Module code: |
BMAF004-20 |
Module title: |
Introduction to Business and Management |
Assignment: |
S1. Group Presentation |
Wordcount: |
3,000 |
Contribution to module mark: |
100% |
Module leader: |
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Student Name:
Student ID.:
Total Word Count: 3000
Table of Contents
Interaction of the internal strengths and weaknesses with the external environment 11
Organisational structure of BT Group 13
Issue being faced by the BT Group 15
Recommendations for BT Group 16
Introduction
This study will show an assessment of the telecommunication industry of the UK and how the company BT Group operates in the country.
The internal as well as the external environment of the country will be analysed and this will be followed by the description of how the two interact.
The organisational structure of the company will be discussed, along with an issue which is being faced by the company at present. Recommendations will be provided for the company for adoption and implement. This will give a glimpse of the state of the market of the UK and how telecommunication companies work in the same.
Company Profile
The company BT Group, also known as British Telecom Group, operates in the telecommunications industry and there are about 10,000 employees to work for them (BT, 2024).
The headquarters of the company are located in
One Braham, London, England, the UK.
The company is the leading organisation for providing telecommunication services in the UK and they operate in the wholesale as well as the retail market. This organisation is well known all across the world and they are a telecommunications powerhouse and caters to customers in 180 countries.
There are four main businesses and the BT Group works with- consumers, global services, enterprise, and open reach (Statista, 2024).
The revenue of the company has been declining consistently since the financial year 2016, when it reached a peak of £6.17 billion.
The consumer segment of the company generates the highest volumes of revenue and this is followed by the business segment and the open reach. According to Statista (2024), the third quarter of the year 2024 resulted in the generation of £5.34 billion.
Figure 1: British Telecommunications (BT) Revenue
(Source: Statista, 2024)
PESTLE Analysis
Factor |
Findings |
Political |
Figure 2: Political stability of United Kingdom (Source: The Global Economy, 2024)
|
Economic |
Figure 3: Rate of Inflation for the Consumer Price Index in the UK till July 2024 (Source: Statista, 2024)
|
Social |
Figure 4:Average disposable income in households in the UK (Source: Statista, 2024)
|
Technological |
Figure 5: Enterprises in scientific research and development in the UK (Source: Statista, 2024)
|
Legal |
|
Environmental |
|
Table 1: PESTLE Analysis
(Source: Created by the Learner)
This section has been the analysis of the external environment and the issues which have to be considered during the management of the company. The company is stable politically and there are no chances of terrorist attacks breaking out in the same. The government is strong and there are no chances of corruption in the country, which is able to make sure that the company can have a stable and steady growth in the same. The economic condition of the country has also improved relatively as the rate of inflation has reduced considerably. This means that not only will the company be able to run smoothly, but the people of the country will also have a larger disposable income. This means that there are chances of earning more profits for the company.
The population of the country is quite large, and hence, the company can cater to more customers. The rate of innovation has reduced considerably, from 119 of the previous year (Statista, 2024). However, the growth of artificial intelligence and internet services is important to making sure that the company will be able to have a steady growth in the market in the future as well. There are several employment laws which have to be followed by the company to make sure that they can motivate their employees. This will prove to make sure that the employees will be able to focus on growth and have a steady loyalty for the company. The government of the country has also been strictly emphasising on the employment laws, which means that the company will also have to consider this.
SWOT Analysis
Strength
|
Weakness
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Opportunity
|
Threat
|
Table 2: SWOT Analysis
(Source: Created by the Learner)
The major strength of the BT group lies in the fact that all the projects of the company are automated and this provides a significant amount of consistency in their products. This makes sure that the satisfaction of the customers is high and the skilled workforce of the organisation is able to make sure that the needs of the people are carefully catered to. This increases the company’s competitive advantage significantly, which is emphasised on due to the strong network of distribution which they have and their highly lucrative portfolio of products. The weakness of the company lies in the fact that the market of telecommunications is highly competitive and the company keeps shifting their brand.
This causes them to lose customers from time to time and they have issues with poor planning of their finances. Being mostly reliant on the revenue in the UK market is also detrimental to the growth of the company as this puts them in a risky position. The opportunities which are present in the market have been listed and of them, making sure that the cash flow is stable and further international expansion is two of the most doable ones. The threats which are being faced by the company are things which are consistently present in the market in some form or the other; hence, the company will have to design new strategies on the basis of the issue.
Interaction of the internal strengths and weaknesses with the external environment
The company has multiple strengths, just like they have their weaknesses.
Automation of their activities is an undertaking which is already a part of the normal functions of the company.
The external environment of the UK is highly lucrative for this as there is a lot of support from the government in terms of technological growth, which means that the organisation will have the scope of making sure that they can introduce more services. They have a highly skilled workforce and this allows them to cater to the needs of the country easily (BT, 2024). Since the internet connectivity is high for the UK, BT group can easily provide their services to the people. Adding this to the fact that the company has a good brand reputation, it means that the people of the country are able to easily trust the services of the company. The country has a wide population, which means that they can easily add more employees to their workforce. This will promote creativity in the organisation and the services offered to the customers will be of high quality.
The overall rate of satisfaction of the customers is high, and since the country’s rate of inflation is reducing gradually (Statista, 2024). This means that people can easily understand afford the services of the company. This means the company has many strengths which work well with the political, economic and technological benefits of the external market. Since the rate of corruption is low, the organisation can perform smoothly while making sure that the main focus is on the growth. This means that the company will focus more on their personal growth and adding this with the technological strength of the country, the organisation will be able to make steady progress.
