Custom «Cell Phone Company» Essay Paper Sample

My featured company is Vodafone (Vodafone Group plc) which is British international cell phone network operator with its headquarters in England (Newbury). Based on revenue, Vodafone is currently the biggest company of telecommunication networks with a market value of almost £80.2 billion hence the largest British company. Presently, Vodafone operates in 31 nations around the world and has partner networks in additional 40 countries. It stands at position (2) when ranked basing on the number of subscribers, about 151.8 million subscribers, after China Mobil. To remain competitive in the market, Vodafone has worked tirelessly to ensure that all the resources at disposal are put to maximum use to ensure efficiency and customer satisfaction (Technology and resources, 2010).

1. Role and value of resources and capabilities in strategy formulation for Vodafone

The key resources at Vodafone include the workers, assets, network infrastructure and the latest technology. The company boasts of well trained and informed employees who ensure that they make use and develop the latest information technology in telecommunications because of their close linkage (Fuah, 2000). The ability of Vodafone to access latest resources such as opinion papers, video case studies, and white hence they gain important information to help them develop the best strategy in the market. The resources are not only important in ensuring that they serve their customers satisfactorily but also help the company remain at the top as a market leader. Through this they make more informed decisions and come up with good products for the ever changing telecommunication needs.

2. Vodafone's Key Resources

According to Technology and resources (2010) one of the main reasons for the success of the company is their well trained and developed human resources. The estimated number of Vodafone's employees worldwide currently stands at about 79,000 people. When looking the team of Human Resource professionals at Vodafone, various factors come into picture, and the team is always there to ensure that everything goes on as planned. The company has many kinds of specialists ranging from IT experts, customer care, technicians, sales and promotions experts, among others. All of them know one collective thing, that they have to work together to enable the company achieve its goals and objectives.

Telecommunication licences

Telecommunication licences form one of the key resources at Vodafone and enable the company to run telecommunication networks within 28 jointly controlled and controlled markets across the world. It depends on licenses in operation of mobile services through regulation of these services in most countries of its operation. The group holds licences for both its joint ventures and its subsidiaries other than providing a number of licences for fixed line services in many of these countries. This way the company generates a lot of revenue.

Financial resources and assets

The company's non-current assets are made up of intangible assets, plant, equipment and property, investments in related undertakings. Currently the company's intangible assets stand at £30.3 billion with goodwill (£ 51.3) making up as the largest component. Secondly the equipment, plant and property have made significant increment to £ 16.7 billion due to its addition and further acquisition and also favorable movement of foreign exchange. On the other hand, investments in related activities as of 31^st March, 2008 stood at £ 22.5 billion. This amount increased for the £ 20.2 billion the previous year due to investment made in Verizon Wireless. Finally there other non-current assets majorly linked to other investments of the company that adds up to £ 7.4 billion (Technology and resources, 2010).

There are also current assets that the company holds which stood at £ 12.8 billion. The total equity funds of shareholders also stood at £ 78.0 billion. To ensure smooth operation and expand the operations, its short term and long term borrowings stands at £ 27.2 billion. Other current assets as a result of its operations stand at £ 12. 3 billion because of differences in foreign exchange rates

3.How Key Resources are linked to Competitiveness

Human resources at the company are made up of highly trained personnel to deliver the best in the market. The vast range of individuals working here, from payroll and reward specialists to HR Business Partners and development and learning professionals, all have proper ways of engagement at the company (Thylman, 2010). There are clear processes, roles and performance measures stipulated for everyone to adhere to. Success and achievement is recognized and rewarded to motivate the employees other than great leadership acting as another way to serving both employs and clients efficiently and satisfactorily.

The use of financial resources within the company to invest in the current telecommunications technology keeps the company appealing and very concerned of their changing communication needs. The use of white papers and video case studies for example, facilitated by the company goes along way to keep as the leader in inventions of the latest communication technology. Huge profits gained from the Vodafone's sales are channeled to various activities like research to establish emerging trends in the industry and also sustaining many corporate socials responsibility programs for the benefit of all the stakeholders.

Lastly, investment in the state of the art infrastructure has enabled Vodafone to remain the favorite mobile telephone network in many countries of its operations. This ensures clear voice and data delivery within various points in the network. This way, the company gets closer to its customers as it builds reputation hence getting successful day in and out (Technology and resources, 2010).

4. Steps associated with putting resources and capabilities to work

Formulation of a strategy to enhance operations of a given firm deals with harmonizing its capabilities and resources to the opportunities arising in the external environment. Other profitability of the company, resources and capabilities has emerged to have a significant impact on developing and initiating a given strategy in a particular firm (Thylmann, 2010).

There are four major steps involved in strategy formulation using resources and capabilities. The first step (step 1) is identifying them. At this point the firm at stake has to establish all the resources and capabilities it holds from demand/supply point of view.

Secondly (step 2), the identified resources and capabilities have to be appraised in relation to their relative strength and importance. In other words benchmarking has to be carried out to establish how best they can be used to carry out strategy formulation (Thylmann, 2010). The third step (step 3) is developing the strategies which is done by exploiting key major strengths as identified in the appraising stage and managing the weaknesses through converting them into strengths, outsourcing or defending them. Lastly (step 4) to develop the strategy further and the most frequent method employed is gap analysis where among other things, the firm can decide to either develop new ones or replicate them.

5. Other cell phone company, and its key resources and its difference to your featured cell phone company

The other company telecommunication of company of focus is Verizon communication Inc. (Company). Verizon is also one of leading telecommunication services providers in the world. It was formed in 1983 and in the United States of America and is headquartered in New York. It is currently the biggest net work of wireless telecommunications in the United States of America with over 87 million subscribers.

Verizon's Key resources and differences with Vodafone's

The Verizon key resource is the human resources. Emphasizing on commitment and diversity within communities the company operates, it has a highly diverse and trained workforce just like in the case of Vodafone. However a sharp difference can be drawn between the human resources of the two companies in terms of the number of personnel. While Vodafone has approximately 79,000 people workers globally, Verizon boasts of employing about 210, 800 employees (Verizon Communication Inc, 2010).

Other key resources Verizon include financial resources and assets including the infrastructure it uses to carry out its operations within the region. The difference between its assets and those of Vodafone is that due to the fact that Vodafone operates in many countries, it has a bigger infrastructural base than Verizon.

6. Strategy recommendations the company should offer before implementing the cell phone

Before any company can roll out its services to the market, the first step it has to carry out is to determine the available resources and capabilities. This will ensure that it establishes its points of weaknesses and strengths. This is very necessary especially today where the market is fast changing. Additionally developing and exploiting capabilities found externally will help the company to get well adapted to the external changes (Thylmann, 2010).

It is very clear that resources can produce on their own hence they have to be put to proper use in relation to other players/firms within the cell phone industry (Fuah, 2000). This is what is otherwise referred to as capabilities. This, the company will have to do by looking at various functions within the company including sales, marketing, distribution, product design, corporate, manufacturing and management information among others.

According to Fuah (2000), the new company also has to carry out proper research to establish the needs and preferences of consumers in the cell phone market. The company can use this as one way of knowing the best services as required by their customers who form the core component as to why any business has to be set up.

To sum up the whole discussion about cell phone industry, it is very important that operating a cell phone company is a very challenging undertaking. The activity requires significant investment in communication infrastructure, latest IT technology and highly trained personnel among other factors that make up the whole system. This therefore calls for a proper strategy to formulated and implemented basing on the resources and capabilities within the company's reach.