This report gives a whole new picture of one of the leading telecommunication company of Bangladesh, which is Banglalink. Starting from the background and its functions, all the important features of this company is elaborately explained here. As I had the privilege to work in one of the most important department of this company, it was a great honor to be able to work as a part of it. Since I had the opportunity to work in the core marketing department, this report will be mostly focusing on how the PR team of marketing department works. Besides, through this report I have tried to find out new approach towards marketing’s PR and communications team. Apart from that, the organogram of the company as well as the organogram of the marketing department have been highlighted along with some of the key function of the marketing department. Mostly how PR and communication is responsible and convey the company and its products information to its customers are focused and elaborately included in this report. Seeing the functions and activities of the PR and communication, need of new approaches towards it could be incorporated along with the current ones. After drawing all the important factors of PR and communication and their functions, some feedback and implementations are also needed to improve some of their internal activities, plans and workflow.
Introduction
The fundamental functions of telecommunication companies are to connect people by providing voice transferring services and via Internet. Apart from that, telecommunication has already started introducing some diversified areas with the help of its mobile network. Mobile technology is currently providing many solutions to several problems of people’s daily life which was even beyond imagination even before a few years. The traditional way of connecting people only through mobile phone calls have fallen way back because of the radical changes that have occurred in the past few months. The new technological revolution happened to boost the IT sector which consists of the vast market of telecommunication industries. Telecom companies incorporating with the latest information systems gives an economic solutions with a very convenient and easily available access to internet services, which was earlier very costly and not available to some extent. Today, the use of telecommunication has become a day-to-day necessity of the people. According to BTRC, approximately 127 million people in Bangladesh own and use mobile phones as the one and only tool for communication. The use of mobile phone has become is increasing day by day and its importance in our day to day life is increasing too. Among the top 10 mobile markets in Asia, Bangladesh holds a firm place in terms of the number of mobile phone users. Based on the current scenario of the tight competition among all the companies, it could be assumed that call tariff will shrink more because the use of the use of data calls are increasing at a very fast rate effecting the traditional calling system. Currently there are 6 companies in the market from which each and every one of them have the same goal of acquiring more and more market share while serving their acquired customer base. Among them, Banglalink holds the 2nd position in the market. Banglalink fuelled their rapid growth over their 10 years of journey with innovation in their products and services having a clear knowledge of the different target market segments, dedicated customer care services, aggressive improvement of network quality and promising to deliver a robust telecommunication network across the country, and establishing a strong brand that emotionally connects the nation from one end to another with their promise of doing something new.
Background of Banglalink Digital Communications Ltd.
Banglalink Digital Communications Ltd. being one of the largest telecommunication provider, they owns the 2nd largest market share of telecommunication providers in terms of network coverage, subscriber base and revenue in the country. Banglalink is a public limited company and it was registered under the Companies Act 1994. It has 32.224 million subscribers as of June 2015 which representing a market share of 25.40%. They play a significant role by contributing to national exchequer. Banglalink started their journey with a simple mission, which is, “Bringing mobile phone to the masses” which was their main milestone of their strategy. They changed a whole perspective of the nation that mobile phone usage is not only a luxury but a necessity. With that goal in mind, Banglalink has brought mobile telephone to the general people of Bangladesh and made their own position by touching millions of hearts. The use of mobile phone symbolizes the positive and technological improvement in Bangladesh. Banglalink Digital Communications Limited is fully owned by Telecom Ventures Ltd. which is a fully owned subsidiary of Global Telecom Holding, which owns more than 99% share of Banglalink. On the other hand, Vimpelcom Ltd. owns the majority of the share of Global Telecom Ltd. Vimpelcom (www.vimpelcom.com) is the world’s one of the largest telecommunications services operators providing voice and data services through a range of traditional and broadband mobile and fixed technologies in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Russia, Italy, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Central African Republic, Canada, Georgia, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Algeria, Burundi, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. Vimpelcom has it’s headquarter situated at Amsterdam, the Netherlands and listed as an ad on the New York stock exchange under the symbol “vip”.
Product and Service of Banglalink
Product of Banglalink
Banglalink offers a wide range of diversified product which has many verities to fit all types of customer group offering the best possible deals with a strong and promising network constantly focusing on the benefit of the customers. The product line of Banglalink is briefly described below.
