Ses Irm Service example essay topic

1. MARKETING MIX Marketing services is Marketing People. When a customer signs an underwater IRM contract, he is buying a service to be performed. In the end, he will be the owner of a tangible product, Inspection Report, but the quality and cost, as well as the suitability of that report as a solution to his problem depend largely on the services rendered by the contractor. The buyer's best evidence of the quality and competitive superiority of the service he will buy is the impression he gets of the professional capabilities of the manager and staff of the contractor. Therefore, the selling and creation of satisfaction for the buyer before, during, and after executing of the work is the responsibility of the diving firm's personnel who interact with the customers and who are assigned to the project.

Too often an underwater Inspection, Repair and Maintenance (IRM) contract is "sold" by the contractor's manager or salesperson and carried out by other supervisory personnel who feel too little responsibility for satisfying the customer throughout the project. Therefore in this aspect of people, SES personnel who will both supervise the underwater work and work with the clients are made known to and evaluated by the clients from the time of contract negotiation or awarding of contract, and they have the responsibility of providing feedback to management during the course of the underwater work so that corrective action can be taken or negotiated should performance fall short of the client's expectation. All other personnel involved or performing the underwater inspection work are also evaluated and approved / accepted prior mobilisation to the work site. 1.1 PRODUCT / SERVICE purchaser of a product makes his commitment after the product is completed and has a tangible object to consider; a purchaser of a service make his commitment before production and has only intangible promises of the seller about performance to consider, a much more difficult purchasing decision. SES IRM service is specifically focused on the tangible product it has to produce, i.e. Inspection Report, placing considerable emphasis on Quality Control (QC) and Quality Assurance (QA) when executing the work in order to meet the clients' needs. The successful completion of each project is the result of a combination of technology, efficient process and most importantly, uncompromising quality control.

One of the main concerns to the clients of the Oil and Gas Industry is the availability of work barges or boats to execute their work. This is the one area where PCSB and SM-EP faces most problems every year. SES capitalizing on this problem has made commitment to PCSB and SM-EP to ensure that they will have the work barge or boat to execute their work in time. For example at the time of writing this report, SES currently has all their three work barges plus one outsourced and two work boats working on both PCSB and SM-EP contracts. Product Life Cycle SES is also capitalizing on this area to rejuvenate its product (service) life cycle. SES this year has included into their fleet of work barges and boats a Class One Dynamic Positioning (DP) vessel, which is committed to SM-EP for October this year for one of their project.

There is yet a Malaysian company that owns a DP vessel. This vessel will be a cost saving for the client, as it does not require dropping anchors, which mean no anchor handler and topographical boats are required. Setting up on location for a DP vessel takes only a half hour compared to eight and four hours respectively for a work barge and work boat. This also diminishes the risk of anchors getting drop or drag on pipeline (s). One other advantage to the client is that some of the complexes (numerous jackets linked together by bridges) have no access for work boats or work barges due to the abundance of sub sea pipelines, which makes it impossible to drop anchors. At these areas only vessel with DP capabilities can gain access.

To further rejuvenate the life cycle it is already plan for the vessel to be upgraded to a class two DP vessel, which will then be utilised for diving. Another area where the Company should consider as an effort to rejuvenate its service life cycle in the underwater IRM industry is the development of online logging software. To date, there is no suitable software of this nature that is able to serve this purpose. Although PCSB has engaged third party to develop such software but have so far proven not to be successful. This software will also enable historical database to be kept for future trend analysis by the client. In the spirit of Kaizen (Continual Improvement), plans are already being made to upgrade the equipment (DP vessel) and process (ISO 19001: 2000) for the Company.

1.2 PRICING As mentioned earlier in my last assignment, the strategy of SES is to attain coat leadership, where the efficiency of the organization is of utmost importance. Resulting from the recommended cost leadership strategy there is a requirement for more effort in the development of clientele scope and operation efficiency. Focusing on the routine operations and achieving efficiency on its own is insufficient. In order to achieve competitive advantage through cost leadership the Company must return some of the result from the efficiency to the customer in the form of discount. In other words the Company's efficiency can be related by the price of the service / product it offers to the market. In this industry the players compete as much on prices as on their capability of providing a better service.

