Gap Analysis: Global Communications

Gap Analysis: Global Communications

The telecommunications industry is currently in an abating state and their stakeholders are lamenting the fact that they are not getting the expected returns on their investments. Global Communications is stuck in the thick of this recession and confidence levels from stakeholders have diminished. Global Communications has been put under tremendous and exhausting economic strain and drastic decisions must be made if they want they're company to regain it's highly appraised stock prices. In the last three years, the company has experienced a depreciation of fifty percent in they're stock prices. A continued depreciation of their stock price will soon vanish them from the market and give the edge to its competition.

The overall problem is obvious in this scenario; there is far too much competition to compete with and drastic decisions and changes must be implemented. Global Communications must conduct a Gap Analysis to compare the actual performance of the company to the company's potential performance, to see what types of decisions and strategies have to be implemented. With many issues and opportunities accompanying this problem, there are many factors that go into to each decision. Global Communications must take into consideration the market potential, existing usage, and industrial usage when conducting their gap analysis. Calculating their usage gap will allow the company to see how many customers are actually reached and how many, in the potential market, are not receiving services from Global Communications (Shanley, 2003).

Being in the abating telecommunications industry, every company is looking for the next revolutionary idea to "monopolize" it's competition. Local, long-distance and international markets are all competing for the same business and the cable companies did them no justice by incorporating cable, telephone and internet packages as one package. To compete with the cable companies, Global Communications has allied with a satellite provider that will set them apart from the local telephone companies. They will now be offering video services as well as a satellite version of broadband. Partnering with a wireless companies allows Global Communications the technology to grant their customer's anytime, anywhere internet access using wireless telephone or PC cards. The introduction of these new services, primarily to its small business and consumer customers, is a strategic move that has the ability to capture a good share of the market and increase it's profitability.

Global Communications has recently approved a business strategy that will downsize the company, and outsource many domestic positions overseas to India and Ireland. Their latest outsourcing strategy has been plagued with complications concerning the employee welfare and the overall impact of this decision on the company's future. It does make sense for the company, because it will reduce costs for handling unit calls up to forty percent, however, this decision may cost the company the "patriotic" image of valuing their employees over everything else. An issue needs to be addressed to determine the best possible way to break the news that there is going to be a company layoff. The company already understands the employees losing their jobs will not take to this decision blissfully, but they need to do so in a way to prevent possible legal action.

Communication with the Union on every step of the way is a critical element in this process. Global Communications' senior leadership team neglected to include the Union representative on their decision to outsource and layoff employees. This created an issue with the Union and led to the Union taking action through government and all other avenues of approach. The issue is the fact that the Union had no say in this decision, however, as decided, it was the best move for the company. The Union was completely against outsourcing and may have prevented the move from happening. The senior leadership team took it upon themselves to "get the ball" rolling and took the chance of dealing with repercussions in the future.

In basic terms, a corporate stakeholder is anybody that can be affected by the performance or outcomes of business decisions by a corporation. It was specifically defined as, "those groups without whose support the organization would cease to exist (Bardoel, De Cieri. 2006)." With this being said, Global Communications has to think about their internal and external stakeholder's when implementing such a drastic business strategy. Both groups of stakeholder's include critical partners in the company. Outsourcing to different countries is going to limit the amount of domestic jobs available and create an issue with the layoffs that will take place. The rights and interests of current employees are being jeopardized. The community as a whole will be affected by the layoffs and lack of job availability, which will diminish the company's reputation with loyal, local customers.

Global Communications has a common vision to be a leader in enabling customers to exchange thoughts and ideas through technology. Global Communications has recently outsourced to India and Ireland, which has benefited greatly. This business decision has allowed Global Communications to save on unit costs for handling calls, which enabled the company to focus on new production and development. With the current partnership to the satellite company, Global Communications has expanded technology and improved product selection. Moving into the international market and regaining the majority of the local market allowed Global Communications to open up more domestic opportunities for employees. Using the expertise and sophistication of overseas employees, Global Communications held training sessions for domestic employees to learn team diversity and different business practices. Now, with the domestic and global employees interacting with different ideas and solutions, Global Communications has an organizational commitment from both.

In conclusion, the long-term benefits will outweigh the short-term repercussions and Global Communications is making the right business decision by outsourcing jobs to foreign countries. This will effect their reputation, as they had to make employee layoffs and pay cuts, however, in the log-run these issues will be redeemed. Using the foreign market and workers to gain knowledge and expertise of the industry is a great way to globalize and set your company up for success in the future. Having extra revenue to use for product