2010

Change Management Business

Report
Vodafone Mobile Telecommunications

Nothing is constant in this world, except change!

Stud ID: 2977269

Karthick Shanmugam
Coventry University
Word Count: 6757 5/21/2010
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Contents

Vodafone History .......................................................................................... .2

Vodafone Products and Services Portfolio ..................................................... 3
Vodafone Vision and Values...........................................................................4
Mobile Telecommunication Industry and Vodafone....................................... 5
Strategic position of Vodafone in the industry ............................................... 7
PESTEL Analysis ........................................................................................ 10
SWOT Analysis of Vodafone plc................................................................ 15
Porter’s five forces analysis on Vodafone plc ........................................... 18
Vodafone’s Boston matrix: ....................................................................... 21
Influence of Technology on Vodafone .......................................................... 24
Role of Change Management in an Organisation: ........................................ 24
Change Management: .............................................................................. 26
Types of Change: ...................................................................................... 26
Dealing with Resistance to Change:.......................................................... 27
Benefits and Significance of Change Management: .................................. 28
Future Directions for Vodafone:................................................................... 31
Conclusion: .................................................................................................. 32
Recommendations ....................................................................................... 33
References ................................................................................................... 34

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Vodafone History:

Vodafone Group Plc is a public limited company incorporated in England.

Vodafone is one of world’s leading mobile telecommunications company operating in
Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and in United States through the
company’s investments, subsidiaries and joint ventures. All of the mobile subsidiaries
in Vodafone group operate under the brand name “Vodafone”. Being one of the
leading mobile telecommunications company operating across nations, Vodafone
sustains its growth with unique blend of products and services that it offers to its
customers. The name Vodafone was chosen by the company from “VOice DAta
FONE” to reflect the provision of services offered by the company.

 In 1982, Racal granted UK’s first mobile license and the first ever call mobile
was on 1st of January, since then it’s been Vodafone achieving various
milestones in the field of mobile telecommunication.
 In 1990, Vodafone Subscriber base reached 500,000.
 In 1991, Vodafone and telecom Finland linked up to make the world’s first
international roaming call.
 In 1993, Vodafone extended its market with license and partnerships to
Australia, Germany, South Africa, Greece and Fiji.
 UK’s first Vodafone plc emerged as the Vodafone’s commercial GSM-digital
service launched. In 1996, Vodafone launched UK’s first-ever contract free
service (Vodafone prepay)
 2000 the beginning of 21st century, Vodafone established multimedia in to
mobile communication in response to the technical advancements and
innovation including GPRS, 3G and Wireless internet.

Vodafone currently operates in 25 countries and further operates in 42 countries

with partner networks. According to the 2009 year end registered mobile subscribers
data, the Vodafone group company had 333million customer and that triple digit
figures, excluding paging customers. The Vodafone group company had a total
market capitalisation of approximately £71.2 billion according to the company’s
shares listed on London Stock Exchange and NASDAQ stock market on November
2009.

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Vodafone Products and Services Portfolio:

Vodafone offers a range of products and services keeping in mind the choice
of customers and their needs, this means of customer understanding enables
Vodafone to be on the right track to growth. Vodafone offers its products and
services not only to normal customer, but also to those who have disabilities and
impairment. Vodafone committed to provide its customers with user friendly
products and services unmatched by its competitors. Vodafone achieves competitive
advantage over its products and services by adopting itself to new technologies at
first. Vodafone offers its customers a variety of products and services.

Products portfolio

 Pay as you go
 Pay monthly
 Mobile broadband
 Fixed line broadband
 Wired
 Cordless
 Top-ups
 3G data cards
 Smart phones
 BlackBerry business phones

Services portfolio

 3G service
 GPRS
 Vodafone live
 Mobile Office
 Voice
 Entertainment
 Games
 Ringtones
 Application
 Wallpapers

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 Chat
 News & Updates
 Downloads
 Easy payments
 Voice activated dialling system for people with restricted sight problems
 Text to speech software
 Trained staff crew on customised stores
 Vodafone live!

Vodafone Vision and Values:

Vodafone is a company that believes in its Vision and values and relentless
working by its values to reach the vision. Being a telecommunication company that
enables people to communicate hassle free, Vodafone believes in listening to peoples
their thoughts and ideas would enable the company to sustain its competitive
advantage over its rivals.

Vodafone Values

 Speed: Focussed on pace of the market, and coping up to new

technologies.
 Simplicity: Makes things simple for its customers, partners and co-workers.
 Trust: Being reliable and transparent to deal with.

Vodafone Vision

The vision of Vodafone is based on its five year (Corporate Responsibility) CR strategy
and the last CR strategy was to be developed in 2005, the CR strategy helps Vodafone
realise its vision.

