Business Overview and Job Experience at Qubee

Business Overview and Job Experience at Qubee

Augere was established in September 2007 by an experienced team of global telecoms executives with the vision of delivering ‘broadband for all’. It is committed to achieving this through the delivery of fast, reliable broadband internet services in emerging markets using Wimax technology. Augere has an established leadership team in place with over 150 years’ experience in the telecommunications industry. The Company successfully raised $125m in a first round of investment from France Telecom, New Silk Route and Vedanta. The acquisition of spectrum and licences is well underway. Augere currently has access to spectrum in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Uganda. Licences are also being actively pursued in countries across Africa, South and South East Asia.

Augere’s first commercial network launched in Pakistan in July 2009 and was closely followed by the Bangladesh network in October 2009 under the brand name QUBEE. Qubee is a new and exciting company from Augere providing fast and reliable broadband internet services to residential and business customers across Bangladesh. QUBEE believes that everyone should be able to enjoy trouble-free access to the internet and the world of opportunities that it brings.

The company’s aim is to make a magical internet experience available to everyone, everyday, without exception.

Qubee is the creation of a group of global telecoms professionals who saw that a new technology called WiMAX could really change the internet experience for millions of people worldwide. WiMAX means that you don’t need telephone lines or cable to get connected: all you need is to live close enough to a transmitter to receive the internet wirelessly. Currently the company is busy building a network of base stations to offer their brand of internet access right across Bangladesh.

Initially QUBEE is starting in Dhaka, but quickly plan to do the same in cities nationwide. To build a network like this needs to be done properly. So the company gathered a highly talented team right here in Bangladesh to build a company that’s determined to improve the internet experience for millions of people – not just here, but ultimately all over the world.

Vision of QUBEE

The internet is one of the most liberating, exciting features of life in the 21^st century. Whatever you’re into – music, news, views, video, information, chat, contact, research, for business, pleasure or education – we think you should be able to enjoy uninterrupted access to it, wherever you are, whenever you want.

Mission of QUBEE

We are just not making the internet work; we’re making it work beautifully. And now it can be yours to enjoy.

Core benefits & features of QUBEE:

• Qubee is the real wireless broadband internet from Augere, an MNC incorporated in Netherlands.
• Qubee is the name of a commitment for high speed and uninterrupted internet experience for users in Bangladesh.
• Qubee provides its service through WiMAX technology.
• It must be Magical: It’s not about magic, it’s about being magical. It’s about us bringing delightful touches to the customer experience.
• It must Work: It’s not about troubling people with complicated solutions. It’s about our hard work making it reliable and accessible for people

Basic Proposition:

• Qbee offer Fixed WiMAX service for Home & Business (SME) use.
• Qubee product is differentiated by Speed ( 256 Kbps, 512 Kbps, 1 Mbps, 2 Mbps etc.)
• Fixed Monthly Billing for Sky Packages ( 256 and 512 packages)
• User Name & Password stored in Modem and connection “Always On”.
• Any PC Connected to devise will be on Internet without extra Authentication.
• You can share the bandwidth among multiple PCs using a Router or LAN. Just provide our Installation Engineer your router/ Switch LAN cable. We are happy to provide you the installation service.

Vision for the Future

The internet has become an essential part of everyday life in the developed world. However, the ‘World Wide Web’ is a misleading term. The internet has only a fledgling presence in developing nations. Internet usage, as a percentage of the population in countries such as Morocco, Russia, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria ranges between 4 to 24%, well below the levels of developed countries.

From a social perspective, there is an intrinsic link between education and the web. The benefits of investing in digital connectivity and promoting access in schools and universities are clear.

QUBEE will deliver access that is based on three fundamental tenets Broadband that is:

• Available

A broadband network which is available wherever the customer is

• Affordable

Access that is broadly in line with a consumer’s $10 per month and a business’ $20 per month average budget

• Accessible

Customers can access top-up facilities within a convenient distance of the places where they live and work.

QUBEE believes that delivering the above is achievable by developing strong local partnerships and building local companies with empowered local management.

Departments of QUBEE

HR practice

Administration and Human Resource: As the name implies, this department has three major divisions. The Administration division is responsible for Contract, Legal and Protocol & Government affairs. The Purchase & General Maintenances is responsible for Purchase & Support and Estate & Properties, Maintenance & general security. The Human Resource department is responsible for procuring future employees according. This department is also responsible for maintaining the database of all employees, leaves, attendance, health care and related fields of employees.

