252 Al-Shammari
Copyright © 2005, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written
issued expressions of interest for a second GSM license, and awarded a second license
in 2004. The market was due to be fully open to competition in all telecommunications
areas by July 2004.
Never had the external environment of GTCOM been so competitive, turbulent, and
challenging with respect to attracting and keeping customers and controlling costs. The
delicate market position of GTCOM, due to the liberalization of the telecommunications
market, was aggravated by organizational dysfunction manifested by a strong hierarchi-
cal structure, indigenous culture, and a product-centered business. The fear was that
unless GTCOM undertakes substantial change, its competitors would move ahead and
it would be left behind.
In an attempt to face the challenge, the main thrust of activities in the past months
was to make GTCOM more customer friendly and efficient so that consumers will be less
inclined to “jump out of the ship” and defect to new players in the market. As a result,
GTCOM decided to adopt a knowledge-based customer-centric response strategy, that
is, KCRM, in order to diffuse existing business problems and exploit future business
opportunities.
The KCRM initiative targets the achievement of a more integrated approach toward
serving customers through a multitude of channels. By implementing the KCRM
program, GTCOM sought to transform its customer-centric data into complete knowl-
edge, and to apply that knowledge to the development of a longer-term relationship with
customers. The complete understanding of existing customers enables GTCOM to meet
current market challenges and represents a new potential market and source of gaining
competitive advantage, retaining existing customers, repeating profitable sales, increas-
ing revenue, and improving customer satisfaction.
Corporate History
GTCOM came into being in 1981 as a national telecommunications shareholding
company. GTCOM is now working toward meeting the demands of the new info-
communications age — the convergence of communications, computing, entertainment,
mobility, and information.
As one of the country’s largest organizations, GTCOM makes a difference in
people’s lives. To improve this, besides creating business and employing citizens, it is
committed to addressing the impoverished and underdeveloped sections of the commu-
nity, and allocates 2% of its profits every year to educational, cultural, environmental,
charitable, and social causes.
Type of Business and Products/Services
GTCOM is an integrated communications solutions provider that offers a wide
range of products and services in the data, Internet, mobile telephony, and fixed
telephony market segments.
In the Internet service provision market, GTCOM has services that include one-stop
shopping, integrated services digital network (ISDN), messaging switching system
(MSS), budget Internet-access service, and asymmetrical digital subscriber line (ADSL).
In telephony, though the broadest market is fixed lines, mobile services grow ten times
faster.