Vodafone understands the fact that it is never easy to predict the future through
identifying the footprints of the company in the past therefore Vodafone perceives
the company’s future in understanding data services and products offered to the
customers according to their needs. The extensive journey of Vodafone has already

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begun with 3rd generation mobile internet, mobile broadband, and fixed broad band
services by embracing new technologies.

 To be a leader in the world of mobile communications “enriching customer’s

lives” by providing communication solutions to business and communities in
the modern world
 Vodafone focuses on making mobile the primary source of personal
communication for individuals across the world
 Vodafone has clear priorities to capture potential and emerging markets
through mobile telecommunication medium and thus bringing socio-economic
values in the prospect of operational market
 To work on the key areas including Global warming and climate change
 To develop sustainable products and services to attain greater level of
customer satisfaction.

Mobile Telecommunication Industry and Vodafone:

Mobile telecommunications industry plays an essential role in the world’s

economy, mobile phones are considered to be the key device that enables the
industry to portray its importance in world’s economy. Mobile telecommunication
industry through its various innovations and technical advancements has met
numerous milestones in a very short period, than any other industry does. Mobile
telecommunication industry due to its increased demand and through its constantly
evolving nature serves almost all the industries, sectors, business and individuals
across nation.

Mobile telecommunication industry due to its increased demand, the necessity to

facilitate a no of industries and nations is also at a rise. Therefore more and more of
mobile telecommunication industries have been started, understanding the potential
growth of the industry and to capture growing markets. There are over 600 mobile
operators operating worldwide and over 50 mobile operators have over 10million
subscribers each and still counting. The world’s largest and leading individual mobile
operator is china mobile with customer base of over 500million; the UK-based
Vodafone is the world’s largest mobile operator group.

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The top 10 mobile telecommunication operators around the world are as follows 1)
China mobile with overall Subscriber base of over 538.887million 2) Vodafone with
overall Subscriber base of 427.99million 3) America Movil with subscriber base of
over 203million 4) Telefonica/movistar/O2 collectively owns a customer base of over
188million 5) Orange with overall subscriber base of 189million.

Source:http://www.google.com/images?q=mobile%20phone%20subscribers%20per%
20100%20inhabitants&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi

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Strategic position of Vodafone in the industry:

Vodafone strategies for acquisitions, collaborations and merger with other
companies helped Vodafone to become the largest mobile telecommunication
company in the world in the year 2000.

Vodafone Group Plc (Vodafone) provides innovative and interactive services

and other value added services to its customers to remain competitive in the
industry. Vodafone’s various services include voice, messaging. 3G services include,
GPRS, Vodafone live, Mobile Office, and voice. Entertainment services such as
games, ringtones, application, wallpapers. Chat, news & updates, easy payments.
Voice activated dialling system for people with restricted sight problems, text to
speech software, trained staff crew has been appointed on Vodafone customised
stores, Vodafone live! Etc.

Fixed line of Vodafone connection provides its customers with fixed broadband.
Business oriented services include mobile advertising and business marketing
services, incoming roaming and wholesale mobile virtual network operations are
under provision.

 On December 30, 2008, the carrier services and business network solutions a
subsidiary of Gateway Telecommunications SA was acquired by Vodacom group

 Verizon Wireless purchased Alltel Corporation of Atlantis Holdings LLC in

January 2009.

 On May 18, 2009, Vodacom became a subsidiary of the Company since the
company’s 15% stakes are acquired Verizon wireless on April 20, 2009.

 The Vodafone fear not in its confidence, the company committed that UK
mobile phone group to increase its dividend by a minimum of 7% on a yearly basis for
the next 3 years. This is the first time Vodafone has committed to a 3years dividend
target; however the response from the investors were considerably low. Shareholders
side brief that Vodafone’s decision as “embarrassing”

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 Vodafone has written-down a £2.3bn flagship on its emerging market, which is

a challenging and edge of competition to business in India.

 Vodafone’s shares were likely to “decline”. Since the company’s future at

Verizon Wireless (US mobile operator) is still been unresolved, where Vodafone group
has a 45% stake.

 Vodafone’s full-year and fourth-quarter results for 2009-simply matched the

expectations, and Mr Colao’s efforts to improve the group’s businesses are at its best
in work progress.

 Vodafone must realize that the company still trails its larger UK rivals. O2, the
second-leading mobile network operator, who has recorded cash inflow growth of
3.1% in the last 3 months i.e. until March 31.

 Vodafone started to sell the Apple’s world popular iPhone, which partly
contributed to the decline in 2.6% of revenue paid by UK customers in the last 3
quarters, which considerably a better performance compared to the last year same
period data.

