MARKETING AND BRANDING STRATEGIES

( A TCS PROJECT)UNDER THE GUIDENCE OF ALEX P JOSEPH(COLLEGE MENTOR) AND SAURAV

PATHAK (COMPANY MENTOR)

TOBIN JOSE

PGDM A

P14158

INTRODUCTION

The internship topic was to suggest marketing and branding strategies for TCS HOBS in the area of Latin America, middle east and east Asia.

What is TCS HOBS?

TCS HOBS ( HOSTED OSS/BSS SOLUTION) is a telecom product it was a successful one in North America and as well as other parts of the world. A detailed study about the marketing and branding strategies have done on this product also this project includes the details about competitors product

SECTION-1 INDUSTRY PROFILE STUDY

COMPANY PROFILE

Type Public

Traded as

BSE: 532540NSE: TCSBSE SENSEX ConstituentCNX Nifty Constituent

Industry IT services, IT consulting

Founded 1968

Founder J.R.D Tata

Headquarters Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Area served Worldwide

Key people Natarajan Chandrasekaran(CEO & MD)

Services IT, business consulting and outsourcing services

Parent Tata Group

SubsidiariesCMC Limited, TCS China, TRDDC, Computational Research Laboratories, TCS e-Serve Ltd.

Slogan Experience certainty

Website www.tcs.com

MISSION STATEMENT To help customers achieve their business objectives by providing

innovative, best-in-class consulting, IT solutions and services

To make it a joy for all stakeholders to work with us

WHAT TCS OFFERS comprising Application Development & Maintenance

Business Intelligence

Enterprise Solutions

Assurance Services

Engineering & Industrial Services

Infrastructure Services

Consulting

Business Process Services

KEY RISKS FACED BY THE COMPANY Global economic situation

Restrictive cross border mobility legislation

Business model redundancy

Integration risks in M&A

Supply – side risks

Currency volatility

Cost pressures

MAJOR COMPETITORS FOR TCS

WIPRO LIMITED

IBM GLOBAL SERVICES

INFOYS LIMITED

ORACLE

CTS

TECH MAHINDRA

CORPORATE OFFICE AND HEAD QUARTERS

Corporate office- TCS House, Raveline Street, Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Tel: 91 22 6778 9999 Fax: 91 22 6778 9000

Registered office-9th Floor, Nirmal Building,Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021,Tel: 91 22 6778 9595,Fax: 91 22 6778 9660,Website: www.tcs.com

Other countries in which TCS operates- INDIA,AFRICA, ASIA,AUSTRALIA,EUROPE, NORTH AMERICA AND SOUTH AMERICA

TCS DIVISIONAL STRUCTURE

CEO–N.Chandrasekaran (Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director)

CFO- Rajesh Gopinathan (Chief Financial Officer and Vice President)

CTO-K Ananth Krishnan (Chief Technology Officer)

Global Corporate Affairs Pradipta BagchiVice President & Head, Global Communications

Global HR- Ajoyendra Mukherjee (EVP and Head, Global Human Resources) 

Marketing -

JAPAN -AS Lakshminarayanan

 

 

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

 

Non-Executive Board Members

Cyrus Mistry, Chairman  

Prof. Clayton M Christensen, Director

Aman Mehta, Director

Dr. Ron Sommer, Director

Venkatraman Thyagarajan, Director

Dr. Vijay Kelkar, Director

Ishaat Hussain, Director  

Phiroz A Vandrevala, Director

OP Bhatt, Director

Executive Board Members

N Chandrasekaran, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director

Aarthi Subramanian, Global Head of Delivery Excellence

CAPITAL STRUCTURETCS made an initial public offer in July 2004 and its shares were listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) in India on August 25, 2004. The shares of the Company were issued at a face value of Re 1 per share and a share premium of Rs 849 per share. There has been no follow-on offering from the Company. TCS’ equity shares are listed in India on the National Stock Exchange (NSE: TCS) and the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE: 532540).

