Communication And E-Communication Strategies Of Deloitte

Introduction and Background

Select an international business or company and write a formal business report on the organization’s “Communication and E-Communication” strategies.

Deloitte is one of the “Big Four” accounting organizations in terms of revenue and professionals. It was found in 1845 by William Welch Deloitte headquartered in London, UK. It is a UK incorporated multinational professional services network. Deloitte is a reputed brand below which tens of thousands of enthusiastic professionals in the independent company throughout the entire world collaborate aiming to provide the huge number of services.

The organization has uplifted its diversity by nearly 245,000 people in around 150 countries and territories which provides of audit, tax, legal, financial advisory, risk advisory, and consulting services. The company had the revenue of US$38.8 billion in the year 2017 and US$36.8 billion in 2016. However, the full name of the company is Deloitte Touché Tohmatsu Limited and in 2016, Deloitte transformed its brand name and accepted a new and innovative logo with Deloitte written in black rather than blue (Bharadwaj, El Sawy, Pavlou. and Venkatraman, 2013).

Figure: Deloitte by numbers          

Source: Deloitte, about us, 2018

Thus, from the above diagram, it can be said that the total revenue of the company is rising as per the year along with the total number of employees working for the company which denotes the success of the company in terms of growth and profits.

There are large number of non-electronic methods that Deloitte uses to engage its customers, suppliers and the public. The company displays major traits that is widely used (Christensen and Raynor, 2013).

Deloitte aims at building the workforce by integration with the business. The senior executive evaluate the talents of their employees and promote the company’s culture. It also helps to predict the wider needs of the business and hire more managers. Apart from this, the employees who already exists in the company are recognized as a valuable resource and internal mobility is one of the major elements of company culture. Moreover, the employees are also evaluated on the basis of work ethics, values and their potentials. The company also builds a personalized and customized employee journey where they are free to share their views (Henderson, Raynor and Ahmed, 2012).

At Deloitte, the employees, suppliers and the local public are aimed at delivering the crucial issues related to business and economic by expressing their point of view in major debates. The way they communicate position themselves as true leaders of the market and this can be done by regular interaction with the customers, suppliers and employees and publishing thought-provoking idea points. The non- electronic media for communication channel is also very professional (Raynor, 2011). And the employees can only participate in online platform by using sound common judgments. Apart from this, the employees can also solve their queries by using face to face interactions. The meetings are conducted at regular intervals which creates an opportunity for the employees and the customers to put their ideas and view point on specific matter (Kane, Palmer, Phillips, Kiron and Buckley, 2015). 

Synopsis of the key non-electronic communication methods and practices

“According to a recent Deloitte poll, only 22% of organizations have a customer relationship management (CRM) system equipped to handle CASL”.

Deloitte suspects’ technologies will change and it will enable quicker integration of data from social media platform with the necessary information confined in internal CRM systems in order to develop a more vigorous profile of customers. With the help of social media platforms, huge insights cane easily be developed and the company will be able to use such insights to widen their revenue and aims at delivering the best experiences to their potential customers as well (McElroy and Van Engelen,  2012). Deloitte also predicts that the innovative tools that has been used will have importantly higher quality in order to extract insights, both visual and readable texts with the help of data mashups. Tools and the equipment will able to deliver better visualization and combination of data from multiple platforms and offer information to the end users in a much unified ways.  Users who work in the Indian industry across sectors will look at the dashboards and further report to better insights and presentation (Seddon, Calvert and Yang, 2010). On demand visualization technique is already used by the company. The company used cloud and application environment provider that uses data technology elements which will help the company to visualize the sales channel on wen, mobile apps and a voice support is used to where the company can easily find out the abnormal behavior of their employees as well as customers related to security breaches on the real time (Kviklys, 2013).

Apart from this, Deloitte’s “Global Human Capital Trends 2016” report suggests that about 85% of the HR and the leaders recognized that engagement to be one of the major priority of the company, in addition to this, the company created Connect me. It is a united HR service conveyance and collaboration platform which is basically developed in order to boost the engagement between the employees by using digital platforms along with workplace services. Connect me helps to bring disparate systems as well as teams of HR together that will assist to offer employees a customized, streamlined navigation support in order to make best intelligent selections (Berthon, Pitt, Plangger and Shapiro, 2012). Deloitte has proved itself to gain the trust of its potential customers by appearing on the social media with a well reputed image. The customers of the company can also interact with the company via social media such as Facebook, twitter, emails and many more. Moreover, when the customer provides feedback to the company, those feedbacks are taken into serious consideration. Similarly, Deloitte also sued digital toolbox kit to connect with its customers, suppliers and employees as shown in the diagram.

