Bharti Case Analysis

What must Bharti do well to succeed in the Indian telephone market?

Bharti must be able to provide reliable, scalable and up-to-date telephone and communication services to India. The region is growing and adopting telephones at an increasing rate. This growth is so rapid that the network build out is expensive and constantly improving. As such, Bharti will need to make frequent IT systems upgrade to compete with other growing Indian telephone competitors.

What are its core competencies?

Bharti’s core competencies are centered on business operations. While they are a technology company, providing telephone and communication services to customers the executives are strong at operating the company and providing the right services, at the right price to the right market.

What do you see are the advantages and disadvantages of the outsourcing agreements outlined by Gupta?

Advantage – The greatest advantage of the outsourcing agreements is that Bharti senior management is able to focus on their core competency and not worry about the IT system. While the IT system is the backbone of their product offering, it is not strength of their expertise. The outsourcing agreements put experts in control of the IT infrastructure. Another advantage of the outsourcing agreements is the fee arrangements. For some vendors, Bharti is only required to pay for the network when it is used, thus eliminating paying for excess and unused capacity. Similarly, their agreement with IBM is such that they only pay IBM a portion of revenues. These types of costs and fees aligns the vendor’s success with that of Bharti.

Disadvantage – The greatest disadvantage of the outsourcing agreement is the handing-over of an extremely vital business asset to an outsider. Given that Bharti is a technology company, and the fact that the IT infrastructure is so important to their business, any IT interruption will greatly impact the overall success of the business.

What are the...