 Though Vodafone does not really rely on its European business, the company is
still planning get back to the actual revenue growth in 2010-11, to raise the group
sales as it is getting adequate support from the Asian markets and Turkish business
which secured considerable growth in the second half of 2009-10.

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Vodafone results – this year to March 31

Sales Pre-tax profit Earnings per share Dividend

£44.5bn £8.7bn 16.36p 8.31p

↑8.4% ↑ 107.1% ↑ 181% ↑7%

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f5f9b12a-62b4-11df-b1d1-00144feab49a.html

 Vodafone is planning to produce sum £6bn to £7bn of free cash flow during
each of the coming three years. , compared with 8.31p in 2009-10, the company has
planned to increase the dividend to at least 10.18p by 2012-13.

 Verizon Communications doubtfully can afford to buy Vodafone’s stake, which

has been valued at $79bn (£55bn). In the mean Verizon Wirelesses’ cash may soon be
tapped by Verizon communications to maintain the US group’s dividend, highlighted
by Bernstein analysts in March.

 Vodafone on Verizon’s dividend states that the “default thing” is the

restoration of dividend payment by Verizon Wireless to Vodafone. Vodafone would
look at all the aspects of Verizon Wireless including the case for a merger between
Vodafone and Verizon Communications.

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 Verizon Communications, the US telecoms group that owns 55 per cent of the
mobile operations has blocked the dividend to be paid to Vodafone since 2005.

Vodafone differentiates itself as a unique mobile telecommunications operator by

providing its customers with value added services and features to enhance the
product quality and “value for money” this methodology of Vodafone has a unique
approach on customers for its products and differentiates Vodafone from its
competitors.

Vodafone follows the cost leadership strategy and differentiation but fails to adopt
the focus strategy as Vodafone does not focus on a niche market. Vodafone needs to
compete on a focus strategy in order to sustain its customers from moving on to
different networks and thus the company can achieve competitive advantage
through driving down the costs.

Current strategy

Vodafone’s current business strategy is to “grow through geographic expansion,

acquisition of new customers, retention of existing customers, and increasing usage
through innovations in technology”. (Source: www.vodafone.co.uk)

PESTEL Analysis:
The strategic position of a company can be analysed based on the important
factors that affects the internal and external factors of the company. The PESTEL
analysis focuses on the external environment of the company and gives a complete
analysis of the business, and strategic position of the company (Vodafone plc).

Political Factors

Political factors influences the company as the business decisions can be changed
based on the rules set by the political forces. Business can be affected by the
legislation in terms of competition, collusion, acquisitions and mergers, national laws
etc.

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 Rules and Regulations: regulations to limited access to spectrum and tight

control over licences for mobile phones, provides complications to the mobile
industry. Apart from this political pressure arises due to increase in the issue
of radiations that comes from mobile phones and limited usage for children as
well as other health issues concerned while using mobile phones.

 Infrastructure: To promote more facilities within the business and for

increased distribution of network availability, the infrastructure of the
company needs to be developed which usually requires constructing more
buildings that requires authorization from government and statutory bodies
to use their property.

 Health issues and concerns: The research towards the effects of mobile phone
usage is still in process, and there is no definite public opinion on the issues
concerned with usage of mobile phone. Besides these, the technologies in
mobile phones are still developing.

Economical Factors

The economical factors can have critical impact on the business and its performance;
the economic impact can have a direct impact on business due its effect on supply
and demand power. Economic influences include costing, unemployment, increased
competitors, growth of economies and scale, etc.

Licence cost: Vodafone and other mobile service providers face economic issues in
the cases when there is increased cost for acquiring licences for mobile phones.

Third generation cost: Telecommunication businesses faces severe consequences in

paying extreme price for acquiring 3G licences, competition arises in bidding the
price for licences and this results in paying very high cost for obtaining the license for
3G. Added, to provide good network coverage, the company need to build more
network stations which thereby require a lot of revenue.

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Calling cost: Due to increased competition, costs of calls have been bought down as
customer tends to focus more on low-priced products where the demand will be
more. Hence to meet the increased demand the Vodafone was pulled out in situation
to reduce the cost of calls.

Socio-cultural Factors:

Socio-cultural factors include cultural differences and

the influence of consumerism. The innovation of 3G
technology brings to society a better blend of new
series of contents and services. This new technology
of 3G will increase the sales revenue of the company
especially a company like Vodafone will now be able
to offer wide range of mobile phones with latest
technologies adopted in 3G which will result in
increased sales volume. In addition to this, Vodafone adopts few responsibilities to
protect the younger generation of today against the inappropriate content usage and
access violation through gambling and unauthorized games.

