Operation and Strategy of Dish Network

Introduction

Dish Network is a prosperous company that serves approximately 14 million subscribers and meets various desires of people concerning the televised entertainment. The company is the second provider of satellite based pay-TV in the US. The analysis of the company demonstrates that Dish tries to hold its competitive position in the market by means of constantly tracking new technologies and innovative issues necessary for its business. The research paper focuses on the identification of strong and weak points of the company’s strategy, which will help to deter distinct objectives of the business and to elaborate a detail financial plan that will attract investors and significantly contribute to the company’s success.

Strategic Direction of the Company

The strategic direction of Dish is reflected in such specific proposals like providing Sling TV, which proposes a wide range of different shows for children, news, and programming library. With the help of the Internet, Dish also delivers to the computers such services as Xbox One, Amazon Fire TV, and Roku that support live viewing of sought after cable channels ESPN and HBO (Knutson, 2015). The other strategic issue is basing on the efficient bid about 9 billion for a numerous wireless spectrum licenses auctioned by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (Knutson, 2015). The company is also concentrating on providing numerous options offering wireless telephone service. In 2015, it launched a new version of pay-TV (Knutson, 2015).

The specific strategic approach of the Dish operation is based on gaining new subscribers through third parties, which also include different telecommunication firms, national retailers, and regional electronic stores. The investigation of the business operation shows that the company is on the right track, because its strategy helped to increase the revenues of 2014 by 5% as compared with the year 2013. The net income of Dish increased by $944 million in 2013 ‑ 2014 (Chen & Scott, 2013). Besides, Dish constantly implements different innovations that widen the range of offers. In particular, it provides nearly 3100 local channels, thus allowing the subscribers to watch more than 32500 movies and different programs on personal computers, mobile devices, and smartphones. However, the number of new subscribers lowered in 2014. Such phenomenon needs a thorough studying and elaboration of a new tactic (Knutson, 2015). It would be rational to pay more attention to attracting new subscribers and efficient advertising of new and interesting proposals.

Strategic Innovations Successful in the Competitive Environment

Dish occupies a leadership position in the market, but it also has numerous rivals, which induce the company to pay significant attention to the development of the strategy tracking effective technological innovations. Such a competitive atmosphere served as an incentive to implement new effective approaches. One of the recent implementations is the elaboration of presentation, which shows the strategy rationale for receiving an additional $13 billion NVP of revenue synergies. The proposal is based on two opportunities: Mobile Video and Fixed Broadband. Dish stated that obtaining of Sprint assets would give it an opportunity to utilize a fixed wireless broadband, which will provide potential subscribers with a broadband access, especially in the areas that were not previously served by Dish (Chen & Scott, 2013). The presentation showed to the investors that a new strategy would allow to obtain more that 8 million subscribers on its new fixed broadband network. The other new significant service elaborated by Dish is Mobile Video. The strategy does not represent a proven revenue model. The goal of Dish is based on attracting 3% of household until 2016, which is approximately 3 million homes. Such strategy seems very aggressive (Chen & Scott, 2013). However, during the last conference call, Dish promised that Mobile Video service would have great success on the market. It is also important to note that Dish is representing itself as a stress-free and seamless TV experience. Thus, the other new implementation of the business emphasized on the creation of strategic messaging on various touch points through the journey of customers on all digital channels (Chen & Scott, 2013). The touch points include social media, affiliate marketing, email, and Inline RP. Dish also launched the creation of Hopper, which supports the automatic skipping of commercials and simultaneously enables to record up to six shows in primetime. Besides, it maintains transfer of recorded shows to iPad as well as Facebook integration, which proposes a big library of TV shows and offers a cheaper fee per month.

Recommendations Useful for the Business Development and Corporate Social Responsibility of Dish

a) Recommendations

Dish is a prosperous company, but it also has some gaps that need immediate intrusion. For example, it should pay more attention to the satellite pay-TV business. It is important to correct such issues as TV service affected by weather, increase the number of packages, eliminate avoiding of some HD channels, widen the range of available shows, and buy a yearly subscription for monthly satellite Online Providers (Simpson, 2013). It would be rational for Dish to develop brand positioning, which establishes the company as a provider of unique values. It is also significant to concentrate not merely on gaining more Facebook links but on searching more fans’ friends with an aim to draw their attention and curiosity regarding Dish. The company also has to be more attentive to providing detailed presentations of integration costs for its proposed merger (Simpson, 2013). Assumptions on synergies are not workable. Dish synergies costs were calculated without due diligence. Besides, capex synergies did not include the costs to build out the 2GHz spectrum (Simpson, 2013).

It is apparent that Dish works seriously on providing the wireless services, but it is hard to understand how it would shift the value of the company. The wireless market is profitable, but it is not the best opportunity for growth. Thus, it is important for the company to contemplate whether it would be rational to spend much money and energy on its development. The other significant aspect is that Dish proposes the free Hopper to iPad 2 of new subscribers (Simpson, 2013). This is a valuable strategic approach, which should be thoroughly broadcasted through the social media, because it will induce growth of the number of clients.

b) Corporate Social Responsibility

The analysis of the Dish activity proves that the company operates in a socially responsible way. Corporate social responsibility is based on the self-regulatory mechanism, which helps the company to identify and monitor compliance with the spirit of law, international norms, ethical standards, and interests of customers. The company pays significant attention to the constant studying of customers’ needs. Besides, Dish thoroughly controls the work of Quality Assurance Specialists performing audits with an aim to support the social responsibility (Knutson, 2015). The long-term growth and support of the social responsibility ensure 100% satisfaction of customers by enforcing Dish standard operating policies and procedures, training new Quality Assurance specialists, and improving knowledge of qualified workers (Knutson, 2015). The management team organizes weekly and monthly reports, which help to monitor compliance with the legal issues as well as identify the gaps and ways of their elimination.

CSR record definitely helps the company to keep a leadership position in the market. It encourages the company to reduce legal risks and build up trust of shareholders, investors, and customers. The company works closely with dealers, distributors, and partners that help to track business activities and meet clients’ needs more accurately. Dish constantly monitors new technologies and studies the customers’ interests with an aim to form an additional proposal for the subscribers. Such additional services are not always profitable for the business, and the company often postpones its own interests to the social issues. However, such position only attracts new customers, because it supports their confidence in the quality of service and high responsibility of the company.

Conclusion

Dish is a prosperous company, which offers numerous benefits to its clients. However, it has some gaps that need thorough investigation and prompt elimination. The competitive position of the company on the market is high, but due to the numerous rivals, the company constantly tracks new technologies and analyzes interests of its clients. It is important for Dish to pay greater attention to broadcasting its advantages and form more distinct synergy strategy with the presentation of a detailed financial plan. Social responsibility of the company is on the high level, because one of the significant strategic issues is the constant analysis of clients’ demands and interests as well as their correspondence to service and product quality.

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