Telstra Business Strategies - Case Study Example

Telstra strategic plan Name Institution Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Executive summary 3 Goals and objectives 4 Vision and Mission 5 Environmental analysis 5 SWOT analysis 6 Gap analysis 7 Implementation 8 Review and evaluation 9 Evaluation and Achievement 10 Legislation 10 References 11 Telstra strategic plan Executive summary Telstra’s origin dates back to 1901 by the Australian Federation to manage telephones, postal services and telegraph. It was renamed Telstra in 1993 from Telecom. It was partially privatized in 1997 and further in 2006. In 2010, it signed a non-binding financial agreement with Commonwealth company (NBN) to participate in the government’s national broadband network (Gerrand, P., 2004). Telstra Company offers telecommunication and information services in Australia. It offers a full range of communications services to all telecommunication markets competitively. Currently, it provides connection services to over 16 million mobiles, 7.5 million fixed voice services, and 3 million fixed broadband services. The company helps create the connection between people because it believes that opportunities are created out of people’s connectivity. It has over time created a technology that is simple and easy to users like the Australia’s national mobile network. It has an international presence in over 15 countries including China. The company is proud of its opportunity provision and always strives to understand what clients want like both digital connection and content. It aims to offer opportunity to connected governments, businesses, communities, as well as individuals (Cisco website, n.d.). The company has increased overall productivity by 80 percent by cutting operating costs through the use of Cisco Internet applications. However, it has faced some challenges in its way. The purchasing department for instant faces significant hurdles mainly manual placing of orders for networking equipments. The process was time-consuming with repetitive processes that needed close monitoring. Its success came with Cisco internet applications that offer online tools that eventually streamlined ordering of equipments from many countries. Telstra meets the promised delivery that has been operational for nearly 25 years. Goals and objectives The strategic plan’s goals and purpose will include a campaign that will encourage people to embrace technology by showing its benefits to their lives. The campaign will also point out that business and productivity depends on information and communication technologies application. The campaign will be pillared of healthy culture and health relationships around the environments under which the company services takes place. The objectives include; the company needs to be a facilitator of peoples’, organizations’, and government’s performance through raising productivity through the application of technology that makes work easy and efficient especially through communication. Another objective is to generate quality media coverage that is unbiased and morally accepted to target audiences. The other objective is to provide equal opportunities to sharing of voices among different competitors especially thorough driving traffic to the company’s website. According to Telstra’s 2013 report, useful feedback and public relation services will retain and grow the number of customers. Another objective that is similarly significant is being involved in developing new businesses through evaluation of the future outlook as well as exercising good risk management. Most importantly, the company should improve customer satisfaction through provision of quality services and problem-solving strategies like customer service. Vision and Mission The current image of Telstra Company states that it wants to improve the manner in which people live and work. Its purpose is to build technology and content solutions to its customers that are easy to use, simple and valued by all stakeholders. Their mission is to server and serves and strives to know their customers better than anyone else. The strategic plan for Telstra requires that the vision be as accurate as possible. The current one is so general that its definition will convince many and sounds vague. The missions need to be unique so that they stand out from other organizations. Lack of clarity and uniqueness may lead to many stakeholders making mistakes especially in decision-making processes. The plan will then advise management to sit down and define the vision that is realistic and the mission that is clear. It is better that the organization has a few but a realistic and a doable vision, mission, and values. The plan proposes that the mission vision and values be created to be supportive of people’s strives than leading them. Environmental analysis There exist environmental impacts that are associated with the operations of the company and customer applications of the products and services that the enterprise offers. Through the use of life cycle assessment (LC-A) Telstra can track environmental impacts of its products and in measurements for both teleworking and non-teleworking contexts. It has been found that the company has some contributions to global warming, abiotic depletion, human toxicity and photochemical oxidations (McCorkell, G., 2008). The strategic plan will follow a number of steps to reduce the company’s impact on the environment. Mobile phones and telecommunication equipments have been found to be toxic and cause environmental damages like contaminating land, sea and air. Therefore, the company needs to campaign and offer a platform for these wastes’ collection and recycling. Telstra should strive to have paperless billing systems and have environmentally friendly packaging systems. SWOT analysis MBA Skool website has Telstra SWOT analysis that reveals a number of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Strengths- the Company is strong in that it is Australia’s leading in offering telecommunication and information services with an extensive expansion margin. It has a broad range of service portfolio with strong customer service base. It has active sponsorship from both private and government entities and reliable employees. Weaknesses- however, its weaknesses can be seen in its limited liquidity positions and tough market segments implying limited market share. Opportunities- the Company has opportunities for strategic growth with increasing demand for telecommunication services. There are growing information technology service markets. Company can also embrace the launch of 4G mobile broadband connection. Threats- the company suffers from a number of threats like rapid technological advancements (Roberts, J., Nelson, C., & Morrison, P., n.d.). It faces an increasing number of competitors like Optus, Vodafone, and Virgin Mobile. There is also strict regulation of equipments and service use. The risk management plan for the above threats involves undertaking research on what is new in the market so that the company does not drag behind new technologies. The management must be ready to embrace change. A research plan will be set that sponsors new inventories. The company needs to revise its performance so that it offers quality services over the competitors to overcome stiff competition. The customer care services and public relation also should be given priority and part of the