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Technological Factors

The Increased technological usage

in mobile phones created
increased usage of mobile phones
among consumers, in the
beginning mobiles were used only
for speaking, after the discovery
SMS and other advanced
technologies in mobile phones
people have got attracted for
mobile phones not just for
conversing but also for other value
added services and features
offered by network service
providers.

The latest technology like 3G, Bluetooth, Wireless and WAP, has made human life
very simple to get connect with people across the world. People nowadays can
picture or capture videos of memorable moments and share them with others just
like that. All this have been made possible through the innovation of new
technologies and with the help of a simple device “The Mobile”.

Environmental Factors

As the awareness on Eco-friendly environment and other

environment related awareness’s keep hitting the daily news
headlines. Industries around the world started focussing on
recycling and trying to be environmentally friendly. Vodafone a
industry being directly related to very individual and offers
services to millions of direct customers. Vodafone focuses on
certain environmental factors by adopting recycling program that
encourages eco-friendly product promotions and monthly statements. As this will
create increased awareness among customers and encourages them to use recycled

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paper products and environmental friendly products, effective usage of mobile

phones accessories, etc. Vodafone adapts to unique advertising and uses pre-paid
envelopes, recycling bins in the retail outlets. Vodafone advises its costumers to
avoid long time usage of mobile phones focussing on health related issues.
Environmental factors also include demographical change where in certain
population, more young people use mobile phones and in geographical change
where there is less youngsters like UK, mobile phone usage will be less as old-age
people prefer mobiles only in lesser amount.

Legal Factors

This includes certain laws that

regulate the business. For example
the ‘Sales of Goods Act, 1974’ which
insists on the fact that all products
must meet the purpose they are
intended for. Some laws were
created to regulate and monitor the
mobile industries, especially the rule
of ‘ban to cell phones while driving’.

Vodafone has marked down a set of marketing strategies In order to retain market
leadership;

• Add new customers

• Sustain the existing customers

• incorporating new technologies and providing user friendly services

• Shaping the Vodafone brand while capturing emerging markets.

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SWOT Analysis of Vodafone plc:

The SWOT analysis that comes henceforth will provide the company with
detailed information of market situation at present and Vodafone plc’s competitive
advantage over its competitors. This report will use the SWOT analysis to analyse and
evaluate the Intrinsic and Extrinsic environment of Vodafone plc, stating to that
Strengths and Weakness will be considered as “Intrinsic” environment of Vodafone
plc where as Opportunities and Threats will be considered as “Extrinsic” environment
of Vodafone plc.

SWOT Analysis on Vodafone plc

Strengths: Weakness:
Omni presence Legal issues
Diversified Geographical existence Lack of R & D

Vodafone plc

Opportunities: Threats:
“Third Generation “3G” Wrong Strategies- effects

Trend of Mobile phones Environmental hazards-effects

Fourth Generation “4G” Mobile phone usage rights

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Strengths
• The primary strength of Vodafone is its omnipresence and Diversified
geographical existence.
• Vodafone widespread its brand by acquiring emerging markets and retaining
the Vodafone brand name to the existing brand while controlling the existing
network and retaining the internet value in each of the acquired markets

• Choosing and Sponsoring the Famous events and sports games for e.g. Ferrari
Formula 1 team enables the company to portray itself uniqueness and brand.
• Due to the company’s global presence, Vodafone self analyses existing
network and incorporates future technologies to enhances the company’s
ability to introduce products considering both the pace of the market and
stability of the group networks

• Well trained customer relations crew members and time bound queries
handling specialists adds value to the Vodafone’s group. The company’s
strategy in developing a globally specified group standard in customer
relations management ensured awareness of its customer base and serve
according to their preferences and thus enabling the company to develop user
friendly products and services.
• Vodafone plc has recorded a high operations margin in the last five years of at
least 30% has been recorded.
• Vodafone offers data services in which a customer can access the internet
using “3G” a 3rd generation network that was rolled out in many markets in
the beginning of the year 2000.

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Weaknesses
• Vodafone on expanding its brand and geographical existence has invested
some quite a huge amount on fixed tangible assets in the past five years on an
average has exceeded the depreciation charge by 58% and represented a 50%
of operating profits therefore there is a greater chance of the company
meeting meet a cash shortage.
• Exploring new technology will require huge R&D and infrastructural costs. If
the company could not meet the profits on resourced project, the company
will held under tremendous pressure in recovering the costs spent. On some
occasion spent may never be recovered. In addition the company’s present
technologies will not be flexible to adopt new technologies.

• Vodafone as a telecommunications organisation is still considered to be

immature and receptive to legal issues when things change rapidly.