Price war is a common practice when there is a shortage of jobs. SES has two competitive advantages in which they compete aggressively in these areas: 1. The Company offers very competitive price for their mobilisation / de mobilisation cost, which makes up the bulk of the cost for the client, especially for the vessels. Because the work barges and work boats are placed either at Miri or Labuan when they are not working and PCSB mobilisation / de mobilisation point is Miri, Labuan or Ke maman while for SM-EP is either Miri or Labuan. SES incurs minimal cost for mobilisation / de mobilisation of their work barges or work boats. SES also offers discount, no additional mobilisation / de mobilisation cost to the client when job gets roll over from one to the other.

For example, the Company has got two different contracts with SM-EP for topside services and underwater IRM services. The Company would not charge SM-EP for de mobilisation / mobilisation for their vessel when she completes the job for the topside contract and rollover to the underwater contract. 2. Because SES owns the work barges and work boats, the Company is able to offer very competitive price to their clients for the daily charter rates.

The Company had also offered discounted daily charter rate for their vessel, by means of charging the same rate when a higher capability vessel is used. For example, when PCSB uses the vessel Sark u Seman tan, a bigger vessel with higher crane capacity and able to accommodate 90 pax used for deep saturation (mixed gas) diving, for their air diving (non mixed gas diving to maximum depth of 50 metre's) work, the Company offered a discount of approximately RM 10,000.00 a day for the daily vessel charter rate. This pricing strategy has put the Company in the lead, as these are the areas, which makes up the bulk of the cost for the contract. 1.3 PLACE A service company can differentiate itself by designing a better and faster delivery system.

SES clients, PCSB operates from Miri, Labuan or Ker teh while for SM-EP from Miri. Majority of Malaysia's Oil and Gas installations (around 300) are located in Sarawak. Eighty percent of the yearly diving IRM activities are from Sarawak and to cater for this, SES has their main operations office in Miri and logistical support offices in Kuan tan and Labuan while the head office is in Kuala Lumpur. The Company is able to provide immediate respond to their clients' queries, for example, SES Diving Project Manager for SM-EP contract is able to have daily operations meeting with their contract holder. SES also has dedicated duty engineers to cater for any after office hour's queries. A critical aspect of this is the fast respond towards any emergencies.

For example in a recent emergency case where it involved a non-work related death tragedy on one of the diving vessel, SES was able to react effectively and efficiency largely due to the strategic location of the operation's office and efficient process it has in place. 1.4 PROMOTION According to the theory of bidding, all licensed contractors are presumed equally capable of performing the contract, and the client need only select the lowest bid to obtain maximum value for dollars expended. The prevalence of securing bids for underwater IRM services supports the contention that those who need to purchase underwater services suffer great uncertainty. Their main concern is cost, and bidding is supposed to keep cost down.

But buyers have to assume that all contractors, whose bids are considered, are capable of the same quality performance which, of course, they are not, and which is a source of even greater uncertainty for the astute buyer. However, as many contractors and their customers know, the theory is not always supported by practice. Presumably, the only promotion needed by a contractor who is getting business on a competitive bid basis is the effort required to get on the customer's list of bidders. For SES, the available tools of promotion in order of importance are personal selling, public relationships, merchandise, and advertising. While mass-produced and mass-consumed products and some industrial products can be promoted best by advertising and sales promotion, underwater IRM services are sold to a limited number of customers and must be explained and sold in a personalized problem-solving manner, which is best done by personal selling. SES salesperson is the Project Managers themselves, capable of solving the clients' problems by application of the firm's unique set of service capabilities.

Public relations, construed as a process of two-way communication between the Company and all publics that affects the long-run viability of the Company, customers, the community, government, employees, and others, can be used to supplement and support sales activities. A good reputation, or image of the company, is a prerequisite for effective sales efforts, and the Company takes an active part in building this reputation. Managers of the Company and its salespeople develop contacts with potential customers. Such public relations activities can result in pre-selling by communicating the strengths and capabilities of the company, and can provide feedback to the company of any negative attitudes or opinions. If such attitudes are based on misinformation, corrective communication can be disseminated; if they are based on aspects of the company's behaviour that are damaging its reputation in its market, corrective action by the Company can be planned. Merchandising by the Company usually takes the form of point-of-sale activities such as brochures and advertising specialist; special event such as during the recent Oil and Gas show in Kuala Lumpur.

Such activities is viewed as part of the Company's public relation or advertising efforts and coordinated with those programs. At best, their true value is uncertain, and they should be considered only as supplements to the Company's more important personal selling activities. Advertising in mass media or even direct mail is likely to be less effective than the person-to-person instant-feedback type of communication previously suggested.