The weaknesses of the company come from the fact that there are too many competitors in the market.
This means that the customers of the company have too many companies to choose from, which reduces the market advantage of the BT Group.
The financial planning of the company is also deemed to be poor, which indicates that their decisions about the allocation of resources are not always sound. The external environment of the company is not particularly stable yet. Things like the war between Russia and the Ukraine have resulted in the economy of the country collapsing to the point where affording basic food, housing and power became too hard for common people (Statista, 2024). In an environment like this, it is imperative that the company must have good financial planning. Consistently shifting the identity of the brand is not helpful as this confuses customers. Since they have to be careful about the money they spend, this may discourage them from investing in the brand. The issues which can come from the consistent progress of technology in the market lies in the fact that the company may not be able to keep up with the same and this will be able to ensure that the company will be able to focus on its growth.
Organisational structure of BT Group
The consumer segment refers to the mobile and broadband aspect of the company, which can make sure to promote communication for more than 25 million subscribers.
The business segment has the responsibility of seeing to it that organisations which are their clients are resilient and secure.
Openreach is a separate company which is a part of the BT Group and this is able to see to it that the homes of the country have steady connectivity (BT, 2024).
The organisation is a single business which is formed like various units. The main focus of the business is in the form of customers and having their needs catered to is of utmost importance (BT, 2024). The organisation focuses on delivering value to their customers and providing innovative solutions to the organisation’s problems. There are three main businesses which cater to the needs of the customers- business, consumer and Openreach. The main objectives of the company is to make sure that the organisation can sell and buy technology in a manner which would be able to benefit society consistently and minimise the potential for harm in the society.
The main structure found in the company is that of the hierarchical structure of working.
There are certain characteristics which can be seen in these kinds of organisational structures.
The most distinguishable aspect of this is that there is a steady chain of command which is expected to be followed (Oh and Ha, 2020).
The process of decision making is also highly formal and the instructions move from the top to the bottom of the organisation. There are clear roles which have to be followed in the company (Schulze and Pinkow, 2020). This means that the employees of the organisation will be responsible for performing the tasks of the same on the basis of the expectations of the mangers. There are clear roles and expectations, and the employees know exactly what to do in the company. The relationships of the company are formulated on the basis of the work needs of the company. The employees have their reporting managers and they are responsible for the direct management of the employees on the basis of the needs of the organisation. This is the organisational structure of the company BT Group. The businesses and management of the employees are regulated in a manner which would ensure that the company can grow in the market of the UK.
Figure 6: Organisational Structure
(Source: Created by the Learner)
Issue being faced by the BT Group
According to Race (2024), the of the issues which have been faced by the company quite recently is that of not being able to connect important 999 calls.
The company has been fined for the same as the issue lasted for 10 hours on the 25th of June, which meant that 14000 calls of emergency were not answered.
The main issue which was seen during the course of this was that the company was not able to respond effectively to the calls, which meant that the company caused inconveniences to a large number of people across the country. The issue arose due to an error in the server of the company, which caused the calls to get disconnected. This meant that the company was not able to connect the calls and this issue could not be handled due to the poor training of the staff and poorly documented instructions. This outage was not seen only in the case of emergency services, but this also affected the services of the other calls- family, services, businesses and so on.
The main cause of the issue has been that the company was not ready for the situation and the staff were not trained enough to know how to address the same. Not having the instructions laid out for the employees clearly showed that the company was not prepared for situations of this kind and they were not able to respond effectively to the issue (Urbancová et al., 2021). This problem could have been avoided if all the possibilities which could arise in the operations had been premediated and the warning systems of the same had been sufficient. This meant that the company did not have sound internal processes, although their own standards are particularly high. This is an issue which has been faced by the company recently.
Recommendations for BT Group
In this case, a solutions-based problem-solving method has been used to come up with the recommendations for the above-mentioned problems.
The company needs to invest more in the training and development of their employees and they have to see to it that they can provide grounds for the organisation to grow well.
The company will also have to ensure that they take into account the fact that the methods of management of their internal systems have to be tested clearly to avoid issues in the case of emergencies.
The company will also have to regulate their internal financial systems better and this will prove to make sure that the allocation of resources is strong to be able to manage the needs of the organisation.
Providing training and development to the employees would mean that they will have the skills which they need to be able to operate the functions of the company (Kulkarni et al., 2022). This means that the organisation will have to allocate resources to upskill their employees on the basis of the needs of the market. The processes which are being developed by the company will have to be tested so that the company is able to make sure that the organisation can manage any issues as they arise.
The internal systems of the company may fail at any time, since this is a company which is strongly focused on technology (AYTAÇ and ÇABUK, 2020). This would mean that the company will have to keep a lot of back up plans in place to make sure that the processes do not fail again. The management of the finances of the company efficiently will make sure that the organisation will have the resources which would be needed for performing these functions and that they would address the problems effectively. These are some of the recommendations which are relevant to the organisation and will make sure that they grow. To solve the issues concerning human resource development, the company should develop systems to train their employees with the latest skills. The management of systems and finances can be initiated making consultations which are necessary from consulting organisations and implementation of the same.
Conclusion
This study has shown the interaction of the internal and the external environment of the organisation and the ways in which the same interact to promote the growth of the company.
The issue which has been faced by the company recently have been noted along with the causes of the same.
Recommendations have been provided for the organisation to adopt and implement and this will be able to make sure that they have the scope for growth. The external environment of the company is supportive for their growth but there are some issues in the internal environment, which have been noted as well.
References
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Appendix