Period Instrument Authorized Capital Issued Capital - P A I D U P -

From To (Rs. cr) (Rs. cr) Shares (nos) Face Value Capital

2013 2014 Equity Share 420.05 195.87 1958727979 1 195.87

2012 2013 Equity Share 225 195.72 1957220996 1 195.72

2011 2012 Equity Share 225 195.72 1957220996 1 195.72

2010 2011 Equity Share 225 195.72 1957220996 1 195.72

2009 2010 Equity Share 225 195.72 1957220996 1 195.72

2008 2009 Equity Share 120 97.86 978610498 1 97.86

2007 2008 Equity Share 120 97.86 978610498 1 97.86

2006 2007 Equity Share 120 97.86 978610498 1 97.86

2005 2006 Equity Share 60 48.93 489305249 1 48.93

2004 2005 Equity Share 60 48.01 480114809 1 48.01

2003 2004 Equity Share 40 36.44 36440002 10 36.

TOP SHARE HOLDERS OF THE COMPANY

Sr.

No.Name of the shareholder Number of

equity shares held

Percentage of holding

1 Tata Sons Limited 144,34,51,698 73.69

2 Life Insurance Corporation of India 4,45,37,764 2.27

3 Frankin Templeton Investment Funds 2,33,16,367 1.19

4 Aberdeen Global Indian Equity (Mauritius) Limited 1,14,00,000 0.58

5 Oppenheimer Developing Markets Funds 99,16,961 0.51

6 Government of Singapore 87,11,318 0.44

7 Vanguard emerging markets stock index funds and a series of vanguard international equity index funds

82,37,765 0.42

8 Lazard asset management LLc a/c lazard emerging markets portfolio 77,68,771 0.40

9 Stichting Pensioen funds ABP 70,78,171 0.36

       

TCS TELECOM PRODUCTS

Med mantra -TCS Hospital Management and Information system

Tata accounts receivable and billing system

TCS clin-E2e

TCS Bio-informatics solution

TCS Smart box

TCS Rapid sigma

SOME CUSTOMERS OF TCS

SONY

HYUNDAI

MOTOROLA

ROCHE PHARMACEUTICALS

BRITISH AIRWAYS

NATIONAL INSURANCE BANK

ING GROUP

FUNCTIONAL DEPARTMENTS

PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT

TCS provides production support, maintenance and enhancements to the solution at an optimal cost and quality level. The client not only experienced lower operating costs but also greater satisfaction.

FINANCE DEPARTMENT

Finance and accounting management processes across businesses and locations with TCS’ Finance and Accounting (F&A) Platform Solution.

HUMAN RESOURCE DEPARTMENT

A volatile global economy and dynamic market conditions have compelled HR functions to reduce costs, maximize operational efficiency and focus on strategic initiatives. TCS’ complete HR Services provide with a choice of end-to-end HR processes, which are delivered with minimal risk and controlled costs.

MARKETING DEPARTMENT

TCS’ Connected Marketing Solutions aim to bridge marketing and IT, providing reality-based innovations—delivered in partnership with customers’ marketing organization, leveraging global best practices and deep domain expertise, thus enabling customers to engage, measure and optimize interactions with target audiences across all the touch-points

SWOT ANALYSISSTRENGTHS

High quality products

Large pool of knowledge workers

Flexibility and adaptability

Reliability

High growth

Large products

WEAKNESSES

lack of domestic computerization

High reliance on US market

Localization

 

OPPORTUNITIES

Global market

Domestic demand

E-commerce

 

THREATS

Economical threats

Technological threats

Government interference

cost

OBSERVATION

o Academic interface programed (AIP)

Developing faculty for academic institutes, improving employability of students and developing curricula as per industry requirements. A total of 626 institutes in India and 301 institutes overseas benefitted through the Company’s AIP activities like workshops for students, faculty development programmes, research scholarships, research alliances,

o Learning and development (L&D)

The Company continued to invest in enhancing its human capital by providing opportunities to its employees to develop their skills and competencies relevant to the market requirements

SECTION 2 ROUTINE WORKS

Routine work 1

Presentations on OSS/BSS, inbound marketing, MVNO’S

Routine work 2

To get the names and details of all MVNO’s in north AMERICA

Routine work 3

To get name and details of all MVNO’S in Asia

Routine work 4

To make a document regarding challenges faced by telecom companies in APAC,EU,NA and also to make a list of fixed line and broad band companies in NA with less than 10 million subscribers.