Opportunities
• “Third Generation” 3G Mobile Phones are considered to be a key player in the
product and services portfolio mobile telecommunications industry as it will
allow the users to access the internet much faster, with greater efficiency and
hi-speed data transmissions this effectiveness will also facilitate
videoconferencing through mobile Internet at broadband speeds, and
restructure future multimedia messaging.

• The trend of people change from time but in the case mobile phones from the
time of mobile phones launched till this moment, mobile phones remains to
be a special devise among individuals. This is due to effective service offered
by the mobile operators attracting new technologies. There people across the
world hold at least one mobile phone for them, we can even say mobile
phones are considered to be a ‘must have’ device by people of developed
countries. This enables greater opportunity for Vodafone to keep searching for
potential markets and increase the count of customers with its extensive
products and services.

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Threats
• Failure to build an effective model or technology would put the company
under immense pressure and will lead to lose greater amount of money in
shot.
 Wrongly defined strategy would impose a false image on the company’s brand
name

• Mobile telecomm industry is encompassed with no of rules and remains as a

highly regulated industry. Mobile telecommunications operating companies
have to abide by the rules made for political and socio-economic without
considering impacts of those rules in its organisation values. Examples of
these rules would be licensing on certain or further mobile phones and
operating infrastructure, Imposing pricing strategy on call rates and network
rates.

• If the use of mobile phones was restricted due to medical and environmental
hazards reason, the entire mobile and telecommunication industry would
suffer.

• Users wishing to change their network services provider may expect better
service from Vodafone, failing to fulfil such customer will lose customer trust
on Vodafone.

Porter’s five forces analysis on Vodafone plc

Porters five forces model helps the organisation to its competitors in its
industry, competitor analysis would enable Vodafone plc to understand the various
that makes its way in entering it to the potential market, the buying power of
customer in a specified region or location, helps in identifying cost effective supplier
in the location, product substitute helps Vodafone to identify the substitutes of its
products and services offered with local are technical advantage. These five forces
will have a direct impact on Vodafone’s strategic competitiveness.

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Competitive rivalry
Competition between mobile operators is very high as a number of companies
operate in a specified location, O2, Orange, Virgin, 3 and T-Mobile. Rivalry is high as
when customers from other networks switches to Vodafone and finds there is no
brand loyalty i.e. difference in services offered other than price.
Buying power
Vodafone’s accounts on the number of customers disconnect the service
during one complete year enables Vodafone to know about its customer and their
expectations. Customers are provided with a number of choices to choose from new
packages, new phones and new tariffs through newspaper, advertisements and mass
communication medium the internet.

Power of suppliers
Suppliers play a vital role in any industry and notably suppliers in the mobile
telephone industry are too strong. Vodafone, Vodafone due to its omnipresence and
geographical existence reduces the cost and operates with greater margins than
their competitors. This ultimately allow Vodafone to attract increased price from its
suppliers and remain competitive than its competitors. Being the largest mobile
operator in the mobile telephone industry, Vodafone has a greater advantage of
holding suppliers costs down, the company’s sustains returns at higher average.
Threat of substitutes
Vodafone faces a low threat of product substitutes. The focused cost
leadership strategy that Vodafone operates under makes it difficult for a similar
substitute to be produced at a lower rate by their use of economies of scale, their
buying power and their use of temporary price increases that come from suppliers
that do not need to be passed on to the consumer.
Threat of entry
Even though the threat of new entrants is less for the Vodafone operations,
the company must reduce costs below their competitors. This can be achieved by
maintaining high levels of efficiency, Vodafone being the major supplier of mobile
products and services can reverse the trend set and make it harder for the
competitors to make a potential entry.

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Sustainable competitive advantage

Vodafone outruns its competitors through its unique and focussed strategies,
these unique strategies enables Vodafone to develop unique, differential products
and services to its customers. Vodafone products and services are accepted
worldwide as cost
effective and value for
money. Vodafone
achieves operational
performance by
enriching customer
value enhancement.
Vodafone due to its
wide-spread
knowledge about
various products and
services and through
core competency
possess sustainable
competitive
advantage not only
among its rivals but
also in entire mobile
telecom industry.

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Vodafone’s Boston matrix:

Boston consulting group is developed by Bruce Henderson. This technique is used to
classify a business performance whether low or high by relating market growth rate
and relative market share. In other way, it can be termed as ratio between
percentage of sales that a business have in the market and the speed of growth in
sales. This BCG matrix is used to analyse how successful a range of Vodafone’s
products and services are by looking at their sales volume in market and the trend
for their products in the market.