Although Qubee is a new company with a small group of employees but they are keen to manage their employees through HR practice. Qubee has the 4 layer distribution of employees. Currently they have 130 enthusiastic employees to operate their company.

The head of the company is CEO and under him they have functional managers who are senior managers, managers, assistant managers. Respectively senior executives and executive’s works under the functional managers. Though these 4 layer human resource distributions Qubee create synergy between their employees and make their collective effort much more effective. For recruitment employees Qubee is using EN ROUTE recruitment agency and other some recruitment agencies to get efficient employees.

Marketing

Qubee marketing team is working nicely. Marketing department has three sub departments. These are….

1. Product Development
2. Branding
3. CSR/PR

 Product Development

This department is responsible for find out the innovative features that can attract the existing and potential customers. Product development is one of the key departments in the company. While developing new packages and tariff plans this department has to keep in mind the profit and cost issue. Under all these constraints the department has been producing exciting and new features which ultimately attract customers .Product team always tries to come up with different types of products by considering peoples need and wants. Product team introduce Gigaset, Dongle, for the customers. Gigaset has the power to capture the frequency more compare to Dongle. So Qubee provide Gigaset where frequency is bit poor and Dongle for people who wants mobility.Product team design their product according to the customer wants.

Branding:

The brand department of the company deals with image of the brand to the customers. It basically helps the brand to portray its intentioned image to the potential target group. This department along with the Marketing Communication department deals with the promotional activities.As Qubee is very new organization and WiMax is a very new concept that’s why Qubee have to give too much effort and promotional activities to let the people know about their product and services.Branding is a another sub-department of marketing. Branding team is trying to promote their qubee product. They have organized different events to promote their product. At first they do a campaign in different universities, which worked a lot. At present they are not branding their product extensively but they have a plan for extensive branding.

Qubee is now giving advertises to different renowned news papers in Bangladesh and they are also giving advertisement to the different website to promote their product. They also giving advertisement in the Radio like Radio Amar, Radio Foorti etc.

CSR/PR:

Qubee has another sub department called CSR/PR department. Though they are not doing so many CSR activities but they are planning to engage in CSR activities. Qubee does different sorts of public relation activities to promote their product in the market which involves different University campus campaign. They are offering campus package especially for the students and they are arranging different campus campaign to sell their product. They are also arranging different concerts to grab the attention of the customers.

Finance and Commercial:

This department is divided into two divisions, a) LC preparation and Purchase, and b) Fund Management. Here LC is opened for purchasing of modems and equipment, and all the funds collected are used and controlled for the maximum benefit of the company. This department is also responsible for the budgeting which takes place once a year for the next three years.

Customer Service Operation, Billing and IT:

This department deals with customer after the sale occurs. Main activities of this department includes maintaining data base of the customers, preparing, distributing, and collecting the bills, activating new connections, deactivating connections, helpline service, interchanging of the WiMAX modems, collecting the faulty and repairable modems, returning repaired modems, changing modems and so on. This department is divided into three divisions:

1. a) Billing and IT
2. b) Service Delivery

Employee Motivation:

To motivate the employee of Qubee they use some motivational factors. These are……

• Recognition
• Rewards
• Retention

As the employee gets the above motivations from the organization so employees always try to put hundred percent efforts to their job. This increases the productivity of the organization.

Job Description

Nature of the Job:

I have worked under the Sales & Distribution Department for past three months.During this period I had been assigned to work as a Sales Executive to prepare daily sales and collection report to respective personnel. My other responsibilities included Forecasting & processing weekly sales. QUBEE has 6 different Sales Channel and I worked at 1 of these channels.

The Sales Channels are:

• Corporate Sales Team
• Direct Sales Team
• Tele Sales Team
• Retail Sales Team
• Distribution Sales Team

Specific Responsibilities of the Job:

Snap shot of my job responsibilities………..

1. Maintain a data base.
2. Making cold call
3. Fix an appointment
4. Daily sales and visit report
5. Giving guidelines to the new comers
6. Attend team meeting

In the beginning, I was assigned to a sales team where I do lots of activities. Qubee arrange an extensive training session for us. This was really effective for me because my product knowledge was poor when I get joined in Qubee. After getting the proper training I became more confident.

Maintain database:

My boss advised me to maintain a potential customers database. I have followed the instruction of my boss and start maintaining a database where I had different organizations phone number as well as the top level management contact details. I have made this database by the help of yellow page, my known peoples visiting cards, relatives reference and so on.