marketing mix. Finally, despite stringent regulations, the company should comply with all the laws. The policy makers should also be partners of regulators in order to receive the best and subsidized deals. Gap analysis Telstra managed to work with Ogilvy public relation agencies to drive leadership and marketing for its productivity. The campaign generated positive coverage to target media and success was demonstrated by improved sales, independent brand and media audits. The success was vocal that it was quoted in national press conference findings in 2009. However, Telstra traditionally finds it difficult to achieve neutral media coverage. It refused to participate not long ago in tendering infrastructure project resulting in negative coverage. Research has also shown Telstra’s competitors and key stakeholders fighting for innovation share and ignoring the productivity. There are many systems that Telstra is engaged in that confuse the employees. There also exists a lack of employee training for new technological applications. Therefore, there exists a gap in productivity. The company needs to start communication with its target audience. Importance needs to be placed on productivity improvement and its management. Implementation The implementation of this strategic plan wills the actual and imperative step as it will determine the success or failure of the project. The program aims at bringing change to the organization. Change in a process that requires well-coordinated systems and individuals for it to be smooth. The implementation process starts with clear communication of the whole campaign program. Interested parties must be convinced that the change being campaign for will benefit the involved parties. Therefore, the implementation process will start from application of various communication strategies aimed at getting support. The strategy should be then made clear. The company should adopt change and develop a new culture for it to defeat the competitors. It should identify many redundancies and redeployment among the staffs in order to have a productive workforce. Another measure to be implemented is cutting the high production costs that exist to maximize profits. The company should also replace the fourth M to overrun the compotators. Finally, it should be customer centric in order to build trust and credibility if it is to outdo the competitors. Different communication channels and strategies should be used including direct mails to businesses and government. A strategic media outreach should also be used to reach the public. The policy should accommodate busy schedules of stakeholders. Finally, a series of speaking opportunities need to be provided during corporate events as a way to sensitize interested parties. The pan should be advertised so that it will receive maximum participation (Gerrand, P., 2004). At this stage, every participant should be informed of the plan. It is essential to be clear with the systems and structure set. Teamwork should be encouraged by the success of the program. All parties should not be forced but willingly participate in the campaign. Roles and responsibilities should be well defined through assignments based on the area of specialization. It is important to include ethical issues that will help deal with conflict of interests (Forrest, N., 2008). Personal perspectives should be rechanneled to technical and organizational aspects. A unifying culture will also help facilitate performance. It is important that the company should channel its attention to training and other efforts that will help employees to perfect in their areas of work. Review and evaluation The strategic plan will require setting up of a managing committee who will be supervising every step of the program implementation. The committee will be given powers to oversee every step of the program. They will also be responsible for assigning and redirecting various processes for the betterment of the plan results. The program progress should be reviewed and evaluated before and while taking place. The select committee used is responsible and use reports on the operation and progress of the strategic plan. They should report on the progress of the program, towards meeting its objectives and goals. The management committee should ensure that people on the ground are keeping appropriate records for easier measurement and assessment of the progress. Monitoring opportunity will provide an opportunity for responsibility and accountability. It is at this stage that things to be will give an indication how well the program progress is doing. It should be at this point on how and when the process will be monitored and reviewed and what information is required to the managing committee for progress review. The activities here should be within the parameters of the stated objectives and should be consistent to Telstra Company. The internal and external dynamics should be under review in order to achieve the intended goals. Evaluation and Achievement The measure and evaluate the program’s outcome, output will be evaluating. The company productivity is measured by the profits that it makes. A number of audits will be done regular and compared. The trend of the costs and benefits will show whether the plan is or is not working. However, environmental safety and other non-material achievements will be measured through research and public satisfaction feedback. There will be an open interaction platform through a number of technologies like internet to measure results. Legislation There are several regulations that exist in Australia that may affect management’s area of study directly. Some of them include: equal employment opportunities act of Commonwealth authorizes. The law requires Commonwealth authorities to promote equal employment opportunities for all people regardless of gender or groups. The other is public governance, performance and accountability act of 2013 that regulates the management of Commonwealth entities and companies. The public service regulation of 1999 that makes it appropriate provisions in various management matters. Workplace gender equality act of 2012 requires gender equality promotion at the workplace (Australia.gov.au. web). References Cisco web (n.d.). Telstra Corporation Limited - Customer Service Information. Retrieved March 28, 2015, from http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac49/ac162/about_cisco_success_story09186a00800a8970.html Telstra Annual Report (2013) Strategy & Performance. Retrieved March 28, 2015, from http://telstra.interactiveinvestorreports.com/annualreport2013/strategy-performance McCorkell, G. (2008). Teleworking life cycle analysis. Report of Teleworking Life Cycle Analysis. Melbourne MBA Skool-Study. Learn.Share. (n.d.) Telstra SWOT Analysis BrandGuide. Retrieved March 28, 2015, from http://www.mbaskool.com/brandguide/telecom-service-providers/2125-telstra.html Forrest, N. (2008). Reconstruction during conflict. Crows Nest, NSW: Published by Engineers Media for Engineers Australia. Roberts, J., Nelson, C., & Morrison, P. (n.d.). Defending the Beachhead: Telstra versus Optus. Business Strategy Review, 19-24. Gerrand, P. (2004). Revisiting the structural separation of Telstra. Telecommunications Journal of Australia, 41.1-41.14. Australia.gov.au. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2015, from http://www.australia.gov.au/people/public-servants/key-legislation Read More