PROJECT REPORT

ON

“To measure Idea Champion Club Retailer’s Satisfaction levels and to identify the effective Strategies of Retailer Engagement Program”
At
Idea Cellular (Prepaid)

Region: Delhi-NCR

From: 07/04/2013-06/06/2013

By

Mayur Kriplani (IM20-234)
PGDIM (2013-2015)
Submitted for the partial fulfillment of
Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Management
National Institute of Industrial Engineering
ViharLake, 400087

Under the guidance of

Project Mentor: Faculty Guide:

Mr. Inderjeet Sethi Prof. Sanjeev Verma
General Manager-Sales (Prepaid) Professor
Idea Cellular, Delhi-NCR NITIE, Mumbai

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CERTIFICATE OF PROJECT COMPLETION

This is to certify that Mr. Mayur Kriplani, student of Post Graduate Diploma in Industrial Management (PGDIM) 20th Batch of National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) has successfully completed his two months Summer Internship Project titled as:

“To measure Idea Champion Club Retailer’s Satisfaction levels and to identify the effective Strategies of Retailer Engagement Program”

At Idea Cellular, Aditya Birla Group, Delhi-NCR, under the guidance of Prof. Sanjeev Verma, faculty guide, NITIE and Mr. Inderjeet Sethi, General manager- Sales, Idea Cellular, Delhi-NCR from April 7th, 2013 to June 6th, 2013.

I appreciate the efforts put by him and wish him a bright and prosperous future.

Mr. Inderjeet Sethi|Mr. Sanjeev Verma|
General Manager, Sales-Prepaid|Faculty Guide Professor|
Delhi-NCR|NITIE, Mumbai|

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DECLARATION

I Mayur Kriplani, IM20-234, a student of PGDIM, NITIE, Mumbai hereby declare that the project report titled:
“To measure Idea Champion Club Retailer’s Satisfaction levels and to identify the effective Strategies of Retailer Engagement Program” under the supervision and the guidance of Mr. Inderjeet Sethi, General Manager, Sales, Prepaid, Noida is the result of the Original work done by me and to the best of my knowledge, a similar work has not been submitted earlier to any university or any other Institution.

DATE: - 6th June 2014

SIGNATURE

PLACE: - Delhi NCR
(Mayur Kriplani)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the people who have been instrumental in the successful completion of this project. I take immense pleasure in completing this project and submitting the final project report working last 8 weeks with Idea Cellular, Delhi-NCR.

It has been full of learning and sense of contribution toward the organization. It is well known

That success of any project needs some guidelines and cooperation. I would like to thank Idea Cellular for offering a unique platform to gain exposure and garner knowledge in the field of sales in the telecom industry.

In this context, first and foremost I would like to express my gratitude to Mr. Inderjeet Sethi General Manager, Sales-Prepaid, for giving me an opportunity to learn and contribute to the Organization through this project. He always motivated me to get more than expectation and taught me to understand the Idea Cellular Market and undergo the project on retailer satisfaction. I have a special regard to him for sharing his most valuable time with me.

I would also like to express my gratitude towards all the Territory Sales Managers, Area Sales Managers, HR Department, MIS Department for supporting me with my project whenever I approached them.

I am also grateful to all the faculty members of my Institute, NITIE who have helped me with literature support whenever required.

Most importantly I would like to express my gratitude towards Prof. Sanjeev Verma, who has been a source of inspiration through her constant guidance, personal interest, encouragement and help. Her enormous support throughout my project has helped me fulfill the project requirements properly and on time.

I am able to say with conviction that I have immensely benefited from the prestigious association as a summer intern with Idea Cellular Ltd.

Mayur Kriplani

Student of Industrial Management-20
PGDIM
NITIE

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Indian Telecommunication Industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Government policies and regulatory framework implemented by TRAI have provided conducive environment for the service providers. This has resulted in high competition in the industry and allowed the consumers to access to the telecommunication services at affordable prices.

The Indian telecom Industry has witnessed significant growth in the subscriber base over the last decade with increase in the network coverage over the nation, coming up of new players and decrease in the tariff plans availability for the consumers.

With over 900 million wireless subscribers, India is one of the biggest markets in the telecom industry globally. From GSM, CDMA and even broadband subscribers, the overall penetration in India is nearly 75 percent.

Idea Cellular is an Aditya Birla Group Company, India's first truly multinational corporation. Idea is a pan-India integrated GSM operator offering 2G and 3G services. With revenue in excess of $4 billion; revenue market share of nearly 15%; and subscriber base of over 121 million in FY 2014, Idea is India’s 3rd largest mobile operator. Idea ranks among the Top 10 country operators in the world with a traffic of over 1.5 billion minutes a day.