Key electronic media and communication strategies

Strengths

Deloitte, being one of the leading companies has huge number of strengths which helps to capture the competitive market. It helps to penetrate the new market segments. Some of the strengths of the company are:

• Great skilled workforce are created by the company by successful training programs. The company is focused on investing lot of resources in training its employees that will motivate them to work more efficiently.
• Deloitte has developed successful expertise while entering the new segments and this has resulted in building innovative revenue stream.
• The suppliers of the company are reliable which avoids the unnecessary bottlenecks.
• Deloitte has a strong distribution network and stronger dealer community which helps the company to reach major potential market and attract huge number of customers as well.
• Deloitte offers a sound return on the capital expenditure by developing innovative revenue streams (Poulfelt and Bhambri, 2010).
• The CRM department of the company works with great excellence with has created higher level of customer satisfaction.

Weaknesses

Weakness are those places where a company must focus on in order to gain competitive advantages.

• Deloitte is not successful at integrating firms with several work culture. It is very difficult to merge firms which have dissimilar work culture.
• The company faces the problem of the gaps in the product ranges i.e. the company do not offer huge choices to the customers.
• Deloitte has failed to compete with its competitors in terms of innovation. It has come across as an established company observing out to bring its products grounded on the tested features. The company should invest more in innovative technologies to meet its vision.
• Financial planning is lacking. The current asset ratio and liquid asset ratios of the company is not efficient which suggest that it should use cash more wisely (Weerawardena and Mort, 2012). 

Opportunities

• New polices of environment helps to create an opportunity to drive its benefits and gain market share in the innovative product classification.
• The lower inflation rate of has created stability which helps the company to empower credit at low interest rate to its customers.
• The development in the markets helps the company to enhance its competiveness as compared to other competitors.
• Constant free cash flows offers opportunities in order to invest in neighboring product segments which also open a window for the company in additional product classifications.
• Deloitte can capture more new customers because of the increment in the customer’s spending and economic uptick.

Threats

• Increasing raw material can lead to threat the profitability of the company.
• Rising trend towards isolationism in the American economy can create same reaction form additional government however undesirably impacting the global sales.
• Transforming customer buying behaviors from online digital platform can also be an element of threat to the company (Quirke, 2017).
• Since, Deloitte is serving in various countries, the fluctuations in the currency can also create a major threat to the company.
• Increasing pay level majorly movements such as $15 per hour and growing prices in the china can create major stress on the profit ratio of the company (Lukac and Frazier, 2012).

Findings

The company has already hold a strong position in the market but it is continuously changing its leaderships which has led to develop many challenges. The major finding from the above SWOT analysis are:

• The requirement to invest more in automation, digital platform and developing business model is seen. The new zones of customer essentials such as sustainability consulting is also required.
• Implementation of arduous thought leadership in marketing and create new solutions for higher growth segments in Asia.
• Since the company has its brand name, the customer satisfaction level it very high (Ernst, 2011). 

The two major competitors of Deloitte are McKinsey and Company and Accenture.

McKinsey and Company

The company used the concept of Pyramid Principle, a practice for organized communication. The major take away from the pyramid principle at McKinsey are:

• Begin with the answer initially.
• Cluster and précis supportive arguments.
• Reasonably order supporting thoughts (Roper and Fill, 2012).

If all the three rules will be combined together, then the pyramid principle appears to be very strong and stronger structured communication tool which is highly recommended to the executives in the company. The company follows the Pyramid Principle which is appealed in written and oral communication to positively encourage actions. However, Pyramid Principle is not only useful while communicating with executives but it is quite helpful in communicating with anyone who needs to influence with an argument. This tool is used by the company to communicate with stakeholders, peers and major project management team while making an important proposal (Hinterhuber and Liozu, 2015).

Accenture

Accenture is one of the reputed leader of telecom consulting and outsourcing solutions. It aims at serving wire line, wireless, and cable and satellite communications network operators along with innovative entrants, mobile virtual network operators i.e. MVNOs and internet players. Accenture has created everlasting bodings with 18 of the world’s top 20 communications companies and 41 of the top 50.  Accenture has international scale and reach to offer inclusive solutions in order to find the crucial needs of the service providers. Accenture aims at developing the communication strategy by generating higher values from the assets and working on the cost effectiveness instead of working on short goals. Accenture communication solutions delivers a wide range of business and technology contributions and services which assist their communications clients to unlock the growth in terms of profit and also enhance operational activates to gain higher performance.

