Orange Telecom: a Case Analysis
Orange Telecom: A Case Analysis ORGA 433 – 460 Orange Telecom is a tremendous example of successful organizational understanding of change in a fast-paced and growing market. Utilizing the environment around them, Orange has grown into a worldwide triumph in the Telecom industry. By committing to a progressive strategy, Orange has demonstrated their ability to change and evolve to not only suit their immediate environment, but to also actively envision the future path of the industry, and capitalize on prospective trends around the world.
Question 1: Using the internet and other sources, as well as the information give in the case study, summarize the elements in Orange’s temporal and external environments in terms of the influence it had on the opportunity for this new brand to succeed, 1994-2006. Orange was launched in the UK in 1994 as an answer to the growing trend towards mobile telecommunications. From the very beginning, Orange utilized a strategy of pioneering many of the services to its customers that would later become the norm, industry-wide.
At it’s launch, Orange was the first to offer standard customer service features such as caller id. Orange was the first company to offer aesthetically appealing masts shaped like trees which helped in customer relations. In 1999 Orange launched a branch in Switzerland which would be the first of many excursions into foreign markets. In 2000 Orange was able to use superior technology to offer Europe its first wireless video phone. These are just a few example of Orange’s strategy of providing customers with the latest in innovation.
They launched at a time when Telecom services focused more on turnover than customer service. Orange decided to go in a completely unique direction by focusing primarily on customer concerns and service, being among the first to offer their customers numerous different option in every category such as prepaying phones through ATMs. In the UK, in 2003 Orange changed the way the mobile market operated, turning all of its 2,000 UK retail salespeople into ‘phone trainers’ and introducing them into its high street stores.
It also launched the new Orange Film Funding Board adverts that took the international cinema industry by storm. The success of Orange is also strongly attributed to its ability to capitalize on external environmental trends. Being a company steeped in English and French heritage, Orange has been able to utilize a multicultural approach to business and provide nations with both French and British histories. This has opened the door for Orange to cross the language barriers that often bring to a halt the growth of many organizations.
Orange has also been able to sense the common curiosity mankind has towards the future and has therefore began marketing itself, not as a company that simply provides a service, but also a company that provides answers to the future through innovation. Further, the Orange brand has become so widely recognized in the UK and nations around the world that the company’s symbol has become synonomus with youth, innovation, and of course mobile phone service. They have strongly marketed this brand to the youth with the knowledge that brand recognition has become more important than ever in an industry with so many customer options.
Finally, Orange has had a finger on the pulse of, not only technology and innovation, but of the field of study of technology. Since 2000 there has been a huge growth in the communications field of education, and Orange has capitalized on this by keeping steady observation of rising stars in the field of Mobile Telecom. Orange has utilized its temporal and external environment to become a successful telecom company. By keeping up with trends, and pioneering so many practices that have become common-place, Orange has now become an industry leader in being able to recognize environmental trends and provide answers for the future.
Question 2: What type of change do you think Orange was pursuing? In terms of the concepts and ideas put forward, particularly in Chapter 2, justify your views. As an organization in an already fairly established industry Orange was attempting a transformational type of change, also developmental change seemed to be something that was pivotal in the enterprise of this organization. Since the time of its official launch in 1994, to present day, Orange has been avid in establishing itself as a more wider social ntity rather than a specifically narrowly viewed service provider in an industry with a lot of alternatives. This very separation has been the catalyst of the transformational change that took place in the telecommunication industry with the launching of Orange. This change could be also more specifically described as discontinuous change due to the fact that Orange initially originated from a parent company that was government owned. Furthermore, the strategy pivotal to Orange’s success has been significantly divergent from previously established strategies.
Discontinuous change is defined by Grundy as “change which is marked by rapid shifts in strategy, structure or culture, or in all three” (Senior & Fleming, p. 46). The type of change that was pursued by Orange is developmental change. The parent company responsible for the establishment of Orange was France Telecom, which at one time was the monopolistic organization providing postal and telephone services in France. This fact is indicative of an executive team that was very experienced in traditional establishments and industry nuances.
However, rather than simply carry over that deeply rooted experience in a fashion of an identical duplicate, the executives of the newly formed Orange took a developmental approach and built upon well established concepts in order to achieve new heights in this competitive industry. By building new concepts and ideas unto a solid foundation of industry experience the Orange company was able to outdistance its competition fairly quickly and become an industry giant in a relatively short time-p.
If one examines the wide history behind the formation of Orange, this type of change is clearly evident and is transformational in its implications. From the very onset the organization aggressively pursued a marketing campaign that separated them from being viewed as simply another service provider or manufacturer, or a symbiosis of both. The company steadily became an abstract social entity that related to customers on a deeper level then a simple service provider and therefore revolutionized the way it connected with its client base.
In the industry plagued by deprived customer service Orange established itself as a beacon of exceptional customer service has been increasing its customer participation in leaps and bounds, which in turn made it the global entity it is today. Question 3: How far do you think the changes made have been appropriate to the environments in which Orange was operating? The changes that Orange has made are very appropriate for the environment (market) in which they operate. First, the most basic change they have made is distinguishing themselves as a provider of customer service, not as manufacturer and provider as a particular product.
This avoided labelling as just another network provider, and definitely differentiated their firm from the other carriers in the markets where they operate. They operate on a looking forward basis, looking to increase the possibility of communication concentrating on the service and relationship with customers not just the individual transactions. Another change that was made was to have a name that couldn’t be cut out at a mobile services provider; unlike Rogers Wireless, T-Mobile.. etc the changes they made to the way they are branded themselves effectively.
They chose a name that was abstract and unrelated to the telephone industry which was unconventional in that it showed a divergence from industry standards which has paid off for them. An abstract name that is not consciously tied to only one part of a person’s life gives the feeling of an all-encompassing service or entity in that person’s mind. This is appropriate given that Orange is aiming to enrich the customer’s life via their communication possibilities in an industry that is mainly transaction based and not geared towards customer service.
Customer service changes they made were significant, being the first to provide “billing by the second” definitely would have put them in a category of their own at a time when other companies where billing by the minute. This change is consistent with their vision of embodying the future rather than just selling cell phones and products. Overall Orange has had great success by making changes to the way mobile telecommunication companies do business and are seen by consumers.
Their branding before and after their launch has reflected this as well, and considering their target market (the future) ,young people who use their mobile phones for more than emergency calls, their changes are very appropriate. After all it is the younger generations who will be more dependent on mobile communications as time passes accepting more services into their everyday life moving forward into the future…. and unlike the rest of the industry Orange has branded itself as the future which is very fitting. References Senior, B. & Fleming, J. (2006). Organizational Change (3rd ed. ). Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited.
