Strategy, Marketing and Product Management (Telecommunications)

This section will introduce the concept of macroeconomic models. You'll gain an understanding of the macroeconomic view of a national economy and how the individual industries contribute to and benefit from this national system. You'll be able to apply the concepts of GDP, inflation, economic growth, etc, to contemporary real examples.

The concept of strategy will be introduced and applied to a network operator (fixed, mobile, voice and data). The various strategy analysis tools will also be introduced and example strategies discussed. You'll be able to apply the following analysis tools: PEST, PUV, Porters 5 Forces, and SWOT. You'll also review current strategic issues and the way in which they lead to decisions that can be brought together to produce a corporate strategy for network and ICT operators, together with implementation choices.

The generic principles of marketing will be introduced. You'll learn about the concepts of marketing intelligence, segmentation and targeting, the 7 Ps, promotion, channel management, sales and account management, and customer-relationship marketing (CRM). You'll be able to apply these generic principles to the contemporary telecommunications and ICT business environment. The principles and techniques of competitor analysis will be introduced and you'll learn how to evaluate the competitive landscape.

An overview of the principles of portfolio and product management will be presented, together with their relevance to business planning, network planning and capital budgets. Recent practical examples will be discussed. The product life cycle is used as a framework to consider all aspects of product and service management from concept through to product launch, through in-life management to eventual product withdrawal. Certain specific concepts of product management (e.g. pricing and calculating product profitability) will be discussed in the context of the particular challenges of ICT. As well as gaining an understanding of the role of product and portfolio management you'll be able to apply the generic principles specifically to today’s telecommunications and ICT industry.

This part of the course will set the scene for today’s business, covering the types of network operator and the range of competitors. The concept of ICT will be defined, together with the convergence issues. You'll gain an understanding of the interaction of all the factors affecting an operator: macroeconomic, the market place, government policy, regulation, competition, legacy aspects and technology changes, customer expectation and globalisation.

This section will present a quantified view of the industry (telecommunications, e-commerce, internet, and entertainment) from a world-wide perspective. The major cost, revenue, demand, service and technology trends will be analysed and you'll investigate likely future developments. In this section you'll also examine the profound impacts on society, markets and the industry arising from the emergence of new and powerful companies chasing major new revenue opportunities.