Main Products and Services of the Organisation
Given that this is a newly formed business for telecommunication, its operation will majorly depend on offering communication services to the home user. Virgin Mobile will offer similar services comparable to the ones available on the market nevertheless at a lower and sustainable price compared to the competitor ones. The company will provide communication services that customers can subscribe to different packages under various modes of payments. Communication platforms by Virgin Mobile to the domestic customer segment bears a considerable level of reliability higher than those offered by other service providers. The company’s communication service will also ensure sufficient rate frequency and dependable distribution of services to its esteemed customers.
Identification of the Main Customers
The primary customers for the services intended by Virgin Mobile are domestic users. These are users with the desire for a cheap and reliable form of communication in their areas of comfort. They will be identified through the residential zoning process which will involve covering different areas for internet installation not sufficiently addressed so far. Also, Virgin Mobile segments the domestic customer market based on sophisticated social – demographic segmentation parameters. Given that most of the integrated service providers are primarily focused on commercial users, this has locked out domestic end-users from getting reliable communication coverage which represents a market Virgin Mobile is leveraging.
The Purpose and Goals of the Organisation
The mission and vision of the company will be becoming the best affordable telecom company while being the most efficient and reliable at the same time. From a quantitative perspective, 2mn customers in the key market of KSA are the key metric that is supposed to be achieved at the end of 2017. Worth noting is that the communication market is a highly volatile market with companies providing often unreliable services. Therefore, the company will aim at substituting competitor’s services by offering reliable services to domestic users as competitors do it primarily for the commercial segment.
External Factors and their Impact on the Business Activities
Key factors that mostly affect business operations include political, social, technological, and economic factors:
- Political factors impact companies through legal matters and government regulations among others. For instance, high taxation will lower corporate profits contrary to low tax. The even stronger impact can derive from regulatory measures e.g. restricting or opening access to the telecommunication infrastructure of competitors enabling or restricting the business model of Virgin Mobile.
- Economic factors reduced or increased demand levels of internet services can quickly change the company’s normal operation. A reduction in the product demand will lower the business earnings contrary to the growth of the application for this product. The business will not grow to the next level if the level of demand will reduce, however, an increase in demand will increase the business performance.
- Of the social factors are the social trends and forms of operation. Other factors are product preference and seasonality of demand. Businesses with inconsistent products to the community stand to face small purchases unlike those with products addressing customer preferences. Meanwhile, technical factors like an increase in internet connection speed or mobile platforms can easily impact the business negatively if not addressed immediately to stay ahead of the competition.
The Structure and 4 Functions of the Organisation
At the top of the company is the President and the Vice President as the most senior executives, next are different managing directors in departments including accounting, HR, legal and marketing besides the junior staffs at the lower level as they include supervisors among other officers. Four functions include the research process, the financing, the sales and marketing campaigns, and the HR activities.
Functions Optimizing Performance
It is impossible to keep each function within Virgin Mobile from each other. Financing is the primary function as it develops a budget for other ones. For instance, it defines how much money is spent on human resource activities such as financing research processes and providing salaries to employees. The HR function supports the research process by finding employees that are skilled in specific fields. The sales and marketing function relies heavily on financing as it predicates the size of a promotional campaign. Finally, the income from marketing campaigns forms the conditions for executing the financing function.
An Identification of the Culture of the Organisation and Ways They Affects its Operations
Organization Culture refers to values and behaviors that make up the unique setting of the organization. Mostly, a reliable and efficient entrepreneurial culture makes workers efficient and fruitful given the ability in making them feel like essential members of the enterprise. However, based on Handy’s classification Virgin Mobiles culture resembles more a role culture which functions with clear authorities and characterized by hierarchical bureaucracy. The impact on the organization is that expertise is not fully leveraged and as well entrepreneurial spirit is not fully appreciated.
Activity B
The Organisation’s Strategy
Organization strategy refers to the ability of the firms to evolve time after time. In this attempt, the company can use the strategy to re-evaluate its objective, mission, and vision. In the process of serving the customers, the company strategy enables the reestablishment of the new ways of creating reformed products suitable for meeting the demand of the client. For Virgin Mobile this means the following from a strategic perspective:
- Achieving above-market growth and a top 3 position in each market/segment it operates in.