Routine work 5

To make a presentation from E & y telecom report

SECTION 3 PROBLEM CENTRED STUDY

TOPIC- MARKETING AND BRANDING STRATEGIES OF TCS HOBS IN 3 GEOGRAPHIES MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA,EAST ASIA AND LATIN AMERICAThe title of the study is to make a 3 month timeline oriented marketing and branding strategy aiming towards products differentiation in 3 geographies- Middle east & Africa, East Asia, Latin America

WHAT IS OSS/BSS?OSS/BSS systems are the impetus behind the communication service provider’s future. The OSS/BSS market has a lot to offer and CSP’s have a lot to select from. Understanding the OSS/BSS market and the communication service provider’s demands and needs for the future purpose a 3 month timeline oriented marketing and branding strategy aiming towards products differentiation in 3 geographies- Middle East& Africa, East Asia, Latin America.

TCS HOBS

TCS HOBS is an end-to-end but modular application built with a next generation mindset to solving business-driven IT challenges. The solution helps service providers focus on core business growth and addresses varied needs in innovative ways. It facilitates service providers in launching products and services quickly, and enables large service providers to meet their growth aspirations by transforming from legacy to flexible yet standard solutions.

AN OVER VIEW OF TCS HOBS

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

To make suitable strategies of marketing and branding for the promotion of the product TCS HOBS

Business justification of the strategy

To find out the possible expenditure of the campaign

To calculate expected return on investment

To find out current competitors products

To find out the current market situation in the three geographies- Latin America, middle east and Africa and East Asia

To find out client details

METHODOLOGY OF THE STUDY Subject Matter Expert- Subject Matter Expert is a person who is an

authority to a particular area. In this project most of the details and research way was collected from SME’s. It includes industry profile, details about the product TCS HOBS, and competitor’s details.

Analyst Report-I have also went through the analyst reports of Gartner, Analysys Mason, Forrestor. This helped me to get a better idea about the market and as well as the business in which the TCS in to. On basis of these reports I have made a small document which are the key take away from these reports

Analyst Briefing- In the meanwhile of the internship I had small sections from my guide as well as from an analyst from the company. All sections were based on the sector and the product which they are developing. I could collect many informative things from these sections

TOOLS FOR DATA COLLECTION

http://www.wipro.com/documents/investors/pdf-files/Wipro-annual-report-2013-14.pdf)

http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/financial-services/annual-report-2013-2014-2259072.pdf)

http://wwwen.zte.com.cn/en/about/investor_relations/corporate_report/annual_report/201504/P020150408612617327250.pdf

http://www.ericsson.com/

http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/

http://www.rethink-wireless.com/

http://www.moneycontrol.com/

http://www.cedmagazine.com/

http://www.mobileworldlive.com/

http://www.policychargingcontrol.com/

http://techstory.in/wipro-orga-systems-297564

http://www.telecomlead.com/

http://www.zonebourse.com/

http://www.tcs.com/

http://www.telecomstechnews.com/

http://www.wirtel.co.uk/latinamerica.htm

http://www.africantelecomsnews.com/

https://www.zawya.com

http://fortune.com/2014/09/18/asia-myanmar-burma-telecommunications-market/

http://www.developingtelecoms.com/

http://www.telecomasia.net/

http://www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com/

http://www.bnamericas.com/

http://www.cellular-news.com/

www.telegeography.com

http://www.focus-economics.com/

http://www.weforum.org/

https://www.worldbank.org/

http://www.imf.org/

http://www.africaneconomicoutlook.org/

http://www.economist.com/topics/african-economy

http://www.mei.edu/

http://www.internetworldstats.com/

http://www.marketwatch.com/

SAMPLE AND SAMPLINGThe Project is a market research on TCS HOBS. it is a 3 month timeline oriented marketing and branding strategy aiming towards products differentiation in 3 geographies that is Middle East& Africa, East Asia and Latin America. Project includes five competitors for the TCS product TCS HOBS and made a study on them -how they are working? What are their features? How they are marketing their products? How much money they allocate for the marketing of that particular product?

The competitors are

WIPRO RAPIDS, ORACLE GOLD BUILD, ZTE OSS/BSS, AGILITY SUITE, and ORACLE COMMUNICATION OSS SUITE

PRESENATATION AND ANALYSIS WIPRO RAPIDS

Wipro RAPIDS is a software product which is developed by Wipro. Wipro has adopted industry standard solutions from Oracle Communications and extended them to support the critical operational capabilities required to serve customers better. Wipro RAPIDS is a seamlessly integrated reference solution which has processes for the entire Concept to Bill business flow.

