Business Environment of TalkTalk PLC

This report provides an overview of the business environment of TalkTalk PLC, a multinational connectivity firm. It discusses the company's structure, management, and governance. It also highlights the importance of PESTLE analysis in understanding the external factors affecting the company. The report analyzes the political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors that impact TalkTalk PLC.

About TalkTalk PLC

EXECUTIVE SUMMERY
The current report is carried on the business environment of TalkTalk organisation in
which the term business environment refers to all internal and external factors within or outside
of company that can affects the function and activities of business. With the help of TalkTalk
group it become easy to understand all the terms that involved in business organisation. TalkTalk
Company is a connectivity firm which operates its business across globally in order to increase
the sales and profit of company. The main of this company is to maintain the position at
marketplace by adopting new innovative technologies. This will aids both company and
consumers.

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
MAINBODY....................................................................................................................................4
TASK1.............................................................................................................................................4
Discuss the structure of company along with its management and how its governed...........4
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................7
Assess the importance of pestle analysis in context of business unit.....................................7
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................8
PESTLE framework to assess the external environment of selected company......................8
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Business environment refers to all internal and external factors that is required to run the
operation of business in which it includes employees, demands of consumers, suppliers, owners,
and function within organisation, rules and regulation of government that need to be followed by
firm, social trends, innovation and the technologies along with the changes in external factors.
All these factors affect the function and activities of business unit directly or indirectly for this
company need to consider all factor in mind while running business in effective way. The current
report is based on TalkTalk organisation in order to understand the term business environment as
it become the vital factors for any organisation (Prasanna and Haavisto, 2018). The chosen firm
is a multinational connectivity firm which operates its business throughout whole world in order
to increase sale and profit of company. In this report discussion about history, CEO, BOD,
Executives of company along with organisational structure is carried out. In addition to this the
PESTLE analysis is also included to understand the macro factors that may affects the function
and activities of business.
MAINBODY
TASK1
Discuss the structure of company along with its management and how its governed.
Overview of company
TalkTalk is one of the leading organisations of UK for connectivity which provides
television, telecommunication, and internet access along with mobile network services to
customers and business units. This company was founded in year 1995 by Neil McArthur as
Opal Telecoms. This firm changes its name from opal Telecom to TalkTalk business in year
2011. It has begun in several business units of telecommunication firms that have been taken
over involving Nildram, Tiscali, Pipex, opal telecom etc. Headquarter of this organisation is
located at Salford, United Kingdom. In year 2003 it was founded as a subsidiary of Carphone
warehouse and was de- merged as a standalone firm in 2010. Along with this they acquire
Executel and V-networks in 2011. They manufacture products or services to small sector
business of UK such as business broadband, phone lines, call recorder as well as cloud hosting.
Organisational structure

Organisational structure refers to a formal structure or visual diagram of company in which it
describes that what employees need to do, whom they must report, what they will perform, how
decisions will made and take across business (Akhtar and Sushil, 2018). It can use marketers,
products, or process for taking guidance and supply to business of a size and industry. As the
size of firm get bigger it become to useful for new employee in term of learning about who
manages the firm and how they manage, what is the process of your organisation for smooth
operations. For this there are several kinds of organisational structure that a company can follow
in order to operate their business in effective way.
From below given picture, it can be seen that the firm TalkTalk opt hierarchy based
administrative structure which consist three different level i.e. top, middle and lower level. In top
level it holds senior authorities such as CEO, directors, chairperson and vice chairman (Hamilton
and Webster, 2018). And the middle level is comprising with HR & procurement managers,
CFO, technology etc managers whereas in lower level it involves IR, employees, learner &
developers etc. This approach has so many benefits such as it clearly defined the career path to
those employees who are at lower level in order to achieve higher level. It provides power of
centralisation which as well as aware everyone who holds authority over them.
In addition to this it makes easy to regulate the teams which shares resources and accordingly
identify repetition and responsibilities that are meeting which leads to increases in costing the
company money. As well as there is no scope of any inconclusiveness as there is always
someone on higher position for guiding. It is not possible to hide responsibility and the mistake
within firm who follow this approach. Along with this it helps lower level employees in terms of
stress as they are free from responsibilities. Apart from this it holds several disadvantages too as
the flow of information from bottom to be higher compare to higher to lower which creates
conflicts among employees.
Apart firm this it takes too much time in making and execution of viable decision as it needs
to flow the chain of command and this will move slowly and leisurely. Sometimes it creates
communication barrier too as the higher level and lower level people of firm cannot
communicate directly. The lower level people first need to talk with middle level people related
with any function and then they will relocate to higher authorities which may create mis
communication.