In addition to this, the company has acquired IBB consulting which assists leading broadband and mobile operators, media companies and technology providers to evaluate the shifts in the industry and adapt the necessary changes and grab new opportunities as well. IBB consulting will boost the ability of Accenture in order to create new technologies to build future value for customers in the communications because it pursue wholly digital businesses (Lacy, Haines and Hayward, 2012). 

SWOT analysis and findings

From the above report, it is highly recommended to follow some of the suggestion to obtain sustainable growth in the market and gain more profit advantages as compared to its competitors.

• There are several firms who have dissimilar work culture. Being a well-known company, Deloitte must train itself to be able to integrate many firms which have dissimilar work culture.
• The product range offered by the company is very limited in numbers which do not satisfy every needs of the current demands of the customers. Thus, the customer will search for better options where products range are more diversified. So, Deloitte must diversify its product range in order to attract more number of customers.
• Financial planning is not done in a proper way i.e. the current asset and the liquid assets of the company is not sufficient enough and the company is using cash ineffectively. So, it should focus on such ratios.
• In terms of innovation, the competitors of the company are have innovated technologies and updated version of the products and services they provide to their customers. But Deloitte lacks such innovation. Thus, the company should focus on the innovation aspect as well (Lovelock, 2011).

Conclusions

From the above report, it can be concluded that Deloitte is a well-known reputed brand which aims at offering multidisciplinary assistance related to innovation. The cluster of professionals in the company helps it to remain more competitive and process more innovative ideas inside the organization. The company specialize in assisting innovators by creating, capturing and delivering values by converting innovative ideas into clear concepts and developing revenues. The wide services includes innovation process design, business case development and innovation boot camps. Apart from this, the company major competitors are McKinsey and Accenture. The company adopts major marketing strategy to bring their products and services to the market. However, the company should also focus on the innovative technologies to gain better competitive advantages and remain competitive in the market (Bason, 2010). 

References

Bason, C., 2010. Leading public sector innovation: Co-creating for a better society. Policy Press.

Berthon, P.R., Pitt, L.F., Plangger, K. and Shapiro, D., 2012. Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy. Business horizons, 55(3), pp.261-271.

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P. and Venkatraman, N., 2013. Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights.

Christensen, C. and Raynor, M., 2013. The innovator’s solution: Creating and sustaining successful growth. Harvard Business Review Press.

Ernst, D., 2011. Indigenous innovation and globalization: The challenge for China’s standardization strategy.

Henderson, A.D., Raynor, M.E. and Ahmed, M., 2012. How long must a firm be great to rule out chance? Benchmarking sustained superior performance without being fooled by randomness. Strategic Management Journal, 33(4), pp.387-406.

Hinterhuber, A. and Liozu, S.M. eds., 2015. Pricing and the sales force. Routledge.

Kane, G.C., Palmer, D., Phillips, A.N., Kiron, D. and Buckley, N., 2015. Strategy, not technology, drives digital transformation. MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte University Press, 14.

Kviklys, D., 2013. Deloitte. com.

Lacy, P., Haines, A. and Hayward, R., 2012. Developing strategies and leaders to succeed in a new era of sustainability: Findings and insights from the United Nations Global Compact-Accenture CEO Study. Journal of Management Development, 31(4), pp.346-357.

Lovelock, C., 2011. Services marketing: People, technology, strategy. Pearson Education India.

Lukac, E.G. and Frazier, D., 2012. Linking strategy to value. Journal of Business Strategy, 33(4), pp.49-57.

McElroy, M.W. and Van Engelen, J.M., 2012. Corporate sustainability management: The art and science of managing non-financial performance. Routledge.

Poulfelt, F. and Bhambri, A., 2010. The changing global consulting industry. In Management Consulting Today and Tomorrow (pp. 23-50). Routledge.

Quirke, B., 2017. Making the connections: using internal communication to turn strategy into action. Routledge.

Raynor, M.E., 2011. Disruption theory as a predictor of innovation success/failure. Strategy & Leadership, 39(4), pp.27-30.

Roper, S. and Fill, C., 2012. Corporate reputation: brand and communication. Harlow: Pearson.

Seddon, P.B., Calvert, C. and Yang, S., 2010. A multi-project model of key factors affecting organizational benefits from enterprise systems. MIS quarterly, 34(2), pp.305-328.

Weerawardena, J. and Mort, G.S., 2012. Competitive strategy in socially entrepreneurial nonprofit organizations: Innovation and differentiation. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 31(1), pp.91-101