A Research In Channels Integration Amid The Transformation Of CMCC' Services Halls

As the No.1 telecom operator in China, China Mobile has more than 100,000 chain stores, including 24,000 self-owned branch stores, as well as franchised stores and other sale channels. All of these form a giant network of sales and marketing channels. However, these individual stores are mainly positioned as customer services channel, totally owned and managed by separate subsidiary entities in provinces, cities or counties. Among them there has been no effective integration in product management, marketing promotion, logistics, information system, and so on, and therefore neither synergy nor scale economy. This article applies the theories and methods about channels, consolidates the best practices of oversea telecoms and the reality in China's telecom industry, and brings strategies for channel integration. By rolling out centralized chain store operations, CMCC may effect a successful transformation of service halls and overall sales and marketing channels, and help to achieve both lower costs and higher operation efficiency.This article has 6 major chapters:(1)It combs the latest documents and works about channel management and summarizes the key findings and weakness of both domestic and oversea researches.(2)It studies the related concepts, necessity and models of channel integration, re-examines the logics between it and chain store operations, and goes further into the origin and development of chain store operations and the application of synergy theory.(3)It reviews the progress of CMCC's channel development, defines 4 phases of it, summarizes the characteristics of all 4 phases, and points out the existing issues of CMCC's sales and marketing network.(4)It explores relevant business cases of channel integration of both domestic and oversea telecom competitors, absorbs important lessons learnt from oversea cases, and lists practical experience for CMCC's channel integration.(5)It zooms into the underlying issues of CMCC's current network, makes a SWOT analysis and points out the roadmap selection for channel integration, e.g. centralized management, sales endpoint transformation, chain store operations, specialized operations, and standardization in 6 areas: standardized process for selecting store locations, standardized brand image, standardized promotion programs, standardized procurement and distribution, standardized services level, standardized information system – so-called Six Standardizations.(6)It builds a business case based on CMCC Haikou's context, analyzes the implementation plans of Six Standardizations, and tests its feasibility and accuracy.In net, the 6 above chapters specify the roadmap selection and implementation standards for CMCC's channel integration and provide a correct direction and strategies.