Prepaid
Banglalink divides their prepaid plans into 2 different options. They are “Banglalink Desh” and “Banglalink Play”. Keeping the key factors untouched Banglalink Desh enhances their product line with different offers such as prepaid packages like Desh hello, Desh7 FNFs, Desh 10 FNFs and etc.
- Banglalink Desh was launched on 14th September, 2006. Desh offers one of the lowest tariff charges in the country. The charges apply like 10 paisa per 10 second to all Banglalink FNF numbers, 24 hours.
- Banglalink Play on the other hand offers 18 FNFs at any number and at the best rate at 0.5 paisa per second. Besides, special FNF SMS is 29 paisa is also an important feature that is significant on Banglalink Play.
Postpaid
Banglalink presents their offers to the customers keeping the value of their customer under consideration which stands for giving the best deal. As a result, Banglalink is available with 2 postpaid packages. “Banglalink Inspire” and “Banglalink SME”. Inspire package brings special new features for post-paid subscribers with comparatively lower call rates than the competitors, along with 7 FNF numbers and many other services and facilities. No deposit is required for auto-bill pay subscribers. The deposit policy defers the postpaid pack is unique to all the other postpaid there are in the market of the competitors. Moreover, another unique feature of the postpaid pack is that they have a loyalty discount offer for all the INSPIRE users who have been using the connection for at least a year. Besides, INSPIRE offers 42 paisa per minute call rate for two supplementary numbers. Completely on the other hand, “Banglalink SME” package offers are targeted towards the small and medium enterprises which have attractive tariff charges and a complete package specially customized to suit the needs. Banglalink SME also has 2 packages to offer which were designed in 2 different shapes which are, Banglalink SMEpostpaid and Banglalink SME call & control. It offers 1 second pulse to Banglalink numbers and 10% bonus on incoming calls from other operators.
Banglalink Internet
Banglalink avails one of the fastest mobile internets in the market of telecommunication. Since the use of internet in mobile devices is increasing Banglalink is constantly fighting to be at the top of the chart when it comes to market competition. They came in the market with the name of “Banglalink 3G” assuring their customers to provide the service of surfing the internet with fastest internet speed even on the move with the superior HSPA+ connection. Banglalink 3G users enjoy excellent download speed, stream free video, high quality video calling, high-speed data transmission and etc. In 2014, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) declared that Banglalink’s 3G data service is the fastest in the country. Not only Banglalink provides fastest 3G internet, it also one of the telecom operators in Bangladesh to cover 64 district out of two companies.
Services Available
Banglalink has always been the market leader when it came to introducing new state of the earth telecommunication solution. Besides, Banglalink is continuously adding up more and more to the range of their Value Added Services, which are all done focusing on customer convenience. Since it is the beginning, Banglalink always comes up with offers to its customers with innovative products and services on a daily basis. Friend Finder, Azan Alert, Golpo Chora Gan, Namaz Alert, Stock Information, Banglalink Jigyasha, Amar Tune, Quran, Call Block, Internet, Voice Adda, Missed call Alert, Facebook, whatsapp, viber, skype packs, Song Dedication, Call Me Back, SMS (Text, Quotes, Jokes), SMS email, SMS Adda, SMS Facebook, Daily Facebook, Instant Recharge are the value added innovative value added services that Banglalink is always
Vision for the future
Banglalink’s Vision is “To understand people’s needs best and develop appropriate communication services to improve people’s lives and make it simple.”
Missions of Banglalink
Apart from some values of Banglalink, they have some missions in their set of mind. Banglalink’s missions are-
- Segmented approach in terms of product and services.
- Delivering superior benefits in every phase of customer experience (before, during and after sales).
- Creating optimum shareholder value.
JOB ANALYSIS
Job Description
Banglalink welcome the interns not only as an employee but also as a member of their corporate family. Interns are always contributing and adding value to the company along with the other permanent employees in the company. Interns here get to learn about the proper corporate environment and cultures. The core responsibilities of a PR and Communication intern are to follow the current telecom industry as well as getting in touch with the vendors in order to follow up and to get the marketing deliverable materials. Besides, interns have to get in contact with the marketing agency that provides the necessary marketing tools and get it on time to deliver the items to the suppliers.