Solution offer includes

• Offer design

• Order capture

• Order to activate

• Usage to bill

Marketing expenditure

Wipro spends almost 28,673 crore per year for marketing itself. It includes 27,338 crore for IT services and 1335 crore for IT products

TECH MAHINDRA

ORACLE GOLD BUILD from Tech Mahindra provides global best practices and ready-to-use workflows to speed up rollout of the Oracle platform for telecom operators and broadband service providers. ORACLE GOLD BUILD is a reusable integrated solution for faster implementations for Telcos using Tech Mahindra’s extensive knowledge base and expertise.

Marketing expenditure

INR 1,174 million was the spending of tech Mahindra during 2013-2014 on marketing, selling and advertising.

(source-http://www.techmahindra.com/sites/resourceCenter/Financial%20Reports/Annual%20Report%20FY13-14.pdf)

ERICSSON

AGILITY SUITE is a software which is developed by the Ericsson. The product has various feature they are solutions enable you to offer a broad range of tailored promotions, features, rate plans, discounts, policies and cross-product promotions to any type of customer account. Begin the evolution to a single online charging and policy system using your existing infrastructure investment.

ORACLE

Oracle Communications’ Rapid Service Design and Order Delivery (RSDOD) solution is the industry’s leading COTS products based solution that can truly enable a service provider to deploy a convergent platform across his entire range of services and network configurations to support the rapid design and delivery of new technical services and commercial bundles across all customer service channels.

Marketing expenditure

In oracle marketing expenses is allocated along with the operating expenses. The operating expenses for oracle in the year 2013-2014 is INR 6, 151.45 million. It was INR 5,877.37 million in the last year. (Source- http://www.oracle.com/us/industries/financial-services/annual-report-2013-2014-2259072.pdf

ZTE SOLUTION

ZTE OSS/BSS is a software product which is created by ZTE solution. ZSmart BSS products enable end-to-end solutions to help CSPs to run their business operations towards customers. ZSmart BSS products are fully compliant with TM Forum Frameworks standard, including CRM and five major billing solution domains—mediation, rating & charging and other core billing functions, policy reference management, interconnect & settlement and partner management

MARKETING EXPENDITURE

The marketing expenses of ZTE solution is given as 12885 RMB million per year. (Source-http://wwwen.zte.com.cn/en/about/investor_relations/corporate_report/annual_report/201504/P020150408612617327250.pdf)

MARKET CONDITIONS

LATIN AMERICA

EAST ASIA

MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

PRIORITIES OF CIO’S Making Innovation Real

Raising ROI of IT

Expanding the business impact

ESTIMATION OF CLIENTS

Clients in the whole world

Clients in Latin america

Clients in East asia

Clients in middle east and Africa

MVNO’S In East Asia

• Graphs will give and idea about main players in the market

• Graphs also shows how the clients are good with their business

• China mobile is in the top rankings

• Graphs also categories the clients according to their business

• These graphs will help to target the clients whom we can sell TCS HOBS product

• Client details also includes MVNO’s in which the business can take place more

SUGGESTED MARKETING STRATEGIES o Allocate more fund for the marketing of the product TCS HOBS. This

suggestion is given mainly because all competitors are spending huge amount of the money for the promotion of the product.

o Selling the OSS/BSS product to a third party just like oracle did. This will help TCS to sell their product in the areas where the company is less popular. This will help as well as the third party and the company. I would suggest this marketing strategy in middle east and Africa

o Companies are giving more priorities for digital marketing. In these days following digital marketing would help to gain more business. So I would suggest to put more effort in digital marketing for the promotion in these three geographies. Digital marketing will help to find more MVNO’s as clients.

 

SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Funding on marketing can be increased

• More concentration can be given on digital marketing

• A third party can be outsourced for marketing in the areas which company is unknown

• Rather than sticking on the English marketing can also be done on local language /This would increase the business

• Skip doing marketing in countries like china, japan where OSS/BSS market have lot of restriction

 

• Try to reach the countries in which the competitors are weak

• Work on more on the weaker part of the product and promote silent features of the product

• Find out the weakness of competitors product and do marketing in accordance with that