provision of mobile services has become the firm’s core business and its main source of revenue. This contributed to 11.1% out of its overall sales in year 2012 and captured 27% the mobile market share. Subsequently, there was 10% increase in the number of subscribers, with at least 30.7% increase in prepaid users, thereby raising prepaid revenue by 20.2%. Further the SMS number sent by the SBU increased by 15.7% in year 2012. As consumers continue to spend more on mobile services the company is expected to grow significantly and catch up with other companies in the same industry (Jean). WORK CITED Foster, Timothy R V. Better Business Writing, Kogan Page, London, 2009.Print Jean Wilson Murray. The complete guide to writing effective and award winning business proposals: step-by-step instructions. Ocala, Fla: Atlantic Pub. Group, 2008. Print Jobber, David, Lancaster & Geoffrey. Selling and Sales Management. London, England; New York: Prentice Hall Financial Times, 2009. Print Michael Larsen. How to Write a Book Proposal. Cincinnati, OH: Writer's Digest Books, 2011. Print Robert S. Frey. Successful Proposal Strategies for Small Businesses. using knowledge management to win government, private sector, and international contacts. Boston : Artech House, 2008. Print Ronald A Nykiel .Marketing Your Business: A Guide to Developing a Strategic Marketing Plan. London. Sage, 2003. Print Waters, Kay. Researching, Writing and Presenting Reports, Eastern House, Croydon, Vic, 2009. Print Read More