Study on the Sales and Distribution of QUBEE

Study on the Sales and Distribution of QUBEE

Back Ground of the Organization: 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.

Objective of the Report

Broad Objective

• To utilize the experiences gathered during the internship
• To observe the activities of Sales & Distribution Department of QUBEE.

Specific Objectives

• To demonstrate different aspects of the organization
• The operation and function of QUBEE’s different sales channel.
• To present my observation and suggestions regarding “Sales Strategy of QUBEE.”

Methodology

The data needed to prepare this report has been collected from both primary and secondary sources.

Primary Data Source: Primary data has been collected through unstructured personal interviews and discussions with officials of Sales & Distribution Department of QUBEE and also from the field visit.

Secondary Data Source: The secondary data have been collected through QUBEE’s official website, Aamra group’s official website and others website related to report topic.

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.

Sales and Distribution

Qubee sales and distribution team has five sub departments. These are…..

1. Direct Sales
2. Corporate Sales
3. Tele Sales
4. Distributor
5. Retail Shop

Direct sales team handles the home users and SME. They try to make the product available to the corporate and single or home users. In Dhaka city there is more than 50,000 SME. So Qubee targeted those SME and the direct sales team works with those organizations.

Corporate Sales team works with the corporate clients. Some renowned companies are our corporate clients. They are…….

1. American Embassy
2. Standard Chartered Bank
3. BRAC Bank
4. World Bank and so on.

There is a separate office for the manager of corporate sales who is also responsible for corporate customer relations. Corporate customers are given high priority in terms of sales and also in terms of after sales service. Of course this is due to the high usage and need for good long term goodwill with such corporate clients. This department however deals mainly with sales to corporate customers and maintenance of relations with both current clients as well as scouting out potential new corporate clients, whereas the after sales service and other issues are dealt with by the customer services operations section of the company.

Distributor makes sure that qubee product is available in the market. They get commission on modem and bandwidth price.

Tele sales team sale qubee connection by making call to the potential customers. They have some customer group from the business corporate world. For selling to those people they adopt telemarketing approach

Qubee is distributing their product through their own outlet and third party. They have their own outlet in Gulshan 2 at Casablanka Store and they are using Transcom as third party to distribute their product. They have also given exclusive right to some computer accessories selling company which are located in IDB to distribute their product. They are also selling their product through telesales in some special cases.

Qubee have build experience booth in different places to give the practical experience to their subscribers and they have highly focused on that Experience booth to promote their product. It is now possible to try out the real internet experience from Qubee at your favorite coffee shop or shopping mall

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

Distribution & Coverage

Initial Focus:

Qubee just started their operation from October 09. They are new in this emerging industry. So initially they are not going to give equal focus to every aspect of the business. For their business Qubee initially want to give focus to two most important activities. One is “expansion of coverage” and other one is to improve their “own process of service”.

Expansion of the coverage

Wimax is a network based internet solution to everyone. For that they need to expand their coverage all over the Bangladesh to provide their service to targeted customer.

Initially they are expanding their coverage in the capital Dhaka. Already Seventy five percent of the Dhaka city is under their network coverage. They are aiming to cover 6 divisional cities within one year. And want to serve the whole Bangladesh with their network coverage within three years.

They are aggressively expanding their network coverage. For that they are sharing and hiring other telecommunications network infrastructures along with their own infrastructures to expand rapid network coverage. Now on they have hired Banglalink, Grameen phone and City cell’s network to expand their network.

Improve own process of service

Another important activity, in where Qubee is giving ample of focus is how they can improve their own process of service. They are still very new in the market. So they are still organizing their own processes. But they are trying hard to improve their own internal process to giving service to their customers.

Own process of service is the process where they can utilize all their resources in a smoothen way which will enhance their capability to serve their customer. Like if they can improve their network, coverage, service, marketing, trouble shooting, speed, product etc. In a continuous manner then they will able to serve their customer more efficiently

Core competencies

Internet service is all about how speed you can provide to your customers. Capability to provide high speedy wireless internet to customers is the main core competency of Qubee. Superior 24/7customer service and greater network coverage playing a vital role as their core competencies.