Specific Responsibilities of Job
PR and Communication team of the marketing department of Banglalink does one of the core activities of the company because they are responsible for all the promoting the brand and creating value for the brand, Banglalink. Being a part of the core team, an intern of PR and Communication is usually assigned with a lot of the activities too. Interns do not get the access to a lot of decision making processes but they get all the work of getting a job done just after any decision is made. As an intern, I was exposed to several projects of PR, which gave me a clear view of how and what are the things that are required to be done in order to launch a new campaign. On the other hand, I had to get in touch with the agency that is assigned to provide all sorts of design, TVCs and other promotional material.
Different aspects of Job Performance
While working as an intern of the PR and communication department, I had to get in touch of a lot of the enlisted Banglalink vendors and stay on track if they are maintaining the proper work timeline as well as maintaining the proper design. Moreover, I had to get in touch with the procurement department of the company in order to get their approval on all the products after which we move on to the designing and ordering process.
Critical observation and recommendation
In this job, critical observation is also an essential quality that is a very important role to play in this job. We have to make sure that every single work is well developed and are flawless. Besides, we need to make sure that even the logo of Banglalink is printed or written properly in every single design.
PROJECT DETAILS
Summary
The main object of this internship report is to come up with new approach towards in the PR and Communication of Banglalink. Apart from that, in the process of making this report I acquired a lot of new practical knowledge as well as getting a great corporate experience as this is my first time to work in an organization.
- Description of the project
- Objective of the project
The main objective of the internship program is to get the exposure of the corporate culture and also to apply the academic knowledge that I have gathered so far. The purpose of this report is to find out new approach that could be incorporated in the department that I had the honor to work for.
Methodology
With the part of methodology, it is usually explained how all the data of the report or any particular research was collected. In the case of my report on new approach towards PR and Communication, I collected the data through both primary and secondary data sources to generate a good conclusion.
Primary Data
Since information such as informal discussion with the employees of the same department, observation of the activities of the members of the team as well as participating in a lot of project were used as source of primary data in this report.
Secondary Data
In terms of collecting the secondary data for this report, banglalink’s official website, annual report, journals, internal database and difference other publications.
Limitations of the project
While preparing and collecting information for this report, there were many obstacles and limitations. During the observation, I have also faced some limitations. They follow
- While collecting information, the limitation that occurred the most was getting the classified information. Interns can only have a certain amount of access in Banglalink. Even in the same department, unless any new campaign’s idea is already locked we cannot access that which sets limitation to the activity.
- In addition, not all the employees have the knowledge of every single wing of marketing which also made the data collection very hard too.
- Moreover, working as an intern the preparation of this report at the same time was a difficult job since the interns are also assigned some regular duties like other employees.
New approach towards PR and Communication
In the process of coming up with any new approach, it was a crucial to draw both the positive or negative, pros and cons and etc. Only doing so, it will be clearly visible what can be done in order to come up with any new approach in this aspect as the PR and communication team of Banglalink is already competing with the market leader that it is a hard thing to figure out what new approach could be implemented as new approach. Now, some current problems of the PR communication will be highlighted which from my perspective stand as fixable issues. They follow
After observing critically, I have figured that Banglalink is somewhat deviated from their core business plan. Initially, they started off with the plan of reaching the maximum market share but 10 years down the line they have move from their core business plan to just keeping up in the completion with the other competitors in the market.
On the other hand, the pricing setting should be one of the major concerns here since customers nowadays prefer lower price over the brand. Premium price in this case is not a very good decision to make considering the image Banglalink has in the market.
Banglalink needs to make the market population more aware of their brand because the customers knowing about this specific brand will help them to increase their market share. For example, the latest advertisement of Banglalink, “Bondhut-ter khelay jitbe shobai” created an “AIRTEL” impression in customer’s mind which was somewhat negative in terms of Banglalink because everyone thought that it was an AIRTEL advertisement.
Message clarity is also a crucial for any brand to make sure that the messages that are being generated are clearly understandable and serving the message’s proper purpose. For example, the “1GB smart internet pack” was a TVC which was somewhat provided no clear view and the usefulness of the product. In this case, the advertisement could not convey a proper message to its customers.
