Situation Analysis and Problem Statement

Situation Analysis and Problem Statement

Global Communications feels the pressures of the industries with trying to keep up with its competitors and watching its stock prices fall. Yet the stockholders are giving them a lot of pressure to correct the problem. They need to offer better services than what their competitors are providing to their customers. This paper will discuss the background, the problem, and the end goals.

Situation Background (Step 1)

The entire telecommunications industry has fallen into hard times due to the Cable Companies entering the competition but Global Communications has been hit hard with not just the increased competition but smaller profit margins, the costs of doing business, and have realized that they need a new strategic plan, but will need help in implementing this.

The problem is not really obvious, as one may think. It is easy to say that there is too much competition and blame outside entities for their woes. Ultimately, the real issue is GC’s inability to effectively compete with new players in the market (i.e. cable companies). Often this is the secondary to a failure to differentiate their offerings from those of the competitors. It sounds as if their attempt at differentiation has been “Our Edge is People”. This has two obvious flaws. First, it is in contrast with the apparent reality that their people lack the technical skills to perform the job. Second, differentiation must take the form of something that really matters to the customers. They have already identified the competitive points that seem to be hurting them (new features, televisions, computers, phone service, etc) of and it has little to do with the people. Outsourcing the support jobs may improve the people quality, but unless this is a competitive issue, it may not have a significant effect beyond the reduction in costs.

Issue Identification

o Maintaining employee morale and preventing “brain drain” to competitors, this often occurs following layoffs.

o Maintaining a working relationship with the union and making sure that Maria gets back into good graces with her boss. Maria seems to have a generally favorable attitude toward the company and she could be important.

o Differentiating their new offering from existing competitive offerings. Adding 1000 new sales people are not going to sell a product that has no appeal to the potential customer.

o Maintaining cohesion among top management

o Converting the proposed changes into profit

o Effectively competing more locally and globally…very different games.

o Managing new partnerships effectively and profitably

Opportunity Identification

o Identify markets not currently served (or not served well) by their major competitors and fill that niche.

o Assisting the employees that get laid off.

o Nothing generates future success like current success. If their cost cutting and new competitive plan can improve the numbers, even for a quarter or two, the stock price should rebound a bit.

o Improve their relationship with the union (long term) Identify markets not currently served (or not served well) by their major competitors and fill that niche.

o Increase profits

It is apparent that there is no concern, in the fact that the plan is to grow by serving current customers and that there is no mention of gaining new customers. How important is access to "company information hosted in mainframes" is to a small business owner, because the chances that any small business would have a mainframe computer would be slim. These new partnerships may hold the key, but again, they must be able to differentiate their offering or it will have little effect.

Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas

Senior management presented the Board of directors a plan in which they are expecting to be implemented as proposed after it has been researched and analyzed sufficiently to ensure success, even if problems have occurred, they just need to inform the board of the