Business at Work - BT plc

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AVCE Business Studies: Unit 1: Business at Work                                    28/04/2007

Business at Work 

Task 1: Introduction

BT plc is British Telecommunication public limited companies (plc) registered in England Wales, with listings on the London & New York stock exchanges. The Business is well-known providers of telecommunications services and solutions for everybody in the UK. This business exists to supply telecommunications services, products and services, and IT solutions to corporate and residential customers. BT's Group plan is to increase the value for shareholders by increasing their performance rate by satisfying the customer’s want or needs and for corporate customers in Europe, achieving global reach through partnership which have the same motive of running the business,

BT itself consists mainly of four lines of business: BT Retail, BT Wholesale, and BT Global Services and BT Open world.  They focus on considered priorities to make a better world’s as a public limited company wants to deliver the uppermost levels of customer satisfaction performance and reduce the number of displeased customers each year which they've established a strategic target to do better than their competitors consistently and reduce the number of dissatisfied customers by 25% each year. BT wants to accomplish untreated gainful revenue growth, while constraining capital expenses enabling the company to be more financially controlled over the incoming / outgoing of cash flow. It also wishes to put broadband at the heart of BT, expand the market for broadband services so in the future the increasing of the usage of Broadband which will allow the BT to add value to the BT trademark. BT wants to find and provide solutions and other value-added services such as growing of BT’s brand by using different other pricing strategies of the product or services provided with the BT brand. As a well known business its aim is to place all UK networks under a single running structure and to control investment in charitable donations and data platforms, while transferring operations to new platforms. To use the strength of the BT brand to move into broadband services for consumers and also into connected markets, such as communications solutions and business mobility services for main business customers and information and finally to use different various combination of skilled and motivated people. From these objectives it indicates that the company wants to profit maximise by increasing market shares which has a big influence on profit. They want to expand their ability to reach into every home mainly in the United Kingdom.  

How successfully the business is meeting its objectives:

The corporation known as BT plc it self is successful which is in fact meeting its objectives by the increase of the service given to other businesses and residential customers. Not only have they focused on the service but on improving customer satisfaction which they achieve this by face-to-face interviews are carried out with residential customers which allows the business to continue to make improvements. The company also wants top decrease the customer dissatisfaction which they have achieved this by 37%.  

Not only they achieved customer satisfaction but also they have accomplished the raise of commercial revenue growth. Below are general performance figures for the company over the last 3 years:

This shows BT’s turnover total at year end 31st March

            2000        2001        2002        2003

(m) = million          (m)          (m)         (m)         (m)

 Turnover         21,903   29,666    24,642    20,182

Difference                  7763       -5024     -4460

This is BT total sales during the years this give you an idea about of the performance of BT which indicates that they were performing well until to 2001 where from then sale turnovers decreased which allows BT to investigation where they are going and prevent it from happening during the next years.

This shows BT’s profit total at year end 31st March

         2000       2001      2002     2003

(m) = million       (m)        (m)          (m)       (m)

 Profit                2,045     1,683     1,018    2,698                  

Difference                 362        -665       1680      

        This is BT’s profit made before and after Tax for the total years were they were performing well before 2001 which would be a point where the risk of BT losing their shareholders by them selling their shares but overcame the problem and managed to survive which in the chart it shows evidence because in 2003 the firm increases profit. Which profit after Tax is important to the company because they need profit in order to survive and also continue their service to the community which profit is important revenue to the firm?  

This shows number of BT lines at year end 31st March

         2000       2001      2002     2003

BT Lines         28,500   28,950    28,395   28,000

Difference                450        -555      -395

   

        

        

        

This is BT’s number of lines which indicate how much customers they have which shows that BT are performing bad and try a solution to prevent it  from falling more which might be the increase of competition by competitors such as NTL. Or might be the case where the pricing isn’t attracting the other cooperation or residents which they could change their pricing strategy and also the way they promote their service / products or even could be the case of the customers finding the product or service quality not good enough.

They have tried to develop people at work so they can interact better with customers either face-to-face or other forms of communication with the customers which BT wont various intelligent workers with range of skills and ability to work more effectively especially in problem solving situations. BT’s performance over the years have faced good years and bad years but able to recover and improve from their mistakes which from their performance however to shows that BT are not on their target by not having broadband the heart of BT but they help in charity fundraising by the uses of telephone help lines such as Child Line on “Am I Listening”, websites, and also national telephones to give out charitable information but mainly overall they haven’t achieved all the considered priorities such as finding solution to add value to their brand, but they wish to achieve their unachieved aims while years to come.    

Task 2: Ownership

According to British Telecommunication to its ownership it is classified as a public limited company it allows the public company to sell and buy shares on the Stock Exchange. This allows the firm to increase capital rapidly by selling it shares through the Stock Exchange however it’s expensive to have shares quoted on the Stock Exchange. The disadvantage for BT plc is that the control of the establishment can be vanished by the unique shareholder if bulky quantities of shares are obtained as a fraction of a ‘take over’ which many public company such as BT try to prevent from happening by increasing the price of shares when the shares itself become more admired. For BT to create a plc, the BT board must have applied to the stock exchange council who will cautiously check BT’s accounts. The main advantage that BT as a public limited company is that they have unlimited liability which indicate that if the business goes bankrupt and goes into debt only risk of losing the money invested into the company where’s if BT were a unlimited company they would loose their personnel possessions.

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        The benefit of this ownership which is being a public limited company is that is allows BT to have more then 2 owners which means more capital invested therefore making it easier for the firm to expand and become a well-known established service provider. Also it gives the company more chance of achieving economies of scale which majority of company find it easier to run cheaply. The other advantage of beings a plc it allows BT to be successful when the shares increase which overall the value of the company will boost up.  Below is a chart showing BT ...

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