Idea has consistently stayed ahead of the industry in VLR reporting. Idea’s thought leadership on Mobile Number Portability (MNP) has enabled it to stay as the top gainer with highest net gain. Every 4th mobile user who exercises choice through MNP prefers Idea.

The distribution and sales of Telecom Industry is similar to the FMCG industry. The entire process and stages are discussed later on in the report.

My project was to measure the effectiveness of ‘Retailer Engagement Program’ implemented by the Company. Through this project we can find out the effectiveness of benefits provided to the Retailers through this program. We can understand the various parameters on the basis of which we can measure the service levels and benefits that we can provide to the retailers and also with a detailed survey of the market we can understand the special strategies that our competitors are adopting and the gap present, which can be removed.

I had to cover beat wise market audits in various locations of Delhi-NCR including North, South, East, West, Central Delhi, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, Noida, Greater Noida with the distributor sales executives, Territory sales managers etc. and understand the different problems faced by the retailers on the basis of serviceability and visibility and try to implement the strategies to overcome the same.

I also tried to identify the different parameters on the basis of which the retailer satisfaction is dependent on.

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Contents

1) Introduction(7)

2) Objectives and Deliverables (10)

3) Methodology..(11)

Understanding the ‘IDEAL’ Way

Identification of Retailer Touch points, Categories and Hypothesis

Approach Selection & Questionnaire Development

The Survey and Data Analysis

4) Survey Results and Analysis(13)

Mean Satisfaction Levels- Touch points and Cities

Mean Satisfaction Levels- Category Wise Hypotheses Results Operator Preference Qualitative Insights

5) Recommendations.(18)

Distribution Management Schemes

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Introduction

Idea Cellular is an Aditya Birla Group Company, India's first truly multinational corporation. Idea is a pan-India integrated GSM operator offering 2G and 3G services. With revenue in excess of $4 billion; revenue market share of nearly 15%; and subscriber base of over 121 million in FY 2014, Idea is India’s 3rd largest mobile operator. Idea ranks among the Top 10 country operators in the world with a traffic of over 1.5 billion minutes a day.

Idea Cellular Limited was incorporated in 1995, and now ranks third in terms of all -India wireless revenue market share at 14.8% per cent. Idea holds 16 per cent stake in Indus Towers, a joint venture with other telecom majors Bharti Airtel and Vodafone. Indus Towers is the world's largest tower company with over one lakh towers. In 2007, Idea was listed on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

Idea’s robust pan-India coverage is built on a network of over 100,000 2G and 3G cell sites, spread across over 55,000 towns in India.

Using the latest in technology, Idea provides world-class service delivery through the most extensive network of customer touch points, comprising of nearly 4,500 exclusive Idea outlets, and over 7,000 call centre seats. Idea’s customer service delivery platform is ISO 9001:2008 certified, making it the only operator in the country to have this standard certification for all 22 service areas and the corporate office.

Idea has consistently stayed ahead of the industry in VLR reporting. Idea’s thought leadership on Mobile Number Portability (MNP) has enabled it to stay as the top gainer with highest net gain. Every 4th mobile user who exercises choice through MNP, prefers Idea.

Idea offers a range of high-speed mobile broadband devices including Android based 3G smartphones, dongles etc. Idea’s wide portfolio of 3G smartphones offer the latest in 3G applications and high-end data services such as Idea TV, games, social networking etc. at most affordable prices.

Idea has been a pioneer in introducing customized product offerings for segmented customers. It is the first mobile operator to introduce innovative value added services in the Indian telephony market, and has remained ahead of the industry in data product offerings.

Idea has been a leader in the introduction of value-added services, and there are many firsts to its credit, including a voice portal 'Say Idea', Idea TV, voice chat and instant messenger. Tariff plans have been customer-friendly, catering to the unique needs of different customer segments, for instance the 'Women's Card' caters to the special needs of women on the move, and 'Youth Card' covers the emerging youth segment

Idea has received several national and international recognitions for its path-breaking innovations in mobile telephony products and services. Idea won the prestigious ‘NDTV Business Leadership Award’ in the Telecom category for its solid, consistent performance in 2012. It was the Winner of ET Telecom Awards 2012, in the categories - ‘Customer Experience Enhancement’, ‘Excellence in

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Marketing’, and ‘Innovative Products’. Idea also won the ‘Best Ad Campaign of the Year’ award for the popular Honey Bunny campaign at the Tele.Net Telecom Awards 2012.