Banglalink also has to be aware of its image that this brand carries. One of its campaigns was “Banglalink Desh” where they were very much successful about the campaign until it was exceeding its limit. The campaign had different phases and all of them had a “festive” and “singing and dancing” theme which ultimately became more like an identity of the entire Banglalink. Eventually that “festive” theme of started becoming sort of negative for Banglalink because it was loud compared to all the other brands at that specific period of time.
Analysis of the Report
As we know that the first marketing activity that is known to be the key to set market targets is to find out the “7 P’s”. By the use of 7 P’s formula, a company should continuously keep the formula going to keep the track of their activities as well as evaluating their business activities. The 7 p’s of the marketing are product, price, place, promotion, packaging, positioning and people. All these P’s are explained elaborately in contrast of banglalink’s marketing activities.
Product plays the role of a face of a company. From an outsiders point, Banglalink is deliberately bringing changes to their products to make sure that their customers are satisfied and they get what is desired by the customers. Price is also an essential in terms of competing with the competitors in the market. Banglalink is the market leader in terms of setting price of their product ensuring a high range of network service. From a third person’s view, Banglalink may not have the lowest price in the market but the company that has the lowest price has a poor network service too. Evaluating all that, Banglalink stands in a strong ground where they have a very favorable price along with a string service. Place of all the Banglalink point also shows how the company gives importance to their customers because according to the marketing mix, a company has to make sure that their position in the physical market should be widely available if their target customers are a part of the mass market. Promotion mainly consists of the tools of communication of the company which bridges between the company and its customers.
Banglalink has a very positive record of their promotional activities. Apart from other promotional activities of Banglalink, they are well known for their other activities which benefit others and the environment as well. Packaging usually says a lot about the product itself. Banglalink carries such a significant packaging design which gives a solid feel of the country. It also symbolizes the power of doing something new as well as the dynamic power of the Royal Bengal Tiger. The company makes sure of that their sign of existence in every place they lay a hand on.
Positioning is a crucial thing to do for any brand because the brand has to be positioned in such a way where the product will get the maximum exposure. Banglalink took the best positions and utilized to position the products and the services. They try to position themselves next to their customers wherever their customers go.
People of Banglalink play the role of the backbone of this company. People behind Banglalink make sure that they give their best to bring the difference in the market through the brand. They are not treated as the employees of the organization rather they are considered and treated as every single unit of the company which makes the whole company stand and maintain their difference of the market.
On the other hand, SWOT analysis is another form of analysis that helps to identify the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats. The purpose of doing a SWOT analysis focusing on the marketing department of banglalink is to find out some of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. By drawing the SWOT analysis, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats comes sequentially and eventually opens up a scope for improvement or implementation.
SWOT Analysis
Through the SWOT analysis of Banglalink brand, the marketing brand gets a transparent view of what their strength, weakness, opportunity and threats which they have to utilize in order to bring changes to ensure growth and success. The marketing department of Banglalink is responsible for its brand name, fame, growth, fall and etc.
The strengths that were figured out are some of the most important ones to mention where the first one is conveying messages which are inspiring and motivational to the target consumer as well as the entire nation because their message is something that gives a clear and similar meaning that people have in their mind. On the other hand, not only the marketing department adds value, all the departments add ample amount of value in the company. These workforces are also dependent on the resources that Banglalink has without which it would be a critical journey to achieve goals. These resources include vendors, people outside the corporate as well as people from various regions and etc. These are some of the strengths that has been highlighted of Banglalink’s marketing focusing on their marketing activities.
Next to the strength, there are some weaknesses that are standing on the way. Price is a significant issue in this case because in the telecommunication market, price and quality are the 2 basic factors where these factors basically decide the position of each company of the company. All though the network of Banglalink is significantly better than most of the other companies, they charge a slightly more than some of the other companies. This stands as weakness for Banglalink. On the other hand, the government regulations sometimes create many obligations which stop the company to make new moves and ultimately stand increases weakness. Tax rate fluctuation is also harmful for the brand because customers rather focus on the rate than what the tax rate is. Here, lack of innovation is also a weakness in terms of new changes in the tradition and ways. Banglalink should emphasize on generating innovative idea as well as bringing new changes in their campaigns.