Figure 1 organisational structure of TalkTalk group
Management team of TalkTalk Company
The TalkTalk group consist 10 directors on board in which 4 are at executive place and the
remaining six are at non-executive place. In which Sir Charles Dunstone is at executive chair
position. The Tristia Harrison is another chief executive officer of TalkTalk Company. Kate
Ferry is the chief financial officer of selected firm which comes under executive board and the
final John Gildersleeve is the deputy chairperson of TalkTalk group On the other hand, the Sir
Howards Stringer is non-executive director of this firm along with him Roger Taylor, Nigel
Langstaff, Ian West, Phil Jordan, Paul Reynolds are the other non-executive directors of
TalkTalk corporate.
In which Sir Charles Dunstone is at executive chair position, he is the founder of Carphone
warehouse Group Plc that created TalkTalk in 2002. He was appointed as chair-person of this
firm in 2010 and became executive chair person in 2017. He is directed the development of this
firm in order to become one of the leading fixed line telecommunication business in UK. As well
as the John Gildersleeve’s he is also another chairperson of TalkTalk group who joins this board

in 2010. The Tristia Harrison is the chief executive officer of TalkTalk Company. She joined
Carphone warehouse group Plc. in year 2000.
TASK 2
Assess the importance of pestle analysis in context of business unit
PESTLE analysis refers to a tool that is used by any business unit in order to identify the
external factors that can affects the function and operation of business. PESTLE stands for
political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal plays a vital role for the
growth of business. It aids company in making strategies and planning either for an expansion of
any product line or opening a new business in a new marketplace (Saleh and Watson, 2017). So,
it become important for every firm to carry out PESTLE analysis in order to get appropriate
outcome that can be useful in making decisions. For this the analysis of individual aspects of
PESTLE analysis is obstinate below:
Political factor: It become important when a company interferes with the economy to
any level. That included government policies, laws, taxation policies, budgetary, trade limitations
international trades etc. therefore any changes in all these factors affects the function of business
unit in future. So, it become important to consider all factor while running business operations.
Economical factor: virtually all the changes related with the economy of nation possess a
significant impact on the performance of business (Hassan and Alanazi, 2018). For example, the
economic elements such as gross domestic products, average national income, changes in
inflation rate and so many other elements have a direct influence on profit and shares of business
unit. It involves both macro and micro factors of economic such as market demands, interest rate
comes under macro where as focusing on single households tends to micro factors.
Social factors: It refers to those factors which are related with age, gender ratio,
population growth, employment rates, preferences, trends and so on affects the sales and profit of
company’s product and service (Rezaei, Allameh and Ansari, 2018All these factors all related
with social and culture of consumers.
Technological factor: this is the most vital factor of PESTLE analysis which innovation
of new technologies as well as the growth of technology at marketplace. The advancement can
be introduce in different ways such as adding new features in existing technologies,
improvement in producing goods or service etc. In order to stay in market for longer period or to

maintain the image of company, corporate need to consider or introduced all these evolving
technologies.
Legal factor: this holds all these factors which are related with the changes of laws and
regulation such as introduction of equality law, safety for women, ethical standards for
advertisements etc. for company it become important to opt all these changes for smooth running
of business functions & activities.
Environmental factor: from last two- three decades this factor gained a wide range of
importance for business unit as they need to elements all these factors that can harm or polluted
the environment (Mansouri, Singh and Khan, 2018For sustainable growth of company, managers
need to be mindful about all the practices of eco-friendly technologies.
In which it has a great value for a company which is discussed below:
 It helps the owner of new start-up company in determining the significant changes in all
political, social, technological, economical, environmental and legal factor.
 In order to make effective decision and strategies for expansion of business that time it
contributes a great help towards organisation.
 The department inside company such as sales, marketing, finance etc can be controlled
from inside as they can put more people in sales in order to generate more revenue but
the external factors cannot be controlled by inside for this company need to adopt all
these factor in order to run their business in a smooth way.
TASK 3
PESTLE framework to assess the external environment of selected company.
Political factor- It refers to those factors which bought pressures and opportunity to firm
related to changes of government policies, trading policies, funding, grants and initiatives etc. it
is important for any firm to consider all these factor in order to run their business in effective
manner in context of chosen firm, if the policies of governed is changes such as the division of
UK from European Union which term as Brexit that put a huge impact on telecom sector. In
which regulation comes up frequently in which the government has one idea in order to manage
the function of telecom whereas the people have another idea (Jaakkola and et.al., 2016). Wi-Fi
and the internet becomes the most important part of life for each individual in which people
demands from government to recognise the intranet as a basic right of human as it is necessary in

