Verizon Wireless
Essays

A labor union is an association of workers who have come together in order to attain common goals in relations to such as better working conditions. The job of the leadership of the union is to negotiate with the…

The success of each company is translated into a series of quantitative and qualitative outputs. These outputs are established by specialists in the field, theorists and practitioners, and are applicable to most…

Given the fact that nowadays competition in any field of activity has become extremely diversified and strong, a company's customer relationship management can make a difference regarding the company's success, leading…

The situation in mergers and acquisitions are different. In mergers, two different companies agree to join their forces to develop a bigger company so that they would be able to fight competitive organizations or even…

Network Neutrality is essential to ensure continued and optimal benefits, both from a business and end users perspective. Removing this is to the detriment of the democratic society within which we live and function. The document uses the debate between Tim Wu and Christopher Yoo as a starting point for the discussion.

Verizon's "More Fun than a Miniature Horse Campaign"

Sprint's 4G network offering wireless broadband services Xohm with download speeds in the range of 2Mbps to 4Mbps was the first commercial network across USA to use mobile WiMax technology. However because of limited availability of devices that is able to access the network, Sprint was compelled to use conventional broadband and wireless business models. This move brought the company in direct competition with the present broadband services and 3G services and the product offering was not actually satisfying an unmet customer need and hence the prospects of the service remained narrow. Sprint is targeting customers of existing cable and DSL cable providers with mobility.

The total business of telecommunication in the current era is radically different from the past when corporations were allocated franchise territories decades ago. At that time customers were satisfied with the basic…

Verizon's continued growth in consumer and business-based subscriber levels can be attributed to the depth of customer insight and intelligence the company has operated with, in addition to their unique approach to selling services contracts. Cellular and telecommunication services providers must balance a transaction focus to sell more with a relationship focus to keep customers signing up year after year. Many businesses rely on Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems to manage this balance between transactions and relationship-based selling (Chen, Popvich, 2003). Verizon is a sales-driven company that has grown quickly through mergers, acquisitions and alliances, and as a result, a transaction mentality pervades the company. The combination of the mergers, acquisitions and alliances and the priority put on new business over renewals has made Verizon suffer at building and maintaining relationships with customers. The company has a disjointed, disconnected series of customer processes that need to be unified through a Cloud-based CRM system. Company Background Verizon (NYSE:VZ) is one of the leading providers of cellular and telecommunications services globally, operating in 150 countries with 92.2 million customers globally. During their latest full fiscal year (FY), the company reporting $110B in revenues, an increase of 4% of their previous full fiscal period. Verizon attained a $12.8B operating profit in their latest fiscal year, which was a decrease of 12.1%. Net Profit during these two time periods also decreased by 5.7% during these fiscal years as well, with the company reporting $2.4B in FY2011. As with many cellular and telecommunications services providers, Verizon has gone through several reorganizations, each being focused on making the company more efficient at driving top-line revenue growth. The strategy has worked to this point and today the company has two globally-based business divisions, Verizon Wireless and Wireline. Verizon generates the majority of their revenues from the consumer segment, the majority of profits from the business and government sectors. In these latter segments it is more difficult to displace a cellular or telecommunication provider once contracts and service agreements are in place. This strategy of lock-in in the business and government sectors have compensated for the exceptionally high churn with consumers and small businesses, a problem hat a CRM system could solve. Business Problems Verizon today operates in 150 nations has partnerships in place with Cellco and Vodafone globally at the service provider level of their business. Verizon also has hundreds of partnerships with local cell phone, cellular equipment and enterprise networking companies as well. The two dominant divisions, Verizon Wireless and Wireline, rely on a procurement and supply chain management system that has over time been customized to the unique requirements of the company. The procurement and supply chain management systems are disconnected form the over two dozen CRM systems in the company as of 2012, which makes it nearly impossible for sales representatives, managers and senior managers to see what equipment they have available for sale. Instead, Verizon has integrated their procurement and supply chain management systems to their catalog management systems first. This is ideally used in a more inventory-based approach to selling which does not take into account customer needs first. Instead, Verizon sales reps are told to sell the products and services that are the most profitable without regard to customer needs. While this approach has been exceptionally successful in driving top-line revenue growth it has not yielded a high level of customer satisfaction. One of the most critical success factors of a CRM system is designing its many attributes to reflect what customers expect to be a successful interaction and relationship (Hsin, 2007). Verizon has today created the integration of their procurement, supply chain and catalog management systems to their many CRM systems for transaction efficiency first. Designing a CRM system for customer satisfaction first and transactions second or even third is critical to meeting and exceeding customer expectations on a consistent basis (Adalikwu, 2012).

Creating an effective change management plan needs to begin a a solid platform of leadership and a focus on how best to use IT resources over time. this plan concentrates on the critical success factors of Verizon Telecommunications and its continued growth as a customer-driven organization. there are recommendations on how best to align the organizational structure to specific customer needs included in the analysis.