On another note, there are several opportunities open to Banglalink to grab which will bring positive change in the company. Capturing the growing market is a big opportunity for the company to increase its market share which is one of the core goal for all the companies in the telecommunication industry. Internet is already in the market which also brought many changes in the tradition nut bringing new features or use of internet can also be a great opportunity for the company to grasp. An opportunity also lies between the use of voice call and data call. These to services can be separated in order to make both of them run in the market properly. Banglalink mainly focus on the youth in most of the cases where as they can grasp the opportunity to target different segments of the market and serve them separately which will give the company the opportunity to step aside from the traditional flow.
Finally, in a highly competitive market, a company must have some threats that will drive the company to do well and to move ahead with an aim of better position in the market. In this case Banglalink also has several threats. Competitors coming up with better and favorable key offers can stand as a big threat to the company. Moreover, nowadays, people are making their daily phone calls over Viber, whatsapp or skyoe which leaves the companies in great threat making way less revenue compared to what they used to make before. On the other hand, due to the increase in tax customers blamed the company for increasing the call rate rather than blaming the government. This resulted as a threat for the company in losing their customer’s faith on the brand.
TOWS Analysis
Similarly, TOWS analysis also gives a picture of the threats, opportunities, weaknesses and strengths which is a little bit different because here based on the threats, the flow of improvement starts. As in, threats> opportunities> weaknesses> strengths. These steps give the company a chance to overcome the threats in the beginning and make the decisions less risky.
Recommendation
New Approaches
Long term planning of the organizations is very essential because without a particular aim of all the departments, it will be very hard to bring positive changes for the organization. Rather than just competing with the market competitors, Banglalink should set new goals to chase them in order to set up a new ground in the market.
Making participation open to not only the higher level but also to all the people in the marketing department because in that case the window of getting new ideas gets narrowed down. Currently the agency makes and comes up with all the ideas whereas the marketing department employees should also be encouraged to come up with different ideas or ways of promoting the brand.
Overcoming a lot of other limitation within the department is also needed to be made so the scope of improvements does not narrow down. If the limitations narrow down the improvements, the growth of the company will slowly stop from within and the productivity will also get lost.
The marketing department can have their own in house graphics development team which will increase productivity and will be able to get the works swiftly done because the productivity gets very low when the PR team has to wait to for the agency to develop a theme or a deign to send back to the PR team. The reason behind this is because there are limited amount of resource in terms of preparing a design in a short time.
The team has to be more proactive and focused to come up with more innovative and out of the box ideas to take lead in the current competition in the market. Only the company that can dominate other companies with their innovation and better planning can only penetrate the market and take lead in the market. That is something that Banglalink should also follow to reach the top of the ladder.
Banglalink should also try to maintain a flat organization strategy because in that case employees will feel more importance and give their best by participating in the organization’s decision making and bring out new and huge changes in the organization which can separate Banglalink from the rest of the other companies in the industry and stand in the first in the row.
Banglalink has to identify their archetype and follow all the necessary guidelines and elements in order to make it clear to their customers about their function as well as their product types and categories which will result the brand to have a solid image in the market and boost its reputation in the industry.
Conclusion
Being the second largest telecommunication company in the country, Banglalink has been playing a very important role in making the country move forward with its state of the earth 3G technologies and also making the economy grow stronger. Not just the economy of the country is getting benefitted; they are also contributing to make the best use of internet in human life which results as a tremendous positive change of the knowledge of this country. Banglalink which has “Bangla” in its name, is not just a brand anymore, this name has become more like a daily need of millions of people in Bangladesh. Banglalink’s advance intelligent network has reached every single household of our country and they take a great pride in providing proper quality service to all their users. The reason is because they give their customers the highest priority and they make all the relevant services available for everybody right on all the customer’s footsteps.
Working as a part of Banglalink’s marketing department which is considered as the core of the organization, my knowledge towards the brand, the organization and the industry got highly enriched. In the process I had to keep track of what was happening in the market, what ideas our competitors were coming up with, what campaigns were more attractive in the market and etc.
Doing all these analysis, I acquired the knowledge of how the industry works and the trends and some of their flows and advantages. Among all of them, Banglalink owning the second largest market share, they are constantly in a mission to improve their quality and ensure to deliver their customers a better experience. Finally it can be said that, Banglalink does not only bring happiness and joy in the lives of millions, they always inspire and motivate them to start something new.