Qubee have divided the regions they operate in into four polygons,

1. Polygon -1 Gulshan, Banani, Baridhara, Bashundhara
2. Polygon 2- Uttara
3. Polygon 3- Mirpur
4. Polygon 4- Dhanmondi
5. Polygon 5- Motijheel

At present they are providing their service in Dhaka city, in these five polygons. Qubee target was, at the end of the May they will have full Dhaka city coverage and at the same time they will start their operations in Chittagong. They have kept their promise.

Pricing Strategy

Price is the only revenue generating element of the marketing mix. So for any organization determine the price of the product plays a major role of success. As WiMax is totally a new concept in Bangladesh both Qubee and Bangla Lion should determine the price of their product very sensitively.

As Qubee first introduce wimax in Bangladesh they took the first mover advantage. They followed the price skimming strategy to enter into the market. The practice of ‘price skimming’ involves charging a relatively high price for a short time where a new, innovative, or much-improved product is launched onto a market. The objective behind choosing skimming strategy is to “skim” off customers who are willing to pay more to have the product sooner. On the other hand when a new company comes to a new market they have to bear a large amount of pioneering cost. That is why in this situation they always try to charge high price for their product. Also when they are determining the price for their product they bound to follow the rules of price ceiling that is set by the BTRC.

SALES STRATEGY OF QUBEE

Strategy

QUBEE has exceptional expertise in the design, roll-out and delivery of telecoms networks in emerging markets.

QUBEE’s strategy is to

Identify emerging market opportunities.

QUBEE’s selection criteria is based around sound business planning principles which identify markets based on a number of key success defining factors such as population (and urban density), literacy levels and GDP.

Availability and access to spectrum.

Each country has a unique process for the allocation and pricing of its spectrum. QUBEE has a robust methodology for assessing the ultimate value of the spectrum.

Ability to rapidly ‘operationalise’ in country.

Technology roll-out and integration, coupled with intensive training on the ground allows QUBEE to quickly bring its services to market.

Deliver affordable and reliable broadband.

Use economies of scale and superior technology to achieve a customer proposition of affordable and reliable broadband.

International scalability

On-going pursuit of opportunities for geographical expansion. Carry out spectrum acquisition and network rollout in several territories simultaneously.

PRICING & PACKAGES:

Pricing:

Bangladesh revenue board of telecommunication has set up a price ceiling for WiMAX service providers, so Qubee has to set the price within that price range.

Different pricing strategies followed by Qubee are

 Value Based pricing: Qubee is following value based pricing. They consider the purchasing power of their customers while deciding the price range. However they evaluate the speed and maximum access which can be provided by them within that range and fix the price for every segment.

 Product line pricing: product line pricing is different price for different range, or different service offered, their connections are shared connection, different package like sky and campus have different price, as sky has no access limitation so it’s a bit higher in price, and for campus speed and access limitation has cap on it so the price varies.

Currently for promotion and popularity they are offering free installation for every connection they provide.

Functions of the Sales and Marketing Division

The major marketing goal of this division is to capture a significant market segment that will yield maximum revenue by means of passing on directly or indirectly high end Wireless Broadband Service.

SVP

The office of the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Division is responsible for coordination of marketing activities across the company and to provide top level management with an overall picture of the market situation.

VP

The Vice-President of the division oversees the product and business development scenario of the company and he is responsible to the SVP of the division. He is heading the Sales Division so he has to control all the Sales channels as well.

Channel Sales

The assistant vice president responsible for channel management has the very important job of setting up marketing channels by which packages are distributed among clients and by which feedback is obtained from customers. This department is responsible for the selection of new dealers and motivating them and current dealers to promote QUBEE packages to their customers in their respective areas. This department is also responsible for seeing that there is an excellent support network for each dealer and that they are satisfied with their monetary or otherwise remuneration. This department is also responsible for checking that each dealer does not cut into the sales of another dealer in a very proximal region.