High
Divest
Selectively grow

Business  Multimedia messaging  3G

growth  Vodafone Live!

rate
Defend Share

Divest

 SMS  Analogue services

Low
High Low

Relative market share

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BCG matrix comprises of four segments, which clearly depicts which product and
service falling under which category:

Stars (high growth and high market share)

 Stars are the leaders of the business.
 They need more investment to retain its market share.
 Require more cash and also generates more cash to the business
 Steps should be taken to retain the market position, or else stars will
become Cash Cows.
 Vodafone earns a lot of profit in multimedia messaging, which also
requires more investment and this is met from its own revenue obtained
through MMS services.

Cash cows (low growth high market share)

 They form the basic foundation for the business and they are the past
stars of the company

 They yield more cash to the business

 Cash investment is less when compared to stars and earn as much

profit as possible

 The products or services in cash cows are located in the mature stage
of the product life cycle and not in growing or declining phase.

 Vodafone earns a lot of revenue through SMS, which it yields to other

investments as further investment in SMS would yield less or no profit as they
are in mature stage.

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Dogs (low growth low market share)

 Dogs are the cash trap

 Dogs don’t provide cash to the business and has less potential to yield
profit to the business

 The products and services that fall under dog category should be
minimized to earn more profit in the business

 At this stage if business has more dogs, then this means that the
business is in a declining stage.

 Analogue services of Vodafone comes under dogs category, because

these are the services applicable in first generation phones, but now due to
advanced technologies like 2G and 3G which offers better clarity for speech,
confidentiality, built-in PIN, GPRS, etc customers will focus more on advanced
technologies, where the analogue services has come down which no longer
earn profit to the business.
Question mark or problem child (high growth low market share)

 This is the beginning phase of the business, where the company invests
large amount of cash if there is low market share.

 All the business starts as question marks

 Products under question mark can eventually become stars or cash

cows or even can also become dogs.

 More investment is needed for question marks

 Vodafone shows high level of investment in ‘Vodafone Live’ and 3G

network, which the company focuses in full term, these can become future
stars of the business.
Based on the above analysis and diagram shows that Vodafone possess a well-
balanced portfolio, however it seem to have some major difficulties with ‘3G’ and
‘Vodafone Live’ which can be described as problem child for the business. Vodafone
can adopt a possible way of reducing its investment in ‘dogs’ analogue services and
instead invest more from the money earned through ‘cash cows’ SMS to restructure
the ‘problem child’ and keeping the ‘star’ multimedia messaging in its same position
as of now, high market and high growth rate.

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Influence of Technology on Vodafone:

Vodafone provides its wide range of telecommunication services to people around
the globe and provides access to people for 24-hours a day. The economic
development of a country is supported by the connectivity technology provided by
the telecommunication industries. Many families which live in rural and urban areas
and people who live far away from their beloved ones get communicated through
this mobile technology. People who do businesses even from small scale to large
scale need mobile phones as communication is a very important factor in business to
develop furthermore.
The need for increased movement and security of money has been recognised by
Vodafone which was shown by its partnership with Safaricom. As a result, Vodafone
set up M-PESA technology, which means ‘Mobile Money’ working in funding with the
Financial Deepening Challenge Fund (FDCF). This M-PESA technology provides easy
and simple access for low-cost money transfer system. This provides an ease of
access for top-up technology and in return Vodafone gets a commission in smaller
amount. This technology was made available in petrol stations, supermarkets,
convenience stores, etc. This will help business to have a secure financial transaction
and safe way for wage earners to send money to their home.

Role of Change Management in an Organization

Research on many of the Technical industries clarifies that people with varied
dimensions of change become the valid reason for project failures. According to
study conducted in 248 IT industries, effective implementation of change
management in employees was accounted as one of the top-three factors for overall
success of the project, in many cases whenever a new change arises, neither the
executive nor the front-line employee will be capable of managing those changes.

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“People dimension of change” requires managing five key goals that form Effective
management which is based on the ADKAR model:

 Awareness of the change and definitive need

 Desire to participate and carryover the change

 Knowledge of how to change (and overlook

change)

 Ability to implement the change on daily basis

 Reinforcement to keep the change in place

The process of transition

http://www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/systemsandservices/capability/phi/personal
/learningweb/leadership/change

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Change Management:
A simplest definition for change management is;

“Making change in a planned

and managed fashion”.
Organizational change can be
defined as;
“Any alteration in people,
structure or technology”
Even though change has always
been a part of manager’s job since ages, it has become more crucial in the recent
years.

Types of Changes:
There are four different types of changes in an organization with the definite
possibility of overlap among them:
 Operational changes:

Implementing changes to the way of ongoing operations of the

business, such as the automation of a particular area.

 Strategic changes:
Changes that occur towards the strategic business direction, e.g.,
moving from an inpatient to an outpatient focus.