several regions such as education, online business etc. this offers great opening to chosen firm to
enhance their sales and profit by grabbing more or more people towards their services.
Economical factor- It is related with the changes of economic policies such as inflation
rate, interest, economy trends, local economy, taxation etc. In context of selected company
TalkTalk, the increase in inflation rate leave a huge impact on economy of UK. For instance,
impact of Covid-19 brought recession on economy & telecom sector that leads to scale down of
economy of UK nation along with company. The market shares of company also decrease due to
this impact of Covid-19. As well as several people get unemployed due to lockdown that
decreases the GDP and income of nation (Gupta, Gupta and Gupta, 2019. Which is not in favour
of company as they face several challenges.
Social factor- These factors is associated with the culture aspects, beliefs, lifestyle,
attituded etc. of consumers which affects the business performance of company. The changes in
demographics of market, and the buying decision of customers with respects to price effects the
function of chosen firm as they ned to adopt some new ideas in order to fulfil the demand of
customers as well to grab more people towards their services so that they will able to accomplish
its organisational goal within stipulated time. Social factors that TalkTalk group need to analyse
in pestle analysis can be the leisure interest as well as the skill level of population as they plays a
great role in how marketers of hosen firm will understand the consumers at marketplace as well
as how they plan the market strategies in order to deal with the demands of consumers.
Technological factor- It is connected with the technological aspects such as innovation,
emerging technologies, research and technology, intellectual property issues etc. In context of
selected firm, the introduction of new technology such as advent of 5G solution and network
offers opportunity to TalkTalk company in order to attract large number of people by adoption
new automation technology as in current time, the people of developed country UK prefer to use
high speed network data which provides benefits to TalkTalk company to launch 5G network
which leads them towards increment of operational efficiency and profitability. Along with this a
firm not only need to analyse the technologies even they need to assess the speed of technology
that disrupts industry (Zahari and Romli, 2019).
Legal factor– These factor which are related with the laws, legislations, rules of
government which affects the performance of business operations. The function of TalkTalk
Company also affected with legislation issues such as issues related with the laws of government

policies. The selected firm get opportunity to export and import their products internationally as
well as permits them to development in telecom tech devices. In order to enter the new market
company need to evaluated all these legal factor carefully as it can leads them towards theft of
organisation secret sauce thus the overall competitive edge. The chosen company need to keep in
mind some legal factor before entering in new market such as health & safety law, employment
law, data protection law along with discrimination legislations.
Environmental factor- This is regards with the ecological and environments aspects that
affects the demand of products of company. It involves environmental regulations, sustainability,
impact of adverse weather etc. in relevance to chosen firm they hosted some environmentally
friendly data in order to enhance the sustainability of consumers or clients as well as took some
initiatives to maintain the sustainability of environment (Islam, Mamun and Amanullah, 2017).In
addition to this the changes in climate and global warning puts a huge impact on function and
activities of connectivity firm as it become difficult to supply products to customers in term of
employment with advancing technologies, workers need to opt changes.
From above discussion it has been analysed that it helps organisation to get prepare for a
possible threat which arises due to variations of external factors as well as it assists company in
determining the opportunities that ascends due to modification of external factor for instance, the
decrement in interest rate provides opportunity to increase the demand of product. Apart from
this, PESTLE analysis is a cost-effective tool that can be used by any firm in order to determine
the macro factors that influence and affects the business of company.
CONCLUSION
From above discussed report it has been analysed that for a company it is important to
understand the factors of external environment that affects the operation of business and which
can be done with the help of PESTLE analysis it aids company in making strategies and planning
in effective way that leads the managers of company towards accomplishment organisational
goal within a stipulated time. In addition to it, this report studied about the history and
organisational structure of chosen company, TalkTalk as they follow hierarchy-based structure in
order to operate the activities & function of company.

REFERENCES
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