Bharti Airtel Limited, widely known as Airtel is an India based multinational telecommunication company. It is currently operating in 18 countries across Africa, Asia and Channel Islands. The company provides the services of GSM, 4G, 3G, 4G+, 4G LTE, fixed line broadband services, mobile services, and also voice services (Airtel, 2020).
VRIO model is an analytical tool which is used for evaluating the company’s resources, capabilities and competitive advantages. The model has four components: Value, Rare, Imitability and Organization. It helps the company in uncovering and protecting the resources and capabilities for long term competitive advantage. Here is the detailed VRIO analysis of Airtel Company.
Value
VRIO analysis suggests the company to have most valuable resources, as this will help the company in enabling the implementation of the strategy. This further improves the effectiveness and efficiency of the operations. Companies also assess the value of the resources through Net Present Value. Airtel is one of the biggest multinational telecommunication service providers, who needs to make its resources valuable in order to achieve the competitive advantage in the industry.
The company’s technological resources are most valuable as it brings new and advanced technological services for its customers. The company successfully able to maintain good relationship with its customers by providing good quality services and good customer service. Moreover, it has skilled and well-trained employees who are technical savvy. This is one of the valuable resources for Airtel (Parekh, 2016).
Rarity
Secondly, it is necessary for the companies to have rare resources as much as they can. Rare resources mean one or few rivals have the resources. If any resource is commonly available in the industry, every competitor will be able to make use of that resources in same possible way for exploiting the opportunities. As Airtel is the telecommunication company, it will provide more or less the same services other telecommunication companies are providing.
But Airtel can have the edge over others when it will introduce new service in the industry before rivals. Technological advancement must be rare for the company. However, it can be imitated by rivals, but Airtel works hard on building strong relationship with its customers. This is rare and many rivals are unable to do so or find it difficult in retaining the consumers (Dokumen, 2020).
Imitability
To achieve the long-term competitive advantage, it is important for the companies to achieve this component also as it is equally essential as rarity and valuable of the resources are. This component might give the company first mover advantage. Companies should try to make its resources difficult or costly to imitate. Airtel s a big multinational company operating across the globe. The company has developed strong network channels and connections which are costly.
Maintaining such a huge network requires immense technical skills, cost and time which Airtel is successfully managing. This is difficult to imitate for the rivals. Furthermore, Airtel has successfully achieve the best managerial expert panels who made the managerial expertise and operations of the company difficult to imitate (Parekh, 2016).
Organization
This component put emphasis on the companies to be organized as none of the resources will be beneficial for the company if they are not properly managed. The focal needs capability for assembling and coordinating the resources efficiently and effectively. Airtel company is one of a leading company who manages its operations strategically. It has adopted a good working condition for the employees and have formal reporting structure, with proper hierarchy where everyone is aware of their positions and responsibility.
Airtel plans, budget, and control the management and compensation policies very well. Service level of Airtel are also managed and organized which gives it edge over rivals (Ekram, 2016).
Conclusion
Airtel is one of a leading multinational telecommunication company operating across the globe. The company is technological advance and able to achieve competitive advantage in the industry with the help of its resources and capabilities. However, the company needs to work on the utilization of resources for mitigating threats for future and work hard towards the strategies that retain the competitive advantages for long-term.
| V | R | I | O | ||
| Technological advancement | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Competitive Advantage |
| Spectrum license | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Competitive Parity | |
| Customer Relation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Sustainable advantage |
| Brand Equity | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Sustainable competitive advantage |
| Managerial expertise | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Sustainable advantage |
| Product quality | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Sustainable advantage |
| Service level | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Sustainable advantage |
| Talented HR | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Temporary Competitive advantage |
References
- Airtel, 2020. About us. [Online], Available at: https://www.airtel.in/about-bharti/about-bharti-airtel?icid=footer, [Accessed on: 23rd March, 2020].
- Dokumen, 2020. Airtel VRIO and SWOT analysis. [Online], Available at: https://dokumen.tips/documents/airtel-vrio-swot-analysis.html, [Accessed on: 23rd March, 2020].
- Ekram, K. 2016. Strategic Analysis of Bharti Airtel. [Online], Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/khalidekram/strategic-analysis-of-bharti-airtel, [Accessed on: 23rd March, 2020].
- Parekh, A. 2016. Strategic management analysis- Airtel. [Online], Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/arjunparekh/strategic-management-analysis-airtel, [Accessed on: 23rd March, 2020].