Vodafone Company & Weaknesses
A weakness in this point of view can be defined as any element of Vodafone Company that probably will prevent the success of laid down goals by the company and more often than not regarded to encompass the businesses assets, capabilities and resources which are not fully applied in attainment of the said objectives Since the year 2002, Vodafone has shown large statutory losses and this has resulted in goodwill ‘being written off’ by the UK GAAP.
The company has reported a huge loss that is why it requires the ‘goodwill’ as it plans to accommodate technology change in its sectors. The loss has been attributed to the heavy investments applied on technology in the sector such as the GSM technology. Despite this reality, Vodafone is a highly profitable company and it is only having challenges in terms of providing high quality services and products that go in line with today’s technology. The company in 2006 announced a loss before tax of ? 14.
9 billion which was the biggest in UK’s corporate history since 1992. The main cause of the loss was impairment charges pushed to the company through acquisition of Mannesmann (Blaszejewski. and Dorow, 2003). Despite its numerous strengths, Vodafone could leave it weak in some areas due to huge p control in terms of changes in the way services and products are developed. The company fails to meet the international challenge of penetrating new markets apart from what it has acquired so far because of the strict trade tariffs.
Some countries are developing very faster in terms of technology and are now capable of rolling out their own mobile network operation abilities which will mean that Vodafone should improve further internally and prepare its technical team for better technology-related improvements (Lovelock, 2006). Critics in terms of leadership management suggest that the move by Vodafone to retrench majority of its employees in industry and services has lead to increased amount of poor provision of services within the company.
Performance management control is seen as to be reinvigorated by transferring the dimension of disciplinary management among the employees themselves especially those working in various companies not within the UK. Employees mostly focus on themselves rather than the group work because they are not actively involved in the actual planning of the goals and objectives of the company and this has resulted in mistrust for the company. These and other different issues need to be addressed at length before deciding to adopt them as a way of improving productivity.
In the long run it will lead to the breakdown of individual relationships which affect their productivity in general at the company. The leadership of this company should be in apposition to promote employee participation, innovation and new product development (Minbaeva, Pedersen, Bjorkman, Fey, and Park, 2003). It is also very difficult for the employees to easily adopt the technological changes that go along with the requirements of the company.
The company ha been forced to retrench its employees to accommodate new individuals who are aware of the new technology the company is adopting year by year. Vodafone has also been forced to train its employees to make use of new computer software, hardware and methodologies for the new generation technology (Vodafone, 2008). Opportunities An opportunity in this perspective is anything that provides Vodafone Company with distinctive advantage over its rivals in the market.
As technologies become more complex and accessible, the mobile infrastructure market will increasingly change with technology and this will negatively and positively affect Vodafone. Today, customers would like to have devices and services that match with the technology of the day. Introduction of mobile TV, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), Smart Phone, and Future Mobile Networks Etc poses a challenge and equally an opportunity for the Vodafone Company to critically use the already available financial advantage to beat their competitors.
The growth and advancement of mobile networks will sway for the Vodafone depending on forces such as; market driven factors-some products are developed without a clear market demand or its need derived from the customers; continued sophistication of services as well as increased divergence in the use of the devices/ services such internet use, video recording, music playing and other multimedia features that are available in a computer (Peng, 2003).
Vodafone in the past has taken over, formed strategic alliances and merged with other companies in the sector top form strong competitive companies and it still ha opportunities to further these opportunities.. The main opportunities lie greatly in Asia and South America where tremendous opportunities for future business especially in expanding consumer markets in countries such as India and China are located. New locations offer Vodafone huge chances for excellence as the different technologies apply to the different countries (Keith, 2008).
Threats A threat is looked upon as any happening which if not handled well might probably prevent the success of Vodafone Company purposes e. g. consumers waning real income and rivalry along with other proceedings believed to cause risk to the procedures of the business undertaking. Since Vodafone is the biggest company in the world, it is subject to harsh competition as almost all companies will be trying to adopt and outweigh it financially, technology-wise etc.
Being a global leader in this field, Vodafone is exposed to political problems and other issues such as those policies by GATT. As a mobile network provider and mobile technologies/ handsets are becoming environmental hazards, the company is facing huge challenges. Mobile manufacturers such as Nokia are intensifying their products to become environmentally disposable, this will mean that price deflation for services will occur leading to price competition for players in this industry as well (Vodafone, 2008).
The competitors for Vodafone are varied depending on the local partners in the country where the company has invested or has subsidiary with. Throughout the countries, the following are some of the competitors for this company; Telstra, Optus, China Unicom , China Mobile, PCCW ,Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, Reliance Communications, Idea, Spice, Aircel, Telkomsel, Indosat, Maxis Communications, Telecom Samoa Digicel, SingTel, StarHub, Mobitel, Hutch, among others.
Competitors for Vodafone keep pace with new technology to improve their services. Some companies have shifted from old computer based technologies to newly agitated technologies making them more competitive (Fortune. com 2003). . Other form of threats that may hit the company’s performance at the moment is modernization in the telecommunication sector. The effects of mobile network technologies for any company in this industry will be social, political and economical in nature.
The social effects that have just been noticed are misuse of mobile email, messages and other things. This will in future become a source of contention for the service provisions in this field. When telephone lines will be phased out throughout the world especially in African countries where they still being used, Vodafone will be having problems with its old fashioned technology, as it will need to obtain new machines at the higher costs (Cronje, Du Toit and Motlatla, M. , (2004)
