An Audit of Invisonal Hosting Web Company - Case Study Example

An Audit of Invisonal Hosting Web Company Executive Summary In the year 2005, an Internet and Communication Technology firm, Invisional Hosting was established. The main objective as enshrined in its vision was and still remains the provision of high quality web hosting to internet home users and small and medium enterprises. Currently, the firm is headed by Peter Fairweather and Tom Dawson who are charged with the onus task of improving the web hosting services to the clients. They both run a help desk where Peter deals with money matters, the marketing of the services and the growth part of the enterprise. His colleague is in charge of customer care and the reliability of the services provided by the firm. The firm gets personal in knowing its customers well and fitting into their everyday’s needs. The firm operates in a rather competitive market where you can loose clients on a daily basis but the customer care people at Invisional Hosting have learnt to control this, through daily communication with their clienteles to deduce their thoughts and feeling towards the services offered and the way they are treated by firm’s staffs. A case in example was the revamping of the firms website in September 2006 after suggestions from then customers and the full customer care centre in 2009. Such tremendous developments would not have been possible without the input of the customers (Invisional Hosting, 2011). Service business has become one of the most lucrative ventures to engage in the modern business world. A service business by definition is a business venture whose main objective is to operate in a manner that meets customers’ needs through its provision of high quality services. The business sectors in the service industry includes among others banking industry/financial services, transport and communication, insurance and assurance, entertainment industry among others. A small and medium firm is an enterprise whose classification is based on the assets it has, rate of turnover and the human resource available. In our context, a small and medium firm is one whose employees don’t exceed the 500 mark. On the other hand the World Bank defines them as firms with assets or turnovers exceeding over $ 3 million and not exceeding$15 million dollars. They also have a human resource of between 50 up to 300 personnel. A market audit entails to find out how the business is operating at the competitive market. This is the reason why bigger companies and smaller one alike put more emphasis on market research to find out what their clients want. From the discussion, it’s evident that customer’s service and satisfaction is a key factor towards the success of the business as it’s a reflection of what clients experience and expect from the firm. Customers’ analysis and Market analysis The Invisional Hosting satisfies the standards set by the above definition hence suits to be a small and medium enterprise. The level of customers’ satisfaction at Invisional Hosting is high as is expressed by the customers themselves. This can be based on a number of factors which combine to ensure that the clients are happy with the services provided (Conklin Michael et al, 2004) In order to survive in the service industry and make good returns one requires good marketing skills and customer satisfaction. When clients are satisfied they will do more business with you and also serve as marketing agents to their colleagues. Invisional hosting has embraced this policy hence its customers exhibit a high level of loyalty and propensity to spend hence more sales to the business. When customers are happy with the end product/ service provided by a business, this is called customers satisfaction. The level of this satisfaction is an ultimate guide to the management of the business on whether the business is operating well. Therefore, it’s imperative for the management to ensure that regular audits are conducted to ascertain these levels. The company operates a marketing strategy that’s able to achieve results and which is financed by a low budget. This is the opposite of its competitors who employ expensive strategies to market their products. Invisional Hosting does its marketing through face book, twitter, emails and its website where updates concerning the firm and its services are posted and updated regularly. These are cheap but by far more effective tools of marketing. In carrying out this audit, we apply the Shapley Value to the analysis of the level of customers satisfaction, we use the subset of attributes being studied whish are the customers satisfaction and the factors leading to it. Shapley partitioning is based on the axioms of anonymity of parties involved, the value played and the value they add to the subject matter, customers’ satisfaction. A SWOT ANALYSIS Strengths The Kano model theory acts as a guide in knowing what customers would want put in the services offered by Invisional Hosting. The firm is presented with a model for supporting customers’ specification through focusing on separating product feature and attributes to satisfy the consumer. The attributes are feature which the services offered by the firm have and which either work for or against customers satisfaction. Invisional Hosting has ensured that the attributes of its services meets the customers expectations hence satisfaction. This is supported by the fact that customers can access web services which are not highly complicated but are affordable and effective. . The firm is able to operate at minimum expenditure which ensures that its products are affordable hence voluminous consumption. The main service product which is the website is designed as per the specification of the client and in most cases they just have the essentials to have website up and running. This way, the management is able to cut on the cost of production which translates to low priced services. The firm runs an elaborate customer support which is purely internet based. It has a dedicated team of staff at the help desk which responds and provides solutions to the customers. This is supplemented by an extensive support database which provides instant response to the queries raised. This online way of customer support has got a number of advantages which include cut price of services, ease the agony of a clogged network and the provision of timely answers to the problem. This way, Invisional Hosting is able to offer customer service which in turn is a key factor of marketing its web services. The high quality