Idea won the ‘Best Brand Campaign’ at the esteemed World Communication Awards in 2012 & ‘11. It won the GSM Association Award for ‘Best Billing and Customer Care Solution’ for two consecutive years, and was awarded ‘Mobile Operator of the Year Award – India’ for 2007 and 2008 at the Annual Asian Mobile News Awards.

Idea is one of the few companies in the world, which is able to run high quality telecom services at the world’s lowest price points and yet deliver stable Cash Profits. The improving capacity utilization, increasing brand popularity & quality of consumer service with a strong Balance Sheet underscores Idea’s ability to benefit from long term sector opportunities.

STRUCTURE OF THE SALES TEAM

The entire structure of the hierarchy is as shown in the figure. The entire telecom industry works in circles. The under shown structure is representing the Delhi-NCR Circle. In each Circle, there are Territory Sales Executives/ Managers, who are reporting to the Area Sales Managers. The area Sales Manager reports to the Zonal Manager. Each Zonal Manager Reports to the Vertical Head, who then reports to the Sales Head and each circle, is headed by the Circle Head (COO)

Under each TSM/TSE an area is being assigned. On an average each TSM was assigned two distributors, who worked in separate areas. Each distributor was assigned a collection of retail outlets that were serviced by the Distributor Sales Executives/Managers.

STAGES IN THE BUSINESS:

Initially the distributor makes a RTGS or NEFT to the organization and through software there is a corresponding amount of recharge transferred to the distributor

Primary stage Distributor purchase from Idea Secondary Stage Retailer purchase from Distributor Tertiary Stage Customer purchases from Retailer

Distributor Purchases

from Idea

Primary Stage

Retailer Purchases|Customer purchases| from the DSE working|from the retail outlet| under the distributor|and makes call|
Secondary Stage|Tertiary Stage|

STAGES IN THE BUSINESS

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HIERARCHY STRUCTURE IN IDEA

COO (Circle Head-NCR)

Head

||Paid|(3G)||
|||||
DSA||Idea|DST||
|Vertical Head||

ZBM1 ZBM2

ASM1 ASM2

TSM1 TSM2

DISTRIBUTION STRUCTURE

||Retailer 1||
|DSE 1|Retailer 2||
||Retailer 3||
Distributor 1|DSE2|||
||Retailer 4||
|DSE3|||
TSM||||
|DSE1|--||
||||
Distributor 2|DSE2|------------||
||--------------||
|DSE3|-------||
||------||
||-------||

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Objectives and Deliverables

Objective: To measure Idea Champion Club Retailer’s Satisfaction levels and to identify the effective Strategies of Retailer Engagement Program

Key Deliverables: After discussing it with my mentors following deliverables were identified

DELIVERABLES Summary

|Business Partnership||Retailer’s Perception about IDEA as a business partner|||
||||||
||||||
|||Identification of preferred business partners – finding Idea|||
||||||
|Partner Preference||Champions Club’s Relative Preference levels – decoding major|||
|||reasons for the same|||
||||||
|||Identifying and Mapping Satisfaction Levels on retailer touch|||
|Touch points||points that directly or indirectly affect retailer’s business|||
||||||
|Drivers||Identification of Pain & Strength areas of Idea Champions Club.|||
||||||
||||||
|Roadmap||Suggestions and guidelines to be Successful in REP Program.|||
||||||
||||||
|Independent||Assumption and Testing of independent hypotheses – Direct|||
||||||
|||impact on company’s business|||
|Hypotheses Testing|||||
|||(Voluntary Initiative)|||
||||||
||||||

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Methodology

The whole project was divided into 4 steps each with clear and defined objectives.

Step 1: Understanding the ‘IDEAL’ Way

Before proceeding with anything in project it is very important to understand the standard operating procedure of every related process. Understanding this will gave a clear path where ideal way of doing business could be compared with what actually is happening in market and helped in identifying strength and pain areas in sales process. Internal company interviews were conducted to gain understanding on each process in the first week of the project.

Step 2: Identification of Retailer Touch points, Categories and Hypothesis

In this step all those touch points that directly/ indirectly affects retailer business were identified by internal as well as external interviews. All parameters were test marketed in Noida and Gurgaon and finally top 5 were selected for evaluation. They were

Role of|Role of TSM/|Push-Pull|Advert and|Order and|
DSE|Sr.|Msgs & Online|Merchandising|Delivery|
|Management|Portal||Management|
|||||

Next retailer categories were identified by segmenting it on the basis of number of activations per month and were divided into 3 categories:

|Categories|||A|||B|||C|||
|||||||||||||
|(Tertiary)|||(>150000)|||(75000 -|||(