Rogers Communications Inc Case Solution

1. VRIO Analysis 

To perform the VRIO analysis, the resources evaluation is important which may be allow to review the strength of the internal analysis. Rogers Communication Inc. possess strengths in form of resources ranging from tangible fixed to intangible in form of brand and goodwill. Primarily,  the economic resources of the company ranges from constant increase in revenues which has been time tested, strong profitability in operations which adds on the healthy bottom line (i.e., USD 2,568 Million in 2009). Additionally, the company has a strong balance sheet footing of USD 17,018 Million as of 2009 with a stable cash position.  

Secondly, the leadership of the company is another key resource that leads to a competitive advantage for the firm. Nadir Mohamed is a likely candidate for the successor of Teg Rogers the founder of the group. Mohamed had a keen eye for the bottom line of the group by facilitating incremental change to keep up with the pace of the market development. The leadership’s role is very important in any organization to succeed in the long term therefore a dynamic leadership that can face challenges and builds resilience at the time of crisis is a key resource for an organization to operate in a highly competitive environment (Ray, 2017). In this regard, RCI seems to have the advantage of leadership which holds capabilities to not only operate existing businesses including wireless and wireline but simultaneously responsible for deriving future innovation, monitoring the technical aspect of the company, and improving time to market. 

In addition, the technological resource was of great importance at RCI since technology at RCI was state of the art and modern on account of periodic investment in new technologies each year by the group. At RCI, innovation and technology remained a competitive advantage for the firm which enables it to serve its customer in a distinctive manner. The wireless network of RCI is the pioneer in the development of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology however the same technology was also developed later by competitors including Bell and Telus with their upgraded networks. This proves that the technology is an imitable resource in the industry however the first-mover advantage in any innovation will bring benefit and result in additional earnings (Bharadwaj, 2000). 

Lastly, the brand image of RCI was an intangible resource which the company has leveraged to position itself as a premium service-provider thereby gaining momentum in becoming a leading technology and communication company in Canada. The strong brand of the group enables it to strengthen its image for value, entrepreneurial spirit, innovation, and choice. Only the brand of the company is valued at USD 2.3 Billion which has improved by 33% as opposed to the proceeding year and becomes the eighth-most valuable brand in Canada. 

The VRIO analysis of these four resources may be summarized below. 

2. Corporate Strategy

Rogers Commination Inc was engaged in the business of wireless services, cell sites, wireless networks, wireless data, advanced wireless service auction, wireline, television, internet, media, and landline telephone. RCI was the leading communication service provider in Canada along with Bell and Telus which are the wireless carriers in Canada and collectively these 3 companies controlled 95% of the market share of total mobile phone subscribers. It is critical for a business to build partnerships with similar businesses or the business in the entire value chain to advantage from the existing customer bases, skills, expertise, and experience (Kontoravdis, 2014). The corporate level strategy was largely driven by the growth in mobile Since the usage of mobile phones has grown remarkably over the last years with more customers converting to smartphones. Wireless penetration in Canada is growing rapidly while in 2009 69% of the total population owned a smartphone. In this regard, wireless is an important segment for the overall corporate strategy of the firm. 

As compared to the United States, telecommunication companies in Canada owned and operated cell sites that included radio frequencies and wireless antennas which provided wireless services to the customers in close proximities. As part of the strategy to own its cell phone tower was to retain control of the expense of building the infrastructure for the tower. Moreover, the idea was to build is skills and accumulate experience in building cell phone towers so that the building cell phone towers can also take as a separate business line to provide tower services to small operators against periodic lease payments. 

The wireless network was another important segment of a corporate business line of RCI whereby geographic coverage and bandwidth were the important determinants. In this regard, building partnerships locally and internationally for roaming was an important factor in expanding the reach of the user to benefit from the existing network. The aggregate data traffic is expected to exceed the total voice traffic on account of the rising demand for data-driven services on the phone which includes, internet browsing, video streaming (Kulin, 2016). In this regard, RCI needs to find an equilibrium between shifting their customers to data-driven mobile phone smart devices while building resources to invest in their capacity to manage additional data traffic by their network. Rogers also had a strong history of operations in the Television segment whereby the company has migrated many of its customer digital cable subscribers. Its success in the landline telephone segment helps the company to compete in wireless internet and digital tv cable operations.