- Provision of the best service to the customers at affordable prices.
- Enhance cost competitiveness by continuous improvement of the efficiency of its operations and streamlining the organization.
HR (or L&D) Activities Support the Organisation’s Strategy
The HR sector is responsible for ensuring that organization employees receive the required level of know-how to keep them productive and active at the place of work (Saravanan, Vasumathi, and Subashini 260). HR at Virgin Mobile has a key role to support the stated three strategic objectives:
Ad 1) and 2) strategic objectives: HR executes consistent research of the market, development of integrated value propositions to employees, and strong communication. Since Virgin Mobile is a virtual operator, its employees have to deal with other network providers that own the infrastructure. This requires not only technical knowledge but also communication skills. While the company’s strategy lies in cutting costs by using existing infrastructure, people become the primary resource for proving the service is worth paying for. HR managers also have to seek specialists who can expand the company through signing contracts with other operators who have the necessary technology. HR activities like recruitment and selection are not the only ones that work towards growth and providing high-quality service.
Ad 3) HR monitors the performance of the employees based on agreed on targets and metrics and hence supports further performance improvements and triggers as well as employee churn.
The market of mobile networks is saturated and it is hard to stay competitive. Measuring performance becomes one of the most important HR activities in Virgin Mobile, as there has to be a trend for development. Employees who do not show good results are not likely to be interested in reaching the goals set by the company. An HR department should monitor this level of interest and motivation, and support those workers who wish to further develop their career.
How HR (or L&D) Professionals Support Line Managers and their Staff
Motivation and training processes by the company make workers remember their roles and responsibilities. Besides, they ensure that employees function in line with the objectives of the organization (Saravanan, Vasumathi, and Subashini, 260).
Human resources management helps in organization planning and the establishment of a friendly working environment to promote the workers’ morale. It contains information to the business heads to understand the current and future status of the organization workforce, hence, effective planning. At Virgin Mobile, this consists of orchestrating a monthly employee newsletter highlighting relevant events/topics on a monthly base.
Human resource professionals help in recruitment and training of suitable candidates for the job. This process involves activities such as evaluating the hiring process, attracting candidates to the position (Gond et al., 220). At Virgin, Mobile HR has the task to continuously monitor the market and liaise with search firms to be able to fill in quickly vacant position driven by the company’s / industry’s churn rate and the requirements due to the growth of the company
Another function includes training the workforce. Being the second stage of the course of hiring, the abovementioned department ensures that workers have the required skills and knowledge for the job. Training is not a key focus area in a young company in the region as ours; this is mainly due to partly start-up conditions and a young and highly specialized workforce
Lastly, the human resource department often undertakes performance management for the employees. In this regard, it motivates employees by making sure that they have the right attitudes and focus on the job. Performance management systems are currently applied for the executive positions and are in discussion to be further cascaded down with HR leading the process.
The Role that the HR (or L&D) to the Success of the Business
Finally, the role of the human resource department remains to build space for employees to realize their potential. The talent and coordination’s team within human resource management train motivate and retain competent and motivated workers suitable for taking up the job of organizational success. The training process by the department mentioned above allows various individuals within the organization to renew and update their skills. Given that it coordinates workers within different departments, human resource management issues rules applicable and consistent across all levels of employees. This extent makes workers receive fair treatment given the equitable system of leadership employed by the human resource department.
Works Cited
Depositphotos, I. (2016). Basic Company Organization Structure Chart. Depositphotos. Web.
Gond, Jean-Pascal, et al. “Configuring Management Control Systems: Theorising the Integration of Strategy and Sustainability.” Management Accounting Research 23.3 (2012): 205-223.
Saravanan, P., A. Vasumathi, and R. Subashini. “An Empirical Study on the Issues and Challenges Faced by HR Professionals in an IT Company in Karnataka, India.” International Journal of Services and Operations Management 23.3 (2016): 257-276.
Footnotes
- Note: Virgin Mobile doesn’t allow to publish the real organizational chart for confidentiality reasons.