customer service that they offer has enabled them to win the unwavering royalty of their customers and who dubs as marketing agents to their colleagues through word of the mouth. As posted by Peter on March 18th 2008, Invisional Hosting heavily relies on a good reputation and praises from its customers. It employs the good reputation of offering good and quality web hosting to new friends who are part of the existing market. Customers are encouraged to refer their friends to the company through the friends’ referral scheme. This way you earn points to add new web hosting packages or update current accounts (Invisional Hosting, 2011). The other incentive is the loyalty point’s scheme which is available to all customers. A customer earns two loyalty points upon spending ten GBP with Invisional Hosting. Multiple paying options are strength of the company. Apart from the monthly paying option, Invisional Hosting has developed other paying options for their customers. The new product is the one where the price of purchase is spread out which enables customers get higher specification hosting. The mode is available through the pay pal payment option where there is an automatic monthly payment option freeing the customer to concentrate on the website. The company has been able to offer affordable services that are of high quality but fair priced as opposed to some of its competitors. This concept of fair prices but high services is supported by the quality management theory (Kano et al (1984) which states that a service or a good of high quality and one which is priced fairly have a dramatic influence on the customers’ satisfaction, as is the case with Invision Hosting. Weaknesses On the other hand, the firm also suffers from a number of weaknesses which hinders effective service delivery. One of them is it operates in an ever dynamic industry, one in which it’s never sure of what new invention will come out tomorrow. The information, communication and technology industry keeps on changing now and then and which this dynamism may affect the business in a negative way. The firm is faced with the challenge of competition from other players in the industry. Invision Hosting is a medium company that doesn’t enjoy the advantages of a monopoly. It operates in a field full of strong competitors some who are well established by and who have made huge capital input in their business. Opportunities The dynamic IT industry offers wide range of new opportunities for the company which if exploited will see the firm continue to grow in size widen its customer base and increase its capital. Threats There are upcoming businesses as well as the infiltration of international web hosting firms that offers cheaper ICT services. This is a huge threat as far as the company market is concerned. The unpredictable taste of clients is another threat to the firm. For instance, even though clients may want a website with many features, there is equally another one that wants the exact opposite. This would mean that the segment that wants a web with high attributes is dissatisfied with the Invisional Hosting. PEST ANALYSIS PEST analysis is an acronym for political, environment, social and technological factors used to assess the market for a business. It provides a business measurement tool for understanding the market growth or decline (Quick MBA, 2010). The political factors include government regulations and legal issues under which the company invision hosting operates in. the Australian government has a tax policy that’s friendly to business in the IT sector such as Invision Web Hosting. The company also operates in a politically stable environment with fewer trade restrictions and tariffs. Economic factors affect the purchasing power of invison clients and its cost of capital. The economy of Australia has been performing well in the global economic market thus ensuring that the potential and existing clients of Invision Web Hosting are economically sound to buy the services of the company. This is further supported by attractive tariffs, local taxations and interest exchange rates. However, the economic recessions that faced the global economy of the world had an effect on the market operation of Invision Web Hosting. The social factors such as demographic and cultural aspects of the macro environment have been a major factor in the growth of the firm. The age distribution and large population of Australia has provided a potential market for the company’s web services. Technological factors affect the business in a way that can lower barrier to entry, reduce its efficiency in production of services as well as be a factor to consider when outsourcing. Invision hosting is positively affected by the radical changes in the IT industry as exhibited in its ability to develop new internet products that are affordable to clients. The company operates in a state that lays emphasis on intellectual property rights hence its innovations are safely protected. Conclusion The future of Invisional Hosting looks promising especially with its ongoing program of embarking on offering a wide range of options in the services they offers to suit each customers needs. This is further supported by the elaborate measures put in lace to ensure that customers’ satisfaction is emphasized as is supported by having a good customer help desk, offering high quality products that are affordable and the various incentive products that continue to be upgraded now and then. The company needs to put in place elaborate and effective measures to handle the existing weaknesses as well as the future threats to its existence. This will ensure that it remain a market leader in the IT industry. REFERENCES Conklin Michael et al. Customers satisfaction Analysis: Identification of Key Drivers. European Journal of Operational Research, 2004, 154/3 819-827 Invisional Hosting, 2011. Company Profile. Kristin Haalberg, International Finance: A Market Oriented Strategy for Small and Medium- Scale Enterprise: Washington DC: World Bank Isobel Doole and Robin Lowe. International Marketing Strategy: An Analysis and implementation. South Western: Cengage Learning, pp 38/42 “PEST: political, Economic, Social, and Technological Analysis”. The Decision Group. Retrieved on 1st September 2011. The Marketing Resource Centre (http://www.marketingsource.com/articles/) Customer Satisfaction - The Survey of Organizational Excellence, University of Texas Customer Satisfaction resources retrieved from QuickMBA. 2010. Strategic Management. Retrieved on 1st of September 2011. Read More