Marketing Communications

The chief responsibility of this department is logically, promotion and communication of new products and product ideas to customers both directly through selection of advertising media, then dissemination of information by means of advertisements; and indirectly through dealers by providing them with promotional material. This department is also responsible for public relations which do not include corporate relations. This is handled, as we have seen, by other departments. The responsibility of this department is immensely important especially in the introduction stage of a package for customers. They also provide help for other departments such as the front office and services marketing in order to promote QUBEE packages to both current and new customers. This helps very much in handling cases of dissatisfied customers and also in case of adjusting customers with old packages who have to be convinced to upgrade their packages to the new ones on offer.

The company sub-contracts its promotional materials production to local companies. A regular number of events are held to integrate promotional activities with public relation exercises to enhance the image of QUBEE and better promote the packages on offer.

Activation

This is a unique department with a very specific job description. This is to educate the new customers with the WiMAX technology through various Experience booths throughout the Dhaka city. This whole dept. is being run by a third party, Asiatic Sales Team. The manager of Aktivation control and assign the sales persons of Aktivation team and promote the product and sell at the same time.

FUT

This particular department looks after the Free Trial Users who got the connectivity as a complementary gift from the QUBEE. This department also arrange drive test on various locations and provide 1 months free connections if necessary.

 The overall structure of the sales & marketing department and its sections of QUBEE have both advantages and disadvantages in terms of organizational structural and respective functionality. Most importantly, QUBEE is a new company and it has a long way to go. So, over the time, we can expect QUBEE to flourish itself in the ISP arena. As a partner, Aamra Network is providing Sales support and IT support to QUBEE as they are having a

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.

General Findings

QUBEE is trying to grab the ISP market of Bangladesh in both home user end and corporate clients. QUBEE’s main competitors are Telecom operators, existing ISP companies and local providers. QUBEE’s competitive advantage is having the wireless broadband technology or WiMAX. Another competitive advantage for QUBEE is having Aamra Networks as their local partner (shareholder). Aamra Networks is the leading Corporate ISP in Bangladesh and they have a very good reputation in this sector.

Internet and telecommunication technologies are one of the great innovations in 21st century. This innovation has a big role in the changing mode of business environment and advertisement technology. To cope up with this changing business environment in Bangladesh, the government decided to allow private entrepreneurs to act as ISPs using VSATs (Very Small Aperture Terminal) in 1996. In 1999, there were about 22,000 account holders with 10 ISPs (8 in Dhaka and 2 in Chittagong) and the total number of users ranges around 100,000, while in 2000, there are about 100 ISPs providing Internet services to more than 250,000 Internet home users. More than 100000 people used Internet from cyber café. The growing demand of the society and the congenial global atmosphere towards Internet has pressurized the entrepreneurs to re-think their policies and strategies to accommodate the newly emerged rapidly enlarging target group. Now days, Internet is used for studies, mailing and online shopping.

It may help the advertising or marketing promotion sector to be efficient and effective. Another point is that the optical fiber has already introduced in Bangladesh which makes our communication faster and cheaper. This will also change the business environment. WiMAX is also introduced in Bangladesh.

QUBEE and BanglaLion have got the license and QUBEE has started their operation already. QUBEE’s motto is to provide access to internet for everyone.

From middle to upper class people are fond of leading a modern life because it makes the life faster,speedy, complicated and efficient. We can hope, through WiMAX,Bangladesh can achieve sustainable growth in the near future.

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.

CONCLUSION

QUBEE is a new and exciting company in Bangladesh. Aamra networks are the local partner of QUBEE in Bangladesh.QUBEE, the foreign partner of Aamra networks who brought WiMAX for the first time in Bangladesh. Due to my technical competencies and sales experience I got this opportunity to work as a sales executive in QUBEE. Just after a month of my Internship, There was an opening that time back at QUBEE and I grab the opportunity. I got elected and appointed as Sales Executive. During this period, I learned a lot about QUBEE and its sales operation and Strategy. In this report, I tried to describe the operation and function of QUBEE’s different sales channel. I observe the activities of Sales & Distribution Department of QUBEE and present my observation and suggestions regarding “Sales and Distriution of QUBEE.”