Making cold call:

From my potential customers data base I do call at a regular basis. This technique was really effective because whenever I make a call they are getting my number so they can easily communicate with me for any clarifications. It is a very good way of making a strong network.

Fix an appointment

After making a cold call I fixed an appointment with my respective customer. Though sometimes it is difficult to take an appointment from the top level management but somehow I managed it. By the help of appointment I have got chance to describe my product and show them the demo of our product. I always tried to make my meeting effective and come up with the interested customers tentative date of purchase.

Daily sales and visit report

Back at office, we had to make a report on the specific client and their requirements. It was mandatory to send a regular visit report to my supervisor. Visit report contains customer name, address, contact number, e-mail address, whether he is interested or not, if not then what is the reason and so on. He look after my visit report. Those who were interested customer he tries to close the sale as soon as possible. My supervisor advised me to follow up my existing customers and interested customers.

Giving guidelines to the new comers:

As I was the best performer in our team for consecutive two months so my supervisor told me to guide the new comers. He attaches at least one new employee with me whenever I visited any new places. He gave me the power to supervise the new employee and also advised me to educate the new comers how to make the meeting effective as well as how to make a good sale.

Attend team meeting:

Every day morning, our whole direct Sales team used to sit together and made plan for the day. There were 12 Sales Executives and we had a sales target to meet. For one week, the whole team needed 60 Clients to meet the goal. Our supervisor usually provides the Potential list of clients, and we had to make appointments with them. Then we had to visit the clients’ office and sit with them to close the sales deal.

 It is must to attend in a team meeting. My supervisor gave us the proper guideline about our visit, at first he asked us where we are going today. Which organization we will visit? If any of our employee needs any help for particular day we directly pass it to him and he tried to help us out accordingly. In every week we had a meeting with our direct sales manager. He gave us some techniques about a good sale. After attending his meeting I became more motivated. Finally, in every after of month our head of sales set with us. He handed over a prize to the highest seller and second highest seller of the month. He also declared a promotion to those employees.

Different Aspect of the Job Performance:

As QUBEE is a new company, so it still consider this stage as R&D. The company is still learning and trying to cop in the market. The company initially evaluates the performance on the basis of the Reporting supervisor. Also in the workplace, how the employees are get along with each other is being observed. The KPI (Key Performance Indicator) of direct Sales Department is yet to be Determined.

RECOMMENDATION

After going through the above project work over QUBEE we found, QUBEE is trying to grab all the opportunities to be successful in Bangladesh Broadband Market. But considering Bangladeshi consumers, we would like to draw their attention over some of the following facts.

Brand name should be easy to understand and communicate. But QUBEE is a Latin American word which means Head, works without wire. It’s really appropriate for Broadband service. But for Bangladeshi consumers may not accept it properly. We have several examples in telecommunication industry that became successful by adoption local names (Like: Orascom as Banglalink, Telenor as Grameenphone) and some failed (Like:WARID with ZEM and ZAHI packages)to continue business for their foreign name.

QUBEE could offer more product packages with variable features to compete the other broadband companies. Like: Banglalion has more product variation than QUBEE. More product variation helps a company to be unique. Even it creates threats to competitors if they try to challenge the company. Even Banglalion has more product variation than QUBEE has. So, they should offer more product packages wuth variable features.

QUBEE should come up with TV advertisement as early as possible because as they are launching new product in present market so their prime function to create consumers. Here Television media has no alternatives. They may provide expert opinion (IT engineer) or celebrity’s opinion through their advertisement. And of course they need to highlight the various uses and benefits of using wireless broadband services.

QUBEE should highlight about country of origin (they bought modem from GERMAN) while promoting product, because Bnagladeshi consumers has strong faith over foreign product. It will help QUBEE to have a lime light over their product price and quality as well.

QUBEE should consider pricing of their product. Bangladesh has price sensitive market. At present consequence, it has seen QUBEE has high price. If QUBEE wants to continue with this price they should focus over their quality service and promote their product on this basic.

QUBEE should offer some discount for existing users to create brand loyalty.

Like: discount over uses.

QUBEE should concern more about their competitors. I agree at present they might not have any rival, but Bangladesh broadband market is not so large so they should be more innovate about their product and aware about their competitors (Banglalion and BRAC Net)

QUBEE should more concentrate on CSR activities. At present they are not doing CSR activities. To build up their brand loyalty and customers they should come up with some CSR activities.