 Cultural changes:
Cultural changes are those which affect the basic philosophies of the
organization with which the business is being conducted, e.g., continuous quality
improvement depends on (CQI) system.

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 Political changes:
These sorts of changes occur at staffing in government agencies for
high positions with political interference.
Though it is understood that different changes make different impacts in
various levels of the organization, operational changes tend to have significant
impact even on lower hierarchy level of the organizations. The higher authorities at
organizations may never notice those changes which roots for employees stress and
confusion behind the change and after the change is implemented. Eventually, the
impacts of political changes have been felt, only by the top management. Usually
these changes are made for Power to lead, and supporters of particular group or
entity. Therefore these rules are not really set to make any real changes in technical
industries that needed to be incorporated for the organizations development; The
employees at the lower levels of organizations are often not aware off or not allowed
at all times to understand changes happening at the higher management. The key
concept is, the performers were not much affected, and the reason being that is the
employee’s performance does not form the basis of the change.

Dealing With Resistance to Change

When ever there is change about to be made in the organization, people
refuse to accept the change. Refusal to change weakens the efforts of process
betterment. Huge investments are involved in for many corporate changes and
efforts made towards corporate change; the only reason is to be halted by resistance
among the organization's employees. Organizations also manifest similar behavior to
that of individuals when faced with the need to change. Changes may sometimes
roots as a threat to people working in the organization. However changes are at the
positive facets of higher hierarchy of organizations benefits.
Why people resist change?
It’s often said that most people hate any change that
doesn’t fit in their pockets. There are three main reasons for
which an individual is likely to resist change: uncertainty,
concern over personal loss, and the belief that the change is
not in the organization’s best interest.

Techniques for Reducing Resistance: There are six different

actions which a manager can use for reducing resistance.

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These actions include participation, facilitation and support, education and

communication, negotiation, manipulation and cooptation and coercion. Managers
choose to use any of these actions depending on the type and source of resistance.

Benefits and Significance of Change Management

The unique benefits of change management are as follows:

 Understanding Environment:
In order to envisage and establish an appropriate relationship with
government, customers and society, it is important for an organization to
understand, assess and gauge the dynamics in its external environment.
Therefore managers by knowing the subject of change management can be
prepared to realize whatever is going on in the environment.

 Objectives, strategy formulation & implementation:

Another advantage is consequent upon knowing the impact of change

at extraneous level on its own internal dynamics, and the prime most is
objective setting and seeking competitive advantage.

 Employees:
Whenever a change plan is implemented, the employees are the
recipients. It is the concern of senior managers to make organization highly
reliable in order to have high performing employees in today’s competitive
world.

 Technology Issues:

Technology is considered to be the heart of economic growth in today’s

world but acquisition and integration of technology in its strategy, structure
and process is perhaps the greatest challenge for contemporary organizations.

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Operational Change:
Vodafone incorporates
operational change to achieve
operational excellence in the field of
telecommunication industry, Vodafone
due to years of expertise in
telecommunication industry plans and
implements operational change with
greater level of control

Unplanned implementation of change

would interrupt the ongoing practice of process and may result in dead-stop of
ongoing operational process. Even though the operational change in organizations
would merely make changes in work model process. People does not really tend to
accept change, simply people need not want to change their daily practices and
added to it, it does not really mean anything to them or does pay any extra.

Vodafone implements operational changes by sharing the changes before it was

adopted or put in to business practice. Vodafone counts employees opinions by
sharing thoughts about the change to its employees, co-workers and stake holders
opinions are addressed with greater responsibility. The change is implemented in
various sessions, first the change in process or system is partially or implemented in
one division of the business unit, before it is implemented in the whole business unit.
This gives the employees at various levels working in Vodafone a chance to
understand and realize the change happening around them. The slow and steady
implementation of change helps Vodafone employees to learn the new process as
quickly and as effectively as possible. By doing so Vodafone implements operational
changes in planned and systematic fashion.

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Strategic changes:
Vodafone incorporates strategic changes when there is a real and extensive
need for them to take place in their organization structure, strategic changes are
sensitive to both intrinsic and extrinsic environment, since these changes would
make drastic effects on company’s strategic policy and establishment of company’s
brand image to the end-user.

Vodafone handles strategic changes for

acquiring new markets and industries to add
to its pride, one of the problems that
Vodafone faces in dealing with the change is
changing to competitive environment, the
ability to change rapidly, efficiently, and
successfully in almost all the occasions will
make out the winners and losers.

In most of the cases organizational changes

involves different types and levels of personal
loss for the employees and for the company. For instance, change of any kind in the
organization always requires some additional input from the people to learn the
change in operation, in the employees view point it is a loss of time and energy that
could have been used elsewhere. Even though few may welcome the learning
opportunity almost of the working resist the change, most of us do not want to
invest the time and energy required for change unless we are not satisfied with the
current. Secondly, people like to find some goodness about them. Ideally, workers in
the organization welcome every opportunity to feel themselves pride about the
given task

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Future Directions for Vodafone:

 “Third Generation” 3G Mobile Phones are considered to be a key player in the
product and services portfolio mobile telecommunications industry as it will allow
the users to access the internet much faster, with greater efficiency and hi-speed
data transmissions this effectiveness will also facilitate videoconferencing through
mobile Internet at broadband speeds, and restructure future multimedia messaging.

 The trend of people change from time but in the case mobile phones from the
time of mobile phones launched till this moment, mobile phones remains to be a
special devise among individuals. This is due to effective service offered by the
mobile operators attracting new technologies. There people across the world hold at
least one mobile phone for them, we can even say mobile phones are considered to
be a ‘must have’ device by people of developed countries. This enables greater
opportunity for Vodafone to keep searching for potential markets and increase the
count of customers with its extensive products and services.

 Overall at present Vodafone holds strategically a good position in mobile

telecommunication industry in financial aspect and commercial aspect, the only thing
that bothers the Vodafone plc is the European market. Since the future direction in
the European Union is still at stake due to the increased competition and decision
postponement on bidding for “4G technology”.

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Conclusion:
Vodafone achieves success through its strategic investments, constant innovation,
and its focus on customer services. Vodafone plc has taken various strategies like,
branding, which has accomplished using value added services to cope up to the
changing environment and customer needs. However, there are still a number of
problems lies behind Vodafone
E.g., Extreme competition in the European market, the product life cycle point and
view for Vodafone is in a matured stage, and the fact that the Japanese and Germany
market restricts Vodafone’s goal of being a global leader.
As we all aware of Vodafone invested in 4G and high speed broad band market, with
less concentration and far behind the trailing companies, since 4G is considered to be
latest innovation in technology and Vodafone was expected to be a frontrunner.
Wherein the trailing companies such as O2, Skype and T-mobile’s are far beyond and
have started targeting broad band users with frontend 4G technology. Vodafone
holds a large proportion of market share in developed countries; However Vodafone
must also need to concentrate on developing countries also if they wish to remain
global leader in the mobile telecom industry.
Bringing value to developing and developed countries has been the main motto of
Vodafone. It is a clear picture that the recent years of economy is experiencing a
greater amount of growth with the growing impact of mobile technology in
developed markets. Customers are provided with added up value through innovative
functions and features. The impact of technology and Vodafone together helps
people to review the employment opportunities and take advantage of them even
when they are away in their home towns and villages.

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Recommendations:
 Vodafone must explore the opportunities for materials processing in Kenya
 Vodafone must try and focus on a long-term business case solution
 The case study must also involve stake holders both internally and at local
levels.

The future of Vodafone and improvement in managing and reporting CR lies in the
following areas
• Proper training of staffs in customer handling and query handling (Customer
service management).
• Vodafone’s status of compliance on Codes of Conduct to publicly available codes at
local operating level company (network roll-out, content standards, others).
• Organising the CR reporting practices of local operating company to ensure
consistency in reporting principles at group level.

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References
Gelder. D & Woodcock. P, Marketing and Promotional Strategy (2003). Nelson
Thornes
Jobber. D & Fahy. J, Foundations of Marketing 2nd Edition (2006), McGraw-Hill
Education
Lynch. R, Corporate Strategy 4th Edition, (2006), Pearson Education Limited

Websites
http://uk.reuters.com/business/quotes/overview?symbol=VOD.L
http://www.businessballs.com/changemanagement.htm#John%20P%20Kotter%27s
%20eight%20steps%20organizational%20change
http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/13315/vodafone-verizon-and-
qualcomm-expect-increased-demand-for-m2m-networks-as-they-seal-strategic-
alliance-13315.html
http://www.knowyourmobile.com/blog/5967/vodafone_launches_musicstation_unli
mited_download_service.html
http://www.management-issues.com/change-management.asp

http://www.ft.com/companies/telecoms
http://www.vodafone.com/start/investor_relations/strategy0.html

www.3g.co.uk/PR/July2006/3382.html

http://www.vodafone.co.uk
http://tutor2u.net/revision_notes_strategy.asp

http://www.rcn.org.uk/data/assets/word_doc/0007/288655
http://www.vodafone.com/etc/medialib/attachments/cr_downloads.Par.46720.File.t
mp/VF_CR_Dialogue_2_Assurance1.pdf
Vodafone Group Plc, Annual Review and Summary Financial Statement